Each year, the city of Baltimore hosts one of the country’s largest expos of commercial interior design products: NeoCon East. Now I hate to pile on Charm City, a place which perennially tops lists of America’s most violent/corrupt/homicidal/long-suffering cities, but this place manages to shock my senses every time I’m there. From harrowing confrontations on public transportation to running afoul of local labor bosses to rolling around on the floor of the city’s hissing cockroach infested convention center in the wee hours of the night, Baltimore never disappoints.

The great part of the NeoCon show is the parity, our humble booth is situated just feet away from industry titans like Herman Miller, Steelcase, and Bentley. It allows for a great flow of traffic and a balanced mix of visitors to each space, something you never see at other shows of this kind. And while reaching into roach-filled recesses to finagle the booth’s lighting set-up isn’t exactly my cup of tea, NeoCon East is always a huge learning experience and a great opportunity to visit with groups from other great brands.

My strategy for the Zolatone space at NeoCon East was to create more of an art installation than a typical tradeshow booth. With gallon cans, brushes and rollers all suspended on the walls seemingly spilling, dripping, and applying Zolatone’s new line of interior paints, this space screamed paint. That was key for me. With so many disparate products at one show, the Zolatone booth needed to be a quick and engaging read in order to get folks to visit. I designed, built, shipped and assembled this labor of love myself and I’m pleased to say that the booth had great stopping power and brought in considerably more leads than neighboring spaces and previous Zolatone booths. Scroll down for more…