These days, any time you can save a few dollars on an exhibiting program, I'm all for it. Of course, that's just about the time when all the wheels come off the buggy, and you end up having to spend twice what you were planning to save to rescue your company from a trade show snafu.

Take, for example, a recent exhibit at the 2013 National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) show. We had opted to take a rather economical route for NACS, choosing a 10-by-20-foot space that wouldn't break the bank. For in-line exhibits, our company normally used 10-by-10-foot modular back walls with graphics and product information that could be set up alone or strung together for longer displays. One of the 10-foot sections of back wall we were going to use at NACS was at the firm's headquarters in California, so staff there arranged to send it along with a monitor and collateral to the show in Atlanta. The other section of back wall we needed was being used at a show in New York, but the end date of that show lined up well with our start date. So staff at that show were to crate it up and have it shipped to NACS instead of back to the company headquarters when their show ended.

It sounded so simple. But when my colleague and I arrived in Atlanta to set up the display, there was something amiss. Three crates were sitting in our booth space – all from headquarters with our back wall, collateral, monitor, and other exhibiting necessities – and that was it. No crate from New York. I checked with staff at the exhibitor services desk, who said they had no other deliveries for us. This, of course, gave me an instant headache.

We still had two-and-a-half days to get the space set up, though, so I crossed my fingers and called the shipper handling the New York crate. The rep who answered the phone gave me good news and bad news. The good news was that they knew exactly where my crate was: It was on a truck. The bad news was that it got overlooked on the dock and hadn't been shipped when it was supposed to be, so this truck was still traveling through the belly of the East Coast and was days away. Too many days. I asked the shipping rep if we could convert the crate to an overnight delivery, but it turns out you can't just press fast forward on a shipment once it's in transit.

So it was settled: We weren't going to have half of our exhibit. It was a blow, but at least I knew in advance and had two days before the show opened to come up with a Plan B.

That afternoon, my colleague and I set up the portion of the display that we had and stood back to take stock of our situation. Our space looked exactly like you would imagine a 10-by-20-foot space would look with a 10-by-10-foot exhibit in it: stupid. We didn't even have pipe and drape, and I stood in front of the booth squinting at its hideousness as my headache turned into a searing pain.

I paced back and forth trying to come up with a way to fake our way through the show with a space now twice as big as we needed. We couldn't rent a back wall, as anything placed next to the section of wall we had wouldn't even come close to matching our colors or graphics and would stick out like a big, plain sore thumb. The best solution I could come up with was to create a lounge area in half of the display with some pipe and drape and furniture. It could look like we planned all that extra space for relaxing with our clients and prospects, and it seemed like the perfect solution. I headed for show services.

A couple of love seats would have been nice, maybe a coffee table and an area rug. But the thing about ordering items like that from show services once you are at the show and in a pinch is that you almost have to sell a kidney to pay for it. When the gal working the desk told me how much it would cost for my little "dream lounge," my knees buckled. Hell, I could have gone to a local furniture store, bought the nicest sitting area they had, used it in the exhibit, rented a trailer, and later drove the stuff back home for less.

The woman smiled sweetly at me as I stood there, mind racing through the practicality of finding a local store, buying the items, getting them onto the show floor, finding a trailer and a car, and then driving more than 1,000 miles with a bunch of furniture I probably didn't need anyway. Nope. She had me. "Is there anything cheaper available?" I asked.

What I settled on was a couple of high-boy tables, four chairs, and some pipe and drape. And I walked away from the desk with an invoice for $2,000 in my hand and a whole lot of curse words in my heart. So much for our budget-conscious booth.

Show services delivered the pieces, and once they were all set up, the exhibit didn't look too bad. At least it wasn't glaringly obvious that we were missing 50 percent of our display. However, it wasn't pretty either, like a classy little sitting area would have been, and it definitely wasn't as nice as if we'd had our actual booth with a full, 20-foot back wall. Our clients who stopped by didn't seem to notice, and plenty of them availed themselves of our seating spot to take a load off. We had salvaged the situation, but I wasn't looking forward to telling the company brass that they spent a couple of grand on furniture we were never going to see again.

But there was no point crying over spilled milk – or AWOL booths and ridiculously priced solutions. At the end of the day, sometimes all you can do is to roll with the punches, make decisions on the fly, and carry Advil. That said, in some situations, hauling a trailer to carry your own exhibit, or stuff you have to buy to replace one, isn't such a bad idea either.

— André LeMire, sales manager, Solid Systems Cad Services, Duluth, MN