So as if it wasn’t enough that we traveled 12,000 kilometers from Auckland New Zealand to Louisville Kentucky the plot was about to thicken.
It all started in Denver Colorado. We knew there were a few final touches that we would need to sort out when the bits of the booth arrived in Denver, but we never anticipated having trouble getting the booth to Louisville. After a few weeks of back and forth with FedEx freight and what should have been a run-of-the-mill tradeshow freight experience we were right to be nervous. Things were just not coming together and no matter how hard we thought we were forcing them, it wasn’t coming right. After all why would we need to force things. Like I said this was a run-of-the-mill transaction. We call them in, they pick it up and we put it together in Kentucky. Rewind to September 19th, three days before the show and the pickup hasn’t happened. We are already in Kentucky doing some pre-show business when I get the call on Monday (20 September 2011 2:12:57 AM NZST) about the freight still sitting in our Denver depot. On comes the light bulb.
I remember getting an email months earlier by a gentleman named Tony from Global/Airways Freight offering their services in bringing any size booth whether small for large, heavy or light near or far to the tradeshow in Kentucky. In fact they specialize in shipping from overseas so that was the real nature of the call from him. So I make a quick last minute attempt to contact him via email while I am on hold with FedEx freight. Before the last verse of the pina colada song hold-music I get a response from Tony.
My Email
“Tony,
We have a booth crate in denver that we need in louisville in a couple days for ABC. Can you get it there?”
Tony’s Response
“No problem. We should really pick up today if at all possible...”
They picked it up a couple hours later and off it went to Louisville. Bullet dodged. Well, I say bullet dodged, but should there have even been a bullet? I mean, its pretty simple customer service yet FedEx managed to stuff it up. Lucky for us Global/Airways came through big.
Travis and I arrive on the first night of setup to lay down the putting green style carpet before the crates arrive and the mayhem ensues over the next couple of days. We do a late night prepping the area and getting a feel for the space and the layout to come. We leave our space around 12:30 am and head back to the house we rented in the historic area of downtown Louisville.
The crates arrive the middle of the next day. I was extremely surprised even though this is what Global/Airways promised. So we went straight to work on putting things together.
