And even in someone else's booth...

This is one of those rare weekends when I don't have a show to do somewhere and we don't have plans to go hang out on our boat.  So when a good friend of mine asked if would help her out at a trade show I said sure.  Interestingly enough the trade show happened to be the CDA, California Dental Association's Fall Scientific Session and it was being held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  In my former life, before the full-time artisan jewelry creating gig, I was a registered dental assistant.  In fact I still am, renewing my license every two years, just not actively working as one.  It seems I can't ever really leave dentistry and it was a great career for over 20 years.

It was a lot of fun to be in that atmosphere again and  to talk to lots of dental folks.  My friend's business is to take her fabulous all natural, self formulated, FDA approved lip balm and create a private label for a dentist's office so they can give it to their patients as a marketing tool for their practice.  I gotta say, even in this realm of highly educated individuals, there was some pretty interesting questions and/or behavior.

The show floor of this meeting is somewhat considered a "prize-fest" by the staff of those attending.  And with good reason, most companies have tons of promotional give-aways and tons of candy is given out.  (Pretty funny at a dental trade show, yes??)  So while a lip-balm would be considered a "give-away" at another booth it is in actuality a "professional sample" coming from my friend's booth.  The preference is one sample per office staff of an office or one of each flavor (there are 4) if a doc happens by.  Weeeellll...it was all we could to do try to prevent blind grabbing of multiple tubes of lip-balms by the frenzied masses as we were patiently trying to extoll the virtues of said lip-balm and give our sales spiels.  All they were interested in was seeing how many tubes they could get their grubby little hands on and what did the different colored labels mean??  Granted, it was not like that the entire day and there were plenty of folks who were truly interested in my friend's product.  I'm sure the lip-balm will be coming soon to a dental office near you...this lip-balm is out to revolutionize the lip-care world.  But I digress.  One dental student, upon hearing that there was a chocolate flavor, came over and excitedly asked for a sample.  We gave him one.  He opened it.  He twisted the tube until the entire length of the lip-balm was exposed.  He removed said lip balm from the tube and proceeded to take a bite.  As he walked away he could be heard saying "Yup, this is chocolate!"  Strange, and he's a future DENTIST!  During the course of the day the vendor across from us could be seen adjusting their goody bags as they ran out of stuff.  They were down to a few mini-rubic's cubes and some chocolate bars.  When those ran out the vendors gave up, packed up their stuff but proceeded to leave three lonely tangerines on their table.  Within 5 minutes of the vendor staff's departure someone walked up to the deserted table, looked around so see if anyone was looking and deposited all three tangerines into his large, over-stuffed bag and walked away hurriedly.  Nothing is safe!

The day ended with an amazing dinner at the famous Scoma's, there in Pier47.  A perfect ending to a day of incredible people watching.  I hope we do it again next year!