Red Faces in Amsterdam
I flew out yesterday evening, Heathrow to Amsterdam. I thought I’d have a day or so to enjoy myself before the trade show opened. It’s at the Rai, and I’m fixed up with a hotel in the centre of the city, so I had hoped for a little R&R whilst the stand constructors did their job – just popping in once or twice to see how they were doing. Oh, how wrong can you be?!
I got out for the one evening, that’s all, before the fun started. I found a little restaurant by the canals and as it was pretty mild for September I even got myself an outside table and I sat there, watching the world go by and drinking one beer too many. But I didn’t lose my head. I know after dark all those girls come out and sit in the windows down by the canals, but I kept my hand on my wallet and my eyes on the pavement and I made it safely back to my hotel without weakening, for an early night, all by myself.
I’m glad I did too, because when the phone rang at 7.00am the next morning, I was already awake. It was Joe, my stand builder. He was already at the Rai, getting the crates, which had arrived overnight from Boston, signed-in and opened. We’d taken a leap of faith and booked big, huge, central stands for our three shows this year. To fill them, we were borrowing a two-story construction from our US parent company, complete with upstairs meeting zone, downstairs presentation area and no less than 3 plasmas built into the walls. We’d already used it earlier in the year at the NEC and it had worked out quite well. People were drawing positive messages from our big, loud-and-proud presence at these shows and we were doing good business.
Anyhow, back to the call. I was cleaning my teeth and only half listening – it was a bit early to be getting on to me, after all – but I heard his words clearly enough. Of our 27 crates, it seems that only 24 of them had actually arrived. The three missing ones contained a rather critical partition wall, the stairs to the upper level and two of the plasma screens. First there’s a low buzzing sound in my ears.... Now all the alarm bells are going off in my head. My heart is racing and the toothbrush is on the floor. I spell out the problem to myself.... The show opens tomorrow, and we’re missing walls, stairs and screens – that means we’ll be standing in a bomb-site with a box full of brochures.
I was seeing black blotches in my eyes, and my skin was suddenly prickly with pins-and-needles. It’s all in your head, breathe slowly, just like the doctor said. Sit down, close your eyes, and breathe slowly. It wasn’t working. Never mind stress, I was close to freaking out.
Sightseeing is suddenly off the agenda – that’ll teach me to try and skive for a few hours. I’m thinking maybe by this evening I won’t even have a job. It was me, after all, who had suggested we ship the US show stand around the world, and me who said it would be ‘no problem’ moving it around. I realised I didn’t even know where the missing crates were. Round the back of the Rai? At Schipol Airport? Still in Boston?
I headed for the exhibition hall in a cold sweat; a condemned man, on his way to the gallows.
By the time I got there, having had my phone glued to my ear for a half-hour, I’d discovered the crates were in the worst possible place, back at base – Boston, Massachusetts. I’d got the shipping clerk out of bed in the small hours (if I’m going to suffer, so is she), and given her a real hard time. But even then I’d held back a bit. I felt like screaming down the phone, ‘Those darn crates are no good to me now! You can throw them all in the sea for all I care. You guys in Boston know how to do that, right?!’ But I knew I might still need her help, and even though I may be about to be fired, I don’t want to end up getting sued as well.
I just didn’t know if we could fix things on time.
I remember getting a bit cute with the management-speak with Joe once. He took it on the chin, but I squirm when I remember what I said – it was fresh out of the happy-clappy text books: “don’t ever come to me with a problem, Joe, come with the solution too”... It appears he must have forgiven me though, because this morning, he’d made my problem into his problem, and he’d come up with a solution. It seems he knew this guy back in the UK, who worked in customs clearance. They had connections all over the world and could organise shipment of the missing crates in double-quick time, even out-of-hours in Boston. I only needed the shipping clerk to get herself to the office and wait for the freight forwarder. Surely she could do that part right. The guys at Customs Clearance Ltd would see to everything else... paperwork, transportation, clearance out of Boston and into Europe and delivery to the Rai. They said they could get the crates on a plane to the UK within a couple of hours and then cleared and shipped on to Amsterdam. They wouldn’t be here until around 2am tomorrow, but Joe said he’d work through the night and the show management agreed to keep the place open for us – for a fee of course. But that was still better than the alternative.
So, I know you want to know, did we manage it? Well I have to admit, it was a bit of a photo finish. I’ve been involved in last-minute hammering and nailing before, but never quite like this. But yes, we did it - just. We had literally minutes to spare, but as the sales guys sauntered in, off their early morning shuttle, we were testing the plasmas, and when everything fired-up first time, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Joe and his mates at Customs Clearance Ltd did me a real biggie that day, that’s for sure.
23rd Mar 2009
