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My trade show exhibit experience began young around the dining room table. My father, Joseph LoCascio, would come home every night with fascinating stories about designing and building displays and exhibits at various New york city exhibit houses where he worked as graphic artist.

When the projects that he labored on were completed however take the household into New york and show us the outcome of his artistic handiwork, which often included IBM's Madison Avenue window displays, Crane's display of new bathroom/kitchen fixtures, Allied Chemical's lobby displays, and various displays at the Nyc Stock market and the World Trade Center. A number of other Sell Gold Irvine CA of his would be on display at trade events at the New York Coliseum, Waldorf Astoria, or the New York Hilton.

My admiration for my father's artistic talents started when I would be invited to become listed on him for his local freelance work on weekends. I'd help him load the automobile along with his art supplies and watch in amazement as that he laid out and hand-lettered a bank's new window sign in gold leaf, or a company's name on a truck door, or perhaps a new sign for a local church.

The exhibit building business was cyclical, and there were times when work was scarce plus some shop workers must be laid off for a few weeks. Other times there is too much work, Cash For Gold Irvine CA which needed hiring more folks and working overtime and weekends to complete exhibits.

My chance to use my father at Exhibit Craft, Inc. in Long Island City, came when the shop was on a full-time work schedule, including weekends, to accomplish multiple exhibits with time for the National Hardware Show in Chicago.

I jumped at his offer and was excited not to only be making $1. 50 an hour or so at the age of 14, but also to get to work with my father and begin learning the exhibit building business from the ground up. My work that first weekend - and others that followed - included cleaning silk screens and squeegees, resurfacing art tables with new paper, sweeping a floor, carefully peeling frisketed graphic panels, and mixing paints.

I knew right then and there that the exhibit business was where I wanted to spend my career. During high school and after military service I worked at Exhibit Craft, Inc. working my way up the ladder, including Silk Screen Production, Assistant Production Manager, Shipping and Receiving Clerk, and Assistant to the Purchasing Manager.

A major career transition came when ECI won the new Olivetti Underwood account and needed a merchant account executive to manage their multiple product exhibits for significantly more than 40 trade shows per year. I applied, interviewed, and got the work. To my amazement, I soon found myself in planning meetings at Olivetti's corporate headquarters at 1 Park Avenue in New york.

At 22, I was enjoying a dream job, learning the the inner workings of being an exhibit account executive and looking to Gold Buyers Irvine CA the future when, unsuspectingly, ECI was sold to IVEL, which is today part of Exhibit Group. IVEL then moved the ECI plant to Brooklyn, New York. For me, it was unreasonable to work in and travel to Brooklyn as I still enjoyed living an nearly carefree and independent lifestyle within my parents' home in Bergenfield, New jersey, where I grew up. But if moving out for a job was a necessity, I thought moving to California may be a better choice.

With an eye for adventure, travel, and an urge to start fresh, I sent a resume out to Stewart Sauter, an exhibit builder and show decorator in San francisco bay area. I was hired after a great interview. I had contracted Stewart Sauter often before to create and dismantle Olivetti Underwood's exhibits and had established an excellent working relationship with Mr. Tony Panacci, who I would work for. My job was supervising the setup, servicing, and dismantling of all exhibits provided for Stewart Sauter from exhibit houses from throughout the country.

My tenure in San francisco was short-lived, but because while setting up exhibits at the Fall Joint Computer Conference at Brooks Hall, I met Mr. Del Kennedy, Advertising Manager at UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand. He ended up offering me a job as their Corporate Trade Show Exhibits Coordinator in Bluebell, Pennsylvania.

Getting the chance to jump from the vendor side of the business to the client side was a dream I had developed as i watched the entire staff at Exhibit Craft organize and clean up the shop in preparation for starters of its client's visits. One day I believed to myself, "Someday I wish to function as the client. "

UNIVAC built and sold computers. Their trade show exhibit philosophy was to use live theatrical presentations, developed by the highly talented Hardman and Associates from Pittsburgh, PA, to show precisely what computers could do. Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, creators of the cult film "Night of the Living Dead, " developed scripts, scenery, and AV materials, and hired and trained actors and a complete professional production crew to effectively present UNIVAC's computer presentations. We staged the presentations on an hourly schedule in a theater with seating for about 60 visitors. If the presentation ended, the doors would open and visitors would walk by way of a display area where salespeople, managers and technical support professionals made personal product presentations, answered questions, and filled out sales lead forms for extra information or sales calls.

UNIVAC's marketing experts comprehended early on that in reality a pc was merely a machine and that it was the ability of its various software applications that made the absolute most sense to booth visitors. In the often cacophonous trade show exhibit environment, getting attention and making prospects and customers comfortable while sharing complicated and frequently esoteric information required total control of the exhibit environment.

A year later I accepted a job with Memorex (which stood for Memory and Excellence) in Santa Clara, California, as their Corporate Manager of Trade Shows and Exhibits. This included supporting their Video Tape, Computer Media, Office Products and services, and Computer Peripheral sections. Soon after arriving, Memorex decided to launch new audiotape products and I began working on their introduction at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

The online strategy for this important first trade show exhibit was to facilitate a dynamic live demonstration presenting the audible differences between new Memorex cassettes and what was then on the market. We needed to show prospects how Memorex cassettes would outperform recorded music when comparing to reel-to-reel 3M and BASF audiotape, which at the time dominated the worldwide audiotape market.