How to Dress at a Tradeshow While Exhibiting

According to the U.S. Census, more than 15,000 tradeshows are conducted on an annual basis. Tradeshows are still one of the most effective ways for businesses and companies as well as individual proprietors to get the word out to a select base of customers as well as appreciably broaden that customer base in some instances. Some tradeshows are high-tech, high-class affairs, too, meaning exhibitioners dress to reflect their potential customer and visitor base. Other tradeshows, by contrast, attract a more laid-back or casual booth visitor base. Understanding tradeshow dress code while exhibiting your products, then, is particularly important.

Tradeshows and Dressing for Success

“Dress for Success” was a well-known and popular book from a few decades ago, and it made clear that how you dress has a direct affect on your level of success. Tradeshows and dressing for success, of course, means different Tradeshow Dress Codethings for different tradeshow experiences when it comes to exhibitors. For example, if you’re exhibiting your company’s wares at a tradeshow you’ll need to consider the tone of the tradeshow as well as various attendee demographics. Suppose, for instance, that you’re working a tradeshow booth at a bass fishing or sports exhibition and tradeshow. Donning a business suit when exhibiting bass fishing equipment at a tradeshow usually doesn’t make sense, of course. Wearing your bass fishing company’s branded logo polo shirts or fishing-associated clothing, or uniforms, at a bass fishing tradeshow, while working your booth, however, makes a great deal of sense. If you’re running an exhibition booth at a pharmaceutical tradeshow, though, you’ll most likely want to dress in a business professional manner, unless the exhibitor has stipulated business casual or other modes of dress. The point to dressing for success, when you’re an exhibitor working a tradeshow booth, is to put your potential client or customer base at ease by either fitting in with them or by impressing them. Professional bass fishermen, and there are such sportsmen, would dress as such when they’re exhibiting associated products at a sports expo. Pharmaceutical companies and their representatives and tradeshow exhibitors, on the other hand, often interact with physicians, pharmacists, clinicians, health administrators and the like. A suitable business look, then, is in order when dealing with such tradeshow attendees.

Determining Tradeshow Attendee Demographics

Fortunately for tradeshow exhibitioners a wide range of demographics are available when it comes to attendees at such events. In fact, most tradeshow organizers supply a large amount of demographic information about the people that may attend their expos. When you’re planning your tradeshow booth atmosphere as well as your manner of dress, consult the tradeshow demographic information available from the show’s organizer. Tradeshow attendee demographics include such data as income and education level of attendees as well as a number of tastes or preferences they may possess. Chances are visitors to computer equipment and software tradeshows will generally prove either tech-savvy or willing to become so as well as those looking for education on such technology. Unless your tradeshow booth is intended to attract corporate computer system purchasers looking for multimillion dollar systems, your manner of dress will be more business casual than anything else.

How You Dress is Almost Immediately Judged

In almost every regards, just how you dress while exhibiting at a tradeshow is judged almost immediately by visitors and attendees. Never, under any circumstance, present anything less than a personally clean appearance. The clothing you wear while working a tradeshow booth should always be clean and neat, even if it’s a costume, unless it’s specifically meant to look dirty or beat up. Nothing turns off visitors to a tradeshow more than dealing with slovenly looking men and women staffing a tradeshow booth, especially when they’re already acting unprofessionally.