We cooked up a whole new experience for the Impressions Expo 2024 in Long Beach, CA! Our experiential booth brought something fresh to the show floor, delighting attendees and staff alike as they learned about our products and watched our heat transfers in action.
One question from the weekend is: “How did you do it?”
We’re sharing the details 🤫 Read on to learn more!
The Challenge
“How do we do make our booth more inclusive, fun, and just plain cool?”
This question launched the team into the process of developing our experiential booth. We asked ourselves how can we show attendees the value of heat transfers without just showing heat transfers? How do we do more than just displaying transfers on a t-shirt? How do we make it worth people's time to stop in and learn about how transformative transfers can be to their business?
The answer? Change how we show our product - simulating real life use cases, show how to build your own brand(s) and decorate all kinds of products with heat transfers.
The booth was split into two areas:
- A "soccer field" to showcase how you can use transfers on and off the field by decorating different athletic/performance items, fanwear, etc
- A "food truck" to showcase how you can build a brand by decorating uniforms, aprons, branded neck labels, hats, etc
Here's a snapshot of our planning layout for the Hot Off the Press experience. The Green area is our soccer field highlighting sportswear, and the black area is our food truck experience highlighting fan wear, food service garments, and more.
Each and every team member contributed towards building this experience, from drawing the artwork for giveaways, to creating signage, to building the “touch wall”, and so many other details that are seen throughout our booth. Read on to see each detail!
Building the Booth
The Process
The Details
The Truck
This was definitely not a food truck and we weren't handing out actual food (sorry!). Nonetheless, it served to be a super eye-catching, attention-grabbing tool that made people feel invited and welcome in our booth. Shout out to Adelante Wine Bar for the beautifully renovated 1958 Arrow trailer. It was the perfect setting for our wild idea.
All our signage including our truck sign, menu board, and “we cater” signage, were meant to fully lean into the experience and give people something to talk about while still remaining true to our business and products.
The Pun-Filled Menu
We had a blast designing the signage, but especially the menu. Who doesn't love a ton of puns? They highlighted some of our tradeshow "specials" - giveaways used as a way to delight and educate attendees. Best part? Attendees could order right off our “menu.”
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 and handed out straight from the truck.
Shout out to Alphabroder for providing the tote bags for this special giveaway.
Tradeshow "Specials": Original "Burrito" & DTF "Tacos"
What's a tradeshow without an in-booth demo? 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!
These were transfers designed for application demos to highlight how these two transfer types are
comprised of the same "ingredients", but both have amazing qualities that compliment any "menu". Simply said - they're both great tools for your decoration needs.
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!
Big thank you to Sanmar for providing the District Perfect Weight tees!
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!
The Add-Ons
To complement 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!
The "Sprinters" (screen printers!) team
The Sprinters team were on the field throughout the whole weekend! We had all the "soccer field" staples: the soccer post, the net (with a presumptuously placed soccer ball), the penalty box, a bench, a coach, and other little details. We wanted attendees to feel like they were on the field with “players” warming up- envisioning all the garments they can make for the home team, the fans, or the pros!
The Sprinters even had their own sponsor - the "Hot Off the Press" food truck! The sublimated jerseys on each of our mannequins featured the “Hot Off the Press” logo applied in the standard sponsorship decoration location - using our transfers, of course. Sprinters jerseys were pressed with 613 Originals’ high-performance product which be released soon (more details to come!)
Polyester bags, cotton totes, rally towels, can coolers, pennant flags, shorts, jackets, and so much more were decorated with all of our transfer formulas. Want in on the action? Find out which formula is right for you.
The "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.
The Final Booth
We had thousands of people visit our booth with incredible feedback - here are a few soundbites:- “This is the best booth I’ve seen at the show!”
- “[613 Originals’] Booth is so fun. I love these little burrito bags and the elote shirt!”
- “How did you come up with this idea? It’s amazing! I can’t wait to see what you do next!”
We sold out of our Thankful "Burrito" totes by midday Saturday and received 20+ stories and posts through various social channels. We are continuing to see videos posted from the weekend and getting comments and messages around the experience! Did you get to attend? Be sure to tag us too!
Our team in front of our booth!
Top (left to right): Tonie, Rick, Deric, Zach
Bottom (left to right): Sherry, Cat, Steph
Shout out to our team member not pictured: Rob! Kristina! Karla! Nate!
Other Things
Our CEO, Deric (position second from the left) on a Shop Talk panel to talk about the transfer industry.
On Saturday, our CEO, Deric Hoch, was part of a Shop Talk panel hosted by Ink Kitchen and moderated by Stan, @Tshirtsidehustle. Industry leaders discussed the transfer industry, what’s new and what to look for. Guests learned more about transfers from screen print to direct to film along with what to look for in a transfer vendor.
We hope to see you at the next show!
Miss Us At The Show?
You Can Still Request our Free Sample Pack:
