THE ROAD TO NSS 2013: LOADING UP THE CRATE

Let's go back to 2 weeks before the National Stationery Show. We were ready to ship out. In order to get a good deal on shipping, it is helpful to go ahead and ship to their warehouse ahead of time. Then another company transfers your product to the Javits Center. Since my walls were so large, I had to pay for freight shipping. I decided to go ahead and buy a crate from Uline. I thought this was the best way to get my stuff there safely and the crate can be used again in the future. PS: can you spot the cat in the picture?
My crate was 5ft x 5ft x 4ft and weighed 162 pounds all by itself. And my office in is a basement in a house that is in a ditch. The only way we could figure out to put it together and get it shipped out was to build the crate and load it at the top of the hill in our cul de sac. So we carried all of the stuff and the crate up the hill to be put together.

Since we are not a tall people, we left one side of the crate open to load it from the side. The crate was so big that I didn't even have to take apart my ikea furniture to make it fit. That was kind of cool. We wrapped the canvases in plastic to protect the paint. But on the way back we didn't since we will be painting over them in the future. Can you spot the color we choose?

All that was left to do at this point was pop on the top and wait for the truck to come and pick it up. Did you notice that it looks a little rainy? We were very lucky and no rain showed up that day but we have a bit of a disaster when it came time to put the top on.

Something wasn't right and we just couldn't make it work. It didn't seem like the top was square. We tried and tried and finally had to call Uline. Uline has great customer service so they offered to send out another crate to us. The only issue was that we had only a few hours until the pick was supposed to happen. We told this to the representative at Uline and luckily for us, they were able to get it to us just in time. We are also lucky that there is a Uline warehouse near Atlanta. 

As soon as the new crate arrived, we rushed to put it together and transfer all of the stuff. Of course, the truck arrived to pick it up about 30 minutes before we were done so we had to send him away to come back later. It all worked out and the crate arrived at the show (which was my biggest secret fear). I just always assume that my stuff won't be there when I get there but it always is.

Next up: Putting together the booth in NYC!