Still Definitely Not a Food Truck: Impressions Expo Atlantic City Edition

No leftovers here! We served up our experiential booth again, but this time at the Impressions Expo in Atlantic City, NJ. We refined some of the details and improved our recipe - read on for a deeper dive into the details! 

Serving the Recipe for Your Success

Crowd stands in font of the Hot Off the Press truck

Location, Location, Location

We were parked next to the real concession stands this time around. At first we were worried this would cause some folks to get hangry, but I think the high number of excellent food jokes we heard from attendees proved that the location was perfect. We did get some confused looks - a few even warned us about their food allergies! - but one thing is certain, our "burrito" tote bags were loved by all.

A front shot of the Hot of the Press trailer experience during set-up

Shout out to Tipsy Saddle for their horse trailer-turned-mobile bar.

The Pun-Filled Menu

Rob pressing t-shirt giveaways for attendees
Special menu for the Atlantic City tradeshow!
Alex pressing Puff 1 Color giveaway designs

Tradeshow "Specials": Original "Burrito" & DTF "Tacos"

Original Full Color and DTF giveaways

Our in-booth demos are always the best part of the show. Attendees get a chance to really see our transfers in action, ask questions about application, and get a better feel for how easy it is to use them. Attendees could "order" either an Original Full Color "Burrito", printed using our Original Full Color screen printed heat transfers, or Direct to Film "Tacos", printed using our Direct to Film transfers, and we would press the transfer right there in the booth!

We chose designs that would highlight how these two different transfer types have similar "ingredients" and are both great additions to any "menu".  Food metaphors aside - we mean it. Both DTF and Original Full Color are great tools for your decoration needs. Just depends on what that need is!

Each garment was also branded with a tagless neck label - we were pressing these all weekend using a hat press provided by Insta. So easy, so simple, and a great way to elevate any garment!

Tagless label print on the Fruit of the Loom ICONIC t-shirt.

And a big thank you to Fruit of the Loom for providing all of our giveaway garments this weekend. We used the super easy-to-decorate ICONIC™ t-shirts

Fruit of the Loom sign in front of a mannequin and food truck

Featured Item: Thankful "Burrito"

Our featured item, of course, was the Thankful "Burrito", a tote bag decorated with our most popular transfer, the Varsity 1 Color formula. These tote bags were rolled made-to-order using purple and white pin-striped deli paper and handed out straight from the truck.

Cat rolling tote bags into burritos.
A rolled up "burrito" tote bag and standard color swatch pack.
Excited attendees receiving "burritos" from our food truck.

 

A big thank you to Alphabroder for providing the tote bags for this special giveaway. We used OAD's Medium Gussetted tote, a sturdy option that was easy to decorate with our Varsity 1 Color transfers.

Thank you tote bag hanging from the side of the trailer

Ordering "Off the Menu"

With so many transfer types to choose from, we couldn't just show off Original and DTF! Shelly, from our super customer support team, drew tacos, burritos, and elote for our Puff giveaways! We also had a special edition Atlantic City design specially made for the show. This showed off our multidimensional puff in Puff Mint and Light Purple.

Peeling the transfer paper off of our multidimensional puff printMultidimensional puff pressed onto a Fruit of the Loom ICONIC tshirt.

The Add-Ons

To compliment our menu items, we had various Taco Bell-inspired “hot sauce” packets for each of our different swatch packs: Standard, Puff, Metallic, Neon, and Glitter colors. Our swatch packs are an additional resource for our customers to use when placing their order or working on projects so they can cross reference with our colors!

Swatch packets

The "Touch Wall"

Touch wall in our ISS AC tradeshow booth, displaying t-shirt frames with different transfer capabilities.
Touch wall displaying t-shirt frames showcasing our Direct to Film and Full Color heat transfers.
Jay from our Support team discussing our different heat transfer formulas in front of our touch wall.

 

We had garment racks and mannequins throughout the space with various apparel items and transfer types, but nothing is quite like the “Touch Wall”.  It's designed for attendees to touch and feel our transfer types, empowering them to compare each to find the best transfer type for their next project.

Our favorite part? Being able to easily compare the differences and similarities between formulas like Varsity vs Classic or Original Full Color for Direct to Film.

Rick discussing our heat transfer formulas with an attendee.

The Final Booth

My favorite feedback of the weekend:
Booth Feedback from Instagram

 

Other Things

5 industry leaders sitting on stage, including Tonie, 613's VP of Technical Sales, discussing heat transfers.

Tonie, our VP of Technical Sales, (position third from the left) on a Shop Talk panel sharing tips & tricks for how to solve decorations problems using heat transfers.

On Friday, Tonie Mignogna, our VP of Technical Sales, participated in a Shop Talk panel hosted by Ink Kitchen and moderated by Stan, @Tshirtsidehustle. The panel topic was about how to troubleshoot common issues that may occur when using transfers, such as decorating technical fabrics prone to scorching, odd placements on garments, application, and more! Tonie shared details on how to use everyday objects found in your shop to solve some application challenges. Stay tuned for a more detailed post about the talk soon!

We hope to see you at the next show! 

 

Miss Us At The Show?
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