
Christine Nattrass
Photo: Courtesy of Parallel Communications
With 700 exhibitors coming in from across North America and only five days to set up for the 57th annual National Home Show (which runs April 4 to 13 and is sponsored by Remax), Christine Nattrass is preparing for some long hours at the Direct Energy Centre. As DMG World Media's show manager, Nattrass is responsible for coordinating the event and ensuring that the show—which attracts about 160,000 people each year—is a success not only for DMG but for the exhibitors, presenters, and attendees, too.
The National Home Show is only a week away. What are you working on now?
Just last-minute details. A lot of feature work, finalizing a lot of things for the Dream Home, making sure that the union and all of our suppliers are going to be there on time. It’s like a very detailed choreography to get everybody in there because we do build it in five days. We’ll start to drop things off this Friday and they’ll start on Saturday. It’s definitely around-the-clock. We are North America’s largest home and garden show, and we basically cover anything you can think of for your home, inside and out.How has the show changed from last year?
We’ve changed our creative, and that really changed the direction of what we’re doing at the show. We quickly realized through our research and our discussions with our attendees that everybody comes to the National with a project in mind. The only thing that changes is the scope and size of the project. It could be something as simple as changing the wallpaper or something as massive as a huge backyard renovation, but they always have some sort of project in mind, so "How’s that little project coming along?" is our campaign tag, and a lot of our features are addressing that. We’re trying to make it very easy to get the information ... we want to make the information really accessible, but more importantly make it usable.
How do you keep things fresh?
We really listen a lot to the public and to our exhibitors. We spend a lot of time and energy in doing research. We have 60 research kiosks in the front of our show and we spend a lot of time taking that information and breaking it down and figuring out what it is exactly that people are coming to the show to see. Is it new products? What kind of inspiration are they looking for? And this is how we came up with the fact that everybody has a project. There are definitely things we know about our attendees: They love to see new products, so we’re spending a lot of our energy this year in doing a Gallery New, which is going to launch all of our exhibitors’ new products as well as the industry new products. It’s very accessible, and we’re working with a very talented designer, Adam Berkowitz, so we’re excited about that.
How do you determine what topics and experts to include in the feature presentations?
We get inundated with calls, but I think it comes down to figuring out what the message is that we want to achieve. On our Ikea Love Your Home stage we really want to concentrate on a couple of key items. It’s always design, so Karl Lohnes [style editor at Style at Home magazine] is always an attendee favourite because he can break down the complication of design and make it very, very accessible and very, very achievable for people.
We really wanted to use some of our exhibitors that were experts, too—people who really have reached the height of their industry and can offer our attendees incredible information, whether they’re building a home, designing a home, if they need a mortgage for their home, if they’re financing how to do a great renovation and bring it in on time and on cost—these are all really important things for people.
What are the biggest challenges in coordinating a show of this scale?
It’s definitely the move-in. With 700 exhibitors, we hand out more than 13,000 exhibitor badges, plus our own staff, plus suppliers. It’s a lot of people on the show floor, and our move-in runs four days—Monday to Thursday—and the show is up and running Friday. So to get, in four days, 13,000 people, plus suppliers, plus equipment and enough room to build everything, it’s an incredible challenge.
Has everything always come together smoothly in the past?
I don’t think I’d use the word smoothly. But we’ve never missed an opening. I think the great thing about being on site is that everybody really has this camaraderie and there is this instant bond—everybody is in it together. You’re working 24 hours a day, but people are really helpful. You’re there for 10 days, so you want to make sure you have a good neighbour and you want to be a good neighbour. So I find that our exhibitors really partner nicely together; they really make sure they can help each other out, and that makes all the difference in the world. We have quite a few features on the show floor that we’re building simultaneously as our exhibitors are building their booths, and you’ve got equipment on the floor, too, forklifts ... so there’s a lot of action going on and we do a very specific, targeted move-in to ease that congestion. We do stagger it.
What about the tear-down?
Well, oddly enough, it takes everyone four days, working 24 hours a day, to set up, but they can get out of there in about five hours. Most of the smaller exhibits, 200 square feet and under, leave on the Sunday night, and then we do tear-down all day Monday, and then Tuesday by 4 p.m., we’re gone. And that’s features, that’s the Dream Home, that’s everything. The saddest part about the Dream Home is that we spend so much time and energy building it—and the attention to detail is astronomical considering there’s only five days to build it—and then we try and strip out as much as we can. The suppliers that give us the product, we’re pleased to give it back to them. We have Habitat for Humanity come in and strip out as much as they can for their ReStores, but then the rest of it is just taken down with a bulldozer, so it’s really, really upsetting. I’m never there; I never go to watch that.
How do you measure results?
There are a couple of factors, because it has to be a success not only for us as a company and as a corporation. We have very specific financial goals that we need to achieve, but it also has to be a success for the exhibitor. If the company is achieving [its] goals and the exhibitors aren’t, there’s a problem. So we judge our success probably three ways. One, corporately, with our exhibitors: Did they achieve their goals? And then, of course, it’s the attendees: Did the attendees see what they wanted to see? Did they meet who they wanted to meet? Did they have their problems answered? I think it’s less and less now about the numbers you get through the door and more about, Were you able to offer solutions to each and every attendee who came?
The National Home Show is only a week away. What are you working on now?
Just last-minute details. A lot of feature work, finalizing a lot of things for the Dream Home, making sure that the union and all of our suppliers are going to be there on time. It’s like a very detailed choreography to get everybody in there because we do build it in five days. We’ll start to drop things off this Friday and they’ll start on Saturday. It’s definitely around-the-clock. We are North America’s largest home and garden show, and we basically cover anything you can think of for your home, inside and out.How has the show changed from last year?
We’ve changed our creative, and that really changed the direction of what we’re doing at the show. We quickly realized through our research and our discussions with our attendees that everybody comes to the National with a project in mind. The only thing that changes is the scope and size of the project. It could be something as simple as changing the wallpaper or something as massive as a huge backyard renovation, but they always have some sort of project in mind, so "How’s that little project coming along?" is our campaign tag, and a lot of our features are addressing that. We’re trying to make it very easy to get the information ... we want to make the information really accessible, but more importantly make it usable.
How do you keep things fresh?
We really listen a lot to the public and to our exhibitors. We spend a lot of time and energy in doing research. We have 60 research kiosks in the front of our show and we spend a lot of time taking that information and breaking it down and figuring out what it is exactly that people are coming to the show to see. Is it new products? What kind of inspiration are they looking for? And this is how we came up with the fact that everybody has a project. There are definitely things we know about our attendees: They love to see new products, so we’re spending a lot of our energy this year in doing a Gallery New, which is going to launch all of our exhibitors’ new products as well as the industry new products. It’s very accessible, and we’re working with a very talented designer, Adam Berkowitz, so we’re excited about that.
How do you determine what topics and experts to include in the feature presentations?
We get inundated with calls, but I think it comes down to figuring out what the message is that we want to achieve. On our Ikea Love Your Home stage we really want to concentrate on a couple of key items. It’s always design, so Karl Lohnes [style editor at Style at Home magazine] is always an attendee favourite because he can break down the complication of design and make it very, very accessible and very, very achievable for people.
We really wanted to use some of our exhibitors that were experts, too—people who really have reached the height of their industry and can offer our attendees incredible information, whether they’re building a home, designing a home, if they need a mortgage for their home, if they’re financing how to do a great renovation and bring it in on time and on cost—these are all really important things for people.
What are the biggest challenges in coordinating a show of this scale?
It’s definitely the move-in. With 700 exhibitors, we hand out more than 13,000 exhibitor badges, plus our own staff, plus suppliers. It’s a lot of people on the show floor, and our move-in runs four days—Monday to Thursday—and the show is up and running Friday. So to get, in four days, 13,000 people, plus suppliers, plus equipment and enough room to build everything, it’s an incredible challenge.
Has everything always come together smoothly in the past?
I don’t think I’d use the word smoothly. But we’ve never missed an opening. I think the great thing about being on site is that everybody really has this camaraderie and there is this instant bond—everybody is in it together. You’re working 24 hours a day, but people are really helpful. You’re there for 10 days, so you want to make sure you have a good neighbour and you want to be a good neighbour. So I find that our exhibitors really partner nicely together; they really make sure they can help each other out, and that makes all the difference in the world. We have quite a few features on the show floor that we’re building simultaneously as our exhibitors are building their booths, and you’ve got equipment on the floor, too, forklifts ... so there’s a lot of action going on and we do a very specific, targeted move-in to ease that congestion. We do stagger it.
What about the tear-down?
Well, oddly enough, it takes everyone four days, working 24 hours a day, to set up, but they can get out of there in about five hours. Most of the smaller exhibits, 200 square feet and under, leave on the Sunday night, and then we do tear-down all day Monday, and then Tuesday by 4 p.m., we’re gone. And that’s features, that’s the Dream Home, that’s everything. The saddest part about the Dream Home is that we spend so much time and energy building it—and the attention to detail is astronomical considering there’s only five days to build it—and then we try and strip out as much as we can. The suppliers that give us the product, we’re pleased to give it back to them. We have Habitat for Humanity come in and strip out as much as they can for their ReStores, but then the rest of it is just taken down with a bulldozer, so it’s really, really upsetting. I’m never there; I never go to watch that.
How do you measure results?
There are a couple of factors, because it has to be a success not only for us as a company and as a corporation. We have very specific financial goals that we need to achieve, but it also has to be a success for the exhibitor. If the company is achieving [its] goals and the exhibitors aren’t, there’s a problem. So we judge our success probably three ways. One, corporately, with our exhibitors: Did they achieve their goals? And then, of course, it’s the attendees: Did the attendees see what they wanted to see? Did they meet who they wanted to meet? Did they have their problems answered? I think it’s less and less now about the numbers you get through the door and more about, Were you able to offer solutions to each and every attendee who came?