Strike Makes Life Tough for Trade Show Exhibitors

Whether they make Beanie Babies, refrigerator magnets or cuckoo clocks, nearly all of the 1,700 exhibitors at the International Gift Fair had one painful thing in common this week: They ship their products via United Parcel Service.

So if UPS wanted a glimpse of how the strike is disrupting business in even the most frivolous sectors of the economy, San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center was a perfect place to start.

Atis Folkmanis, the owner of a company that makes puppets, said boxes are already starting to pile up at his warehouse and that if the strike persists even a few days longer, “we’re faced with telling employees to go home.”

Folkmanis and other suppliers are particularly vulnerable because UPS specializes in handling small shipments by ground transportation at low rates, exactly the kind of service such companies require.

Exhibitors, most owner-operated with a handful of employees, were worried about both the expense of alternative shipping and the sheer time and nuisance of making other arrangements.

But larger companies were concerned too. Ensemble Co., a Kansas-based subsidiary of Hallmark Cards Inc., depends on UPS “completely” to ship about 3,000 boxes of greeting cards every day, said Suellen Dice, the company’s business development manager. “The good news is it’s not holiday time,” she said. “But this is the trade show season, and we came here to write orders and promise shipments.”

The show itself was inconvenienced by the strike. Most exhibitors travel from city to city, showing their wares. They rely on UPS to ship the display items. “We need to ship 60,000 pounds of merchandise tomorrow night to the New York fair, which starts Saturday,” said Mike Edson, a supervisor for the company that manages the show. “We’re trying to charter a DC-9.”