Floor Planning- 2011

If you've been following this Blog for any length of time, you know that I always set up & diagram my booth (as accurately as is possible) in my studio, prior to packing everything up for Market. But here's the deal, I'm CONSTANTLY tweaking my booth arrangement. When I walk the floor at Market, it's with a purpose. I always take note of the things I like about other booth setups and also the things I do NOT like for future reference.

Here's how our booth was set up in Salt Lake City in May'11

One thing that was painfully obvious to me in Salt Lake City last spring, was that we were starting to outgrow our booth setup. Of course I will resist the idea of going to a double booth as long as possible, because of the additional expense and equipment this would entail, but in my heart, I know the expansion is probably inevitable. In the meantime though, I'll keep modifying our furniture configuration to get  as much useful space as possible out of our square footage.

In Salt Lake City(on the right), I pulled both 8 ft tables out to the aisles, and stacked my boxes in the corner between them, in effect adding 2 linear feet to my display.  I enjoyed the extra space, BUT, I've grown increasingly dissatisfied with the stationing of our work table in the entrance to our booth. It seems like an ineffective use of the space, PLUS, I've come to the conclusion that it "blocks" a clear view into our booth, so I spent most of my spare time in SLC planning how I would change the arrangement in Houston, and here's what I came up with, below.

This is our floorplan for our display in Houston next month.

For Houston, I've gotten rid of the center work table, placing a 4 foot table perpendicular to each of my display tables. Our product displays can now carry over out onto these tables, PLUS, passersbys can now have an unimpeded view into our booth. The foot traffic pattern is still good. No one should feel 'trapped' because there's actually more room to move under this arrangement than our old one above and I probably won't keep that stool in our booth  unless things get really slow (which will help).

Here's the new table 'footprint' outlined on my studio floor. Of course this configuration is a little too big to fit into my studio space. So as you can see in this picture, the 4ft table on the right had to be scooted forward for my simulation, but that's OK, it's close enough for my purposes here.

Now, when I add the brand new shelves that my Dad made for me (more about these later), I can get a really good idea of how to arrange my sample bags so that they look their best, and be seen easily from many angles. And here's how my display will basically look when they ring that opening bell in Houston next month.

Just so you know, I was standing on a ladder in the corner of the roon in order to get this shot, and I STILL couldn't get them all in the picture, but that's OK, I drew a very detailed diagram, so that I can reconstruct this arrangement quickly when we get there.

You might notice that it doesn't look like I utilized much space out on the 4 ft tables, but I needed to leave room to conduct sales and also for my brand new notions display (more about this later as well).

All in all, I'm pleased with how this looks and so it seems, is my assistant. I have every reason to think this will work well for us, but one thing is for sure... we've just about maxxed out our single booth floorplan, and pretty much any expansion that needs to be made now, will probably involve going to a larger size booth.

So, what do YOU think about this new configuration? Any thoughts? If so, please feel free to reply below.