Those who do any amount of international shipping know that customs procedures are nothing to be trifled with. Something as simple as the wrong word choice on documents can get your shipment sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you don't know if you'll ever see it again, much less have it in time for your show.
Working for a U.K.-based exhibit house, I had just such an unfortunate experience years ago when my client there was preparing to exhibit at a home-improvement show in Las Vegas. The company,

World of Mats, manufactured floor mats of all sorts, so we had devised a 30-by-30-foot display that would show off its products. The attention grabber for the space was to be two life-sized mannequins, one dressed as a cowboy, and one dressed as an American Indian. Their outfits were crafted of mat swatches that had been stitched together into a colorful mosaic, and we thought they looked smashing.

On the freight consignment forms, we described that portion of the contents as "two models dressed in fabric," a description that seemed innocuous enough. We loaded them up with the rest of the exhibit into crates stamped with "WOM" in large letters – something that seemed fairly benign – and stuffed them into a 40-foot-long shipping container. With several weeks of spare time built into the schedule, we sent our cargo on its ocean voyage from the United Kingdom to the customs docks in Los Angeles, a place I now lovingly refer to as the entrance to the rabbit hole.

We had a customs clearance agent in Los Angeles who was supposed to help us move the freight through the customs process, though freight from U.K. shippers usually just got the rubber-stamp treatment. However, when customs officials saw the crates with WOM stamped on them, they assumed they were from China, though I have no idea why. The United States had a long list of restrictions on Chinese imports at the time, so officials began sifting through the consignment forms looking for anything that might be on an embargoed list.

Our customs clearance agent tried to get us back on the fast track by pointing out that it was in fact a British shipment, not a Chinese one, but customs officials were not going to admit they had been wrong. There had to be something in that shipment from China, they decided, and so they dug.

Finally, customs agents alighted on a listing they found suspicious: two models dressed in fabric. The government had stringent embargoes on any cotton materials originating from China. Our agent explained that the mannequins weren't really dressed in "fabric" – that it was just a term we'd used to describe their mat garb. But it didn't matter. Officials impounded the whole shipment until they could sort out what – exactly – our cowboy and American Indian were wearing.

Because this was in the days before email, communication between Los Angeles and the United Kingdom was something of a nightmare. Our first inkling that the shipment had gone awry came in the form of a fax sitting on the machine when we arrived at the office one morning.

In it, our clearance agent explained the hang-up and relayed the question about whether the fiber content of the mats included cotton. Thinking this would be a simple issue, we went to the client, confirmed that the answer was "no," and faxed it back later that day. But the next day, there was another fax on the machine with more questions about particular mats that looked suspiciously like they might have cotton in them. They wanted data sheets on the materials in those mats. Again, we went to the client, got the information, and faxed it back.

Day after day for a couple of weeks this went on. What about the band for the American Indian's headdress? What about their shoes? And what about these other mats in the outfits? My client was going insane trying to produce information on these tiny details, and I was becoming worried. I had built in three weeks of slush time for the shipment, but the customs agents were eating away at that, one stupid question at a time.

By the time we had sent 40 data sheets for each mat sewn into the outfit, I wanted to scream in someone's face. Then came the question that almost made my head explode: What about the thread? Customs agents wanted to know not only the fiber content of the thread but also the stitch count used to sew the mats together. My client felt like someone was playing a practical joke on him.

Somehow the client found that seemingly impossible answer and prepared a replacement shipment of mat samples to be sent by airfreight to the show in case the absurd customs ordeal continued. Then we all boarded our flights for Las Vegas, as the show was less than a week away, and we needed to get a Plan B exhibit structure squared away just in case.

We landed on a Tuesday and learned that customs had just kicked the shipment loose, but the trucking company couldn't deliver it to the exhibit hall until Friday evening. The trade show was set to open Monday, meaning we would have to work at breakneck speed to have it up in time, and there was no margin left for error. Just to cover our bases, I visited a local exhibit house to scope out a rental display, and I said a little prayer to the exhibiting gods that the ordeal would finally come to an end.

The truck arrived as promised on Friday, and we worked frantically with a labor crew to get our stand put together. In the center were our showpiece cowboy and American Indian, which I cursed at after the trouble they'd caused us. If only I hadn't called their clothes "fabric," I rued, realizing that in this business, the devil really is in the details.

— Peter Bowen, CEO, Access Displays Ltd., Westlea, England