What Goes Up…

In the hours before a trade show opens, nothing is more stress producing than THE BOOTH. Did it survive shipping? Will it go together without being ruined by that menacing team of over-priced trade show “carpenters”?

And once it’s up, will it stand for the duration of the show-even if someone trips over one of those lumps in the trade show floor and falls against it?

We slipped onto the show floor Thursday afternoon and saw a lot of booth struggles. (We even had a few of our own. How can a shipping company lose entire boxes of flooring material? And then act put out when we try to get them back?)

We were all a little envious of the gang at Zero US. One of their products is their booth, and it works.

At the core of Zero’s system are high-quality steel tubes held together by a system of aluminum expansion joints. The steel tubes are, in fact, the same variety used on racing bikes. Figures. Zero was born in Italy about 40 years ago when the bike manufacturer Quattrochio (founded in 1919) faced an embargo in some of its markets so had to create a new product line.

At the ICFF, Zero is using a mix-and-match version of its Tribeca System, which consists of upper and lower panel walls with a kind of grid-work ceiling. New products from Karim Rashid, Gaetano Pesce, and Denis Santichaira, from Zero’s furnishings division, will be at center stage at Zero this weekend at the ICFF. But the booth itself serves as best supporting actor.