K/BIS – like my birthday – comes once a year and it’s a pretty big deal
Every year, the Merlot team is fortunate enough to attend the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (K/BIS) to support our clients in the industry. K/BIS is the world’s largest tradeshow for kitchen and bath professionals. This is like Super Bowl, New York Fashion Week and the American Idol finale all rolled into one for us.
Months of planning and pitching comes down to just three days of execution at the show. It’s a pretty incredible thing to be part of.
Well, K/BIS 2008 has come and gone and as the office comes down from its incredible adrenaline high, we thought it would be fun to share our completed K/BIS checklist so you can see what we, as a team, accomplished at this year’s show in Chicago:
- Amass approximately 1,200 empty plastic water bottles (Relax! We know plastic water bottles are bad for the environment and we wouldn’t dare contribute to this. That’s why we hit up our family and friends for their bottles.)
- Construct 8-foot-tall glass box to store 1,200 empty water bottles.
- Show off aforementioned water bottles in aforementioned box to make a point: STOP contributing to landfill pile up and refill a reusable bottle with tap water. Take back the tap! Preferably an Everpure tap.
- Recycle all water bottles used in display.
- Gorge self on pizza from Gino’s East in Chicago.
- Become besties with the O at Home crew.
- Roll out the red carpet! With media tour RSVP lists including the editors for publications such as Metropolitan Home, Domino and Elle Décor, our clients brought their A-game. We were able to grab the editors’ attention with new trends and new products.
- Confirm that frog legs really do taste like chicken.
- Take photos with phone of Electrolux’s cupcake-themed booth.
- Erase cupcake photos from phone when confronted by one of several large Electrolux security guards.
- Discover cupcake photos are still on phone after leaving the Electrolux booth. Take THAT security!
- Entertain! Enjoy several rounds of pool with the client before losing the table to two very drunk Chicagoans. (Needless to say, I won’t be quitting my day job for the glamorous life of a pool shark.)
We are in the process of running some pretty impressive numbers on the media attendance at the show. We’ll post final media totals a little later today. Stay tuned…
May 12th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
what kind of pizza? tomato and cheese?