A Day at the Ace Show – In Pics!

We’re just back from the Fall 2009 Ace Hardware Tradeshow in Atlanta. There is lots to blog about, as always, but here are some pics I snapped with my Blackberry (sorry for the low resolution) to give a quick recap of a day in the life of Mail Boss… at the tradeshow. More details to come.

7:50 AM: Here is the Mail Boss Booth #3357 on Friday morning right before the Convention doors opened. Chris is still waking up. Notice the Starbucks Coffee (it was early) sitting next to the Oasis Jr® “locking” mailbox. We put candy in this competitor’s “secure” mailbox and then reach in the incoming mail door and pull it out to demonstrate to people that the candy bar could be a credit card bill or social security statement, and they would never even know it was missing. Hard to explain, but you get the idea.

8:00 AM: Here’s David standing next to the competitor’s locking mailbox. Also, notice we decorated the booth with a scarecrow in a MailBoss t-shirt! We thought it was quite festive. SOMEONE must have liked it because when we went to pack up the crate at the end of the show, Mr. Scarecrow was gone! Seriously… who steals a MailBoss scarecrow?!!!

Here’s a nice view of the whole booth. In the back left corner you can see the Mail Boss locking mailbox endcap, which was also on Bulletin Special in the buyer’s booth. In the left foreground you can see the remote control Mail Boss (converted from an RC truck-thanks Mike!) that we drive around in the aisles when traffic is slow. We have a good time!

12:30 PM: At lunch time, things slow down a bit, so we took the opportunity to stroll through the new product world. Imagine our surprise when we chanced upon our very own Townhouse Mail Boss Wall Mount locking mailbox in the Home and Garden New Product World. We didn’t know it was going to be featured, so we were pretty excited. How cool!

One new thing with this show was that our Mail Boss locking mailbox endcap was featured in the Buyer’s Booth on 50% Off Bulletin Special. The setup was just 30 feet or so away from our booth, but we weren’t supposed to interact with dealers who were looking at the bulletin. That was tough for us, because there are quite a few unique and patented features on the Mail Boss that we like to show prospective customers. This really helps them to get the “big picture” on why our locking mailbox is heads above the rest.

6:00 PM: Before we leave the Booth each day, we have to take care to secure some things so that we can be sure they’ll be there when we return in the morning. Lucky for us, our booth is equipped with our very own security mailboxes that do the job just fine. So, rather than lug our very expensive laptop back to the hotel, we keep it in the Mail Boss! Now that’s walking the talk.. putting your money where your mouth is.. etc. 🙂

6:30 PM: Finally back at the hotel! Here’s Chris and David at the end of the Tradeshow: Day 1. We were all exhausted, but it’s SO worth it!