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Our 50-foot booth at SDCC starts just as lines on the floor with a perimeter of blue and white drapes on rods.
Everything else you see in our booth -- the grids, shelves and most of the tables -- and of course the books. Lots of books! ... are brought there by us on a truck and assembled by our crack team of helpers.
The first part of the SNB team arrives at the loading dock, where we move our boxes and fixtures from the truck to pallets. The pallets are delivered to our booth via forklifts.
Once the pallets are dropped at our booth -- we have to get everything off the pallets ASAP to clear the aisles for the forklift traffic and other exhibitors who are arriving.
We've learned to bring lots of WATER .. as well as snacks and other supplies... to help out our set-up crew.
We arrive on the Monday of Comic Con week. Set-up continues through Wednesday afternoon.
The grids and shelves are put together in a way that Stuart designed over the years...
.. This arrangement of grids and narrow shelves isn't as HEAVY, expensive or hard to move around as traditional bookstore shelving...Below is a view of the booth from the aisle
Here's the interior of the booth in progress,.
This view shows the cashier station with our end-cap that faces out to the center aisle. Usually we reserve the end-cap for signings.Last year, for the Secret of Kells signing, the artists would sit at the end cap table and the line of folks with books to get signed extended down the middle of the center aisle...
Below is the second cashier station .. at the other end of our booth, where we share a wall with another vendor. They have the single end cap at the other end of our row...
This year .. our wonderful team of booth helpers during the show got to wear distinctive athletic wear shirts in SNB goldenrod yellow with our SNB logo on front ..
Above, two crew members model the "song of the sea" cover versions. You can also see our crew wearing the shirts during set-up...
And on duty during show hours...
These shirts were made by Full Gear .. a custom apparel company and supplier of shirts for sports teams and booster groups. Stuart liked the idea of introducing this product to our patrons. One way for artists... and small businesses like ours .. to grow is to find ways to diversify their product line.
With Full Gear, artists can put their art on a unique shirt .. or a run of shirts .. with wrap-around, full color designs. Our staff appreciated how comfortable the shirts were! Super breathable and lightweight to wear. There will soon be a micro-site for Full Gear on the SNB website. Meanwhile, more on Full Gear here:.
https://fullgear.com/
Below is a shot of the booth -- completely set-up and ready for the con to open!
And here are shots of convention attendees shopping at the booth...
This part of the booth had a row of one of our favorite books....
Stuart designs all the SNB postcards. This years card features our publication of Claire Wendling's Iguana Bay 2.0. Here's the front...
and back of the card...
While we have two days to set-up the booth .. when the show closes at 5PM on Sunday, the clock starts ticking for load out. We have to be out of the hall by 11 PM. Many from our set-up crew return at that time to help us box up the stock and take apart all the fixtures...
We have to load everything on pallets again. Once we load the pallets and shrink wrap them, we can get a number to wait for the forklift to take our pallets to our truck. The pallets stay at the convention center. We get to take everything off the pallets and load it all on to our truck. Once our truck is loaded.. our time at SDCC ends. It's a LONG night! And it comes at the end of a hectic week. We can't thank our crew of helpers enough!!! They are the SNB superheroes!
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