Nizzle, Wiz and crice escaped headquarters for a trip to
San Diego
last week. The purpose
for the absence was to give our retailers a preview of the Fall 09 line-up at
the Action Sports Retailer show.
Most companies bring three things to ASR; people, product
and a booth where the people show the product.
After the product and the people who show the product, the
booth is probably the most important part of the tradeshow.
Booths are as unique as the people and products that occupy
them. Some booths have models, professional athletes, artists or musicians and
some have a single hand-written sign.
Because nobody asked me for booth input, Simple didn’t have
organ music nor did they buy me any temporary friends. We did have a big-time
musician in our booth, for a moment, but he purposely didn’t bring his guitar
and, presumably, received no compensation for his appearance.
At Simple we do things a little differently. We use
interesting and responsible ways to attract attention and make money, but we do
love loud noises and eye candy as much as the next footwear company. We sell
shoes based on values rather than vice.
To accomplish this, we rounded up some unloved, unnecessary
and unused phonebooks to help beautify our booth and simultaneously make us
beautiful people at the same time.
A lot was accomplished on the trip. Not only did we save a lot
of phone books from the trash and flaunt our Fall ’09 line-up, we also unveiled
our new creative. It’s called less>more and it’s a fresh way to describe
what’s been happening at Simple for a while.
If you’re not familiar with what we do at Simple, a great
example is giving phonebooks a second chance. If people deserve a second
chance, why don’t previously living trees. I don’t believe a phonebook was
intended to go directly into the garbage because I’ve never seen the phonebook
delivery guy delivering a phonebook into a garbage can.
Here’s the fruit of our toils. We didn’t build the booth
ourselves, Shane, Paul and a couple of other guys did. Nikki took the photos and Chris sold the shoes.