Payment Plan

Making last-minute additions to a booth is always a tricky task, but when your corporate credit card gets canceled five weeks before the show, it makes the mission nearly impossible.

Last summer as I was preparing our exhibit for the American Library Association (ALA) 2009 Annual Conference, my company, Backstage Library Works Inc., was in the process of buying a small piece of a larger company. The acquisition would give us a microfilming function to add to our scanning and data-storage service, so we wanted to have the ability to promote it at ALA if the acquisition went through.

Just six weeks before the show, my boss decided he wanted to use a 10-by-20-foot booth instead of the 10-by-10-foot exhibit we'd planned to use at the show. If the acquisition was completed in time, he hoped to use the additional real estate to highlight our new microfilming function.

Luckily for me, not only was show management able to upgrade us to a 10-by-20-foot space, but the new booth space was actually closer to the front of the hall as well. After biggie-sizing my booth with a single phone call, my main concern was integrating 10 new feet of space into our existing exhibit design. Featuring a "backstage theater" theme to complement our company name, our typical 10-by-10-foot exhibit included a theater-style ticket booth, literature stands, movie posters, and a director's chair. After conferring with our internal team, we decided to keep the theater theme but simply add an "opening-night premiere" to introduce our new acquisition, assuming it came through in time.

Our opening-night elements were to include a red-carpet area with velvet ropes and movie-poster-style graphics that would support the Hollywood-premiere atmosphere. If the acquisition went through prior to the show, we'd post graphics touting our new microfilming service. If the show opened before the acquisition was complete, we'd use graphics highlighting our current offerings. Either way, the red-carpet addition would fit our theme.

With my booth-expansion plans made, all I needed to do was start buying the materials to enlarge our exhibit. And that's when disaster struck. As I began looking up prices on the Internet for velvet ropes and other premiere-night props - none of which were available for purchase through my exhibit house - my company received a letter from the bank that carried our corporate credit-card accounts. It seems the bank had ended its foray into the small-business arena. So while I had been busy planning purchases, our credit-card company was busy notifying its small-business clients that their accounts would be closed in five days.

Five days! I had 100 square feet of booth space that needed flooring, graphics, and a plethora of props. There was no way I could locate all these items online and purchase them in five days. So I basically gave up on the idea of using my corporate credit card altogether.

Making matters worse, I still needed to make travel arrangements for some of my co-workers who were recently added to our booth-staff roster. But, with no corporate card, I had no idea how I was going to pay for everything I needed to purchase.

Soon after news of the credit crunch hit, my boss, our comptroller, and I sat down to hammer out a solution. The good news was that the company had found a new bank to issue us corporate credit cards. The bad news was that those credit cards wouldn't arrive until about a week to 10 days before the show. That would be much too late for me to make those travel arrangements and get the booth outfitted in time for ALA.

I had a personal card in my wallet, but the idea of spending my own money - worse, money that needed to be paid back before my personal card started accruing interest charges - on work items made me nervous. Still, it was the only option we could come up with this late in the game.

To make this bitter pill a little easier to swallow, the comptroller told me to print receipts for everything I purchased. For each day's receipts, he would immediately write me a check so I could pay off my card before interest began to accrue and so I could keep my credit line open. That way, whatever was next on my purchase list - be it exhibit items or personal purchases - wouldn't put me over my limit. And to make me feel even better about the situation, the comptroller offered to let me use his own personal card if I had to make more purchases than my card would allow.

With a payment plan in place, I logged onto the Internet for some online shopping to accessorize my exhibit. I spent about $600 on foam flooring tiles that matched the ones in the rest of the booth, got a check, and sent it off to my credit-card company. Velvet ropes and stanchions cost about $350, and I immediately paid them off. Theatrical curtains: $200. Fabric graphics: $300. Pop-up banner stand: $450. Red carpet: $150. And, of course, a whopping $1,500 in hotel and other travel charges sent me scurrying to accounting for a fast payoff.

A quick shuffling of money from the company to me, and from me to my credit-card company followed each round of purchases. Over the course of about three weeks, I made twice-weekly trips to accounting to keep my credit line clear. Again, all this for an acquisition deal that was still pending.

About two weeks prior to the show, I gathered all of the purchased items that had arrived thus far in our offices in Provo, UT, and packed them up with our regular booth to be sent to Chicago. The remaining items I needed would either be carried onto the plane with my staff and me or sent directly to my hotel in the Windy City. Luckily, the new credit cards my company had ordered arrived just before the staff jetted off to Chicago for the show, so at least we were solvent once again. When we arrived in Chicago, my co-workers and I carried those few straggling items onto the show floor ourselves for setup.

In the end, however, it all was done for naught: The acquisition did not go through until after the show closed. Nevertheless, I was happy we'd gone to all the trouble. The booth looked great, and by accumulating those extra items, we could build out to a 10-by-20-foot exhibit whenever we needed to have a bigger presence at a show. I just hope that if we need any last-minute additions to the booth in the future, our corporate credit cards are not taking their final bow when it's time to make a purchase.

- Richard Covington, marketing manager,
Backstage Library Works Inc., Provo, UT