Day Four: Headed Home, Sweet Home

We got all packed up by 10AM today and have dropped off our shipping paperwork at the labor desk. It took 19 pallets and cases to bring all of our materials out here, and 17 to bring it all back (I guess we consolidated). One side benefit of this job is that in addition to learning to build rooms inside larger rooms and attach table legs at lightning speed, I am now a pallet shrinkwrapping machine – and recently I have even learned to use a pallet bander. There are no limits to the types of skills you can accumulate when working in marketing, kids!

Once again, Vegas has been fun and I almost feel like a local on the strip at this point (if there is such a thing), but I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that I can’t wait to get back to OKC. I will miss seeing people drinking and debauchery-ing at 7:30 a.m. in the MGM Grand, walking over intersections to cross the street, and riding the monorail to “work” every day, but I suppose there are greater things to look forward to back home in the real world, like a washing machine that doesn’t charge you $8.75 to launder a t-shirt and the lack of relative proximity to Pawn Stars (and soon we’ll have our own streetcar in Oklahoma City to use, so there’s that).

An army of red-shirted Firehouse Subs warriors:

I think overall that the show went well. We certainly had a large number of meetings, which is as good an indicator of interest and future success as any. Like I mentioned previously, people do make deals at this show, but sometimes they take multiple years of meetings before anyone pulls the trigger on siting stores. It looks like we will definitely have some announcements over the course of the year as a result of our being at this show and in prior years, however.

With that, we are out of the trade show business for the year, and it’s time to let the dogs out. Thanks for reading; we hope these blogs gave you an idea of the ICSC RECon show and a little bit about what we do at these types of shows, and that you got a little kick out of it along with that info. Thanks again for your time, and be sure to keep up with our blog as we continue to write about all things retail in OKC.