Expo West 2024 was a major milestone for The Only Bean! We'd like to thank everyone who helped us pull this off and to all the people who stopped by to show their support.
Three weeks. Three weeks is how long we had to design, build, ship, and set up a 10'x30' booth for #ExpoWest from scratch. If you're familiar with trade show booth builds, it often takes 3-6 MONTHS of planning to get a new booth designed and built — and that's with large specialized teams and big budgets. Initially, we were beyond ready for Expo West with our 10'x10' booth. This was our second year exhibiting and our booth location had been locked for almost a year. We were confident and had a solid plan. Then we got a phone call. The #ExpoWest2024 sales manager told us that a 10'x30' booth just became available. There was ZERO CHANCE that were taking it. It was an impossible timeline. The redesign, build, logistics, and staffing of a booth 3x the original size within a fraction of the time. Not to mention 4x the planned budget to pull off. We pulled up the floorplan and saw that it was a CORNER booth right at the ENTRANCE of Hall E (bottom level). There could not have been a better location in the entire Expo floor. We couldn't pass this up. Emergency team meeting. Within 15 minutes, we decided to take it. Every spare second of every day from this moment until the start of Expo West would be committed to pulling this off. Somehow we did it. Design, build, ship, and setup without a single day to spare. Multiple outfits. Merch, bags, prizes, samples shipped, everything. We spent 2.5 days building out the massive booth on the show floor. We even managed to build a Slot Machine (!!). The Edamame Fanny Pack "JACKPOT" prize was a HIT and had lines practically out the door for a chance to win. In the end, we gave out over 40,000 bags of beans, met some amazing friends, retailers and buyers, and hopefully converted a few raving fans along the way. We brought as much energy as humanly possible and left it all on the show floor. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to all the friends and family who helped us pull this off: ▪ Melinna Macias (Trendy Treats) - First "woooo!" to ever hit 138 decibels ▪ Jesus Macias (Trendy Treats) - The speediest viral content creator this side of the Mississippi ▪ Jake Hoang - Body built by beans👊 ▪ Alexandria Cui - Push-cart riding world champ! ▪ Hana Hart (Sabik Design) ▪ Kim N. (BASE ROOTS) ▪ Danny Tang ▪ Julie Zhu ▪ Jason Chen ▪ Khai Pham (Milky) ▪ Kenneth Ledesma (Milky) ▪ Jacqueline Chauvin ▪ Yucheng Huo (The Only Bean) - MVP! MVP! ▪ Ralph Chauvin (The Only Bean) - The strongest VP of Sales ever💪 ▪ Kristine Yang (The Only Bean) ▪ Brian Lai (The Only Bean) ▪ Jason K. (The Only Bean) + additional callouts in the comments! This experience was utterly exhausting but shows what a small team can do when they have clear vision and commitment. What an amazing experience. Feel free to share, repost, comment if this inspired you at all! PS. Come see us at Sweets & Snacks Expo in Indianapolis on May 14-16! We'll be at Booth 20315 in the Specialty Market section. Just a 10x10 booth this time😊