What to pack for a trade show?
I just recently got a big boy (soul-sucking) sales job and am going to a trade show in September. I have never been to anything like this so I am not sure what to wear. For context, I am not giving any presentations but will be meeting with clients and prospects and dumb shit like that. It is international so I want to pack as light as possible. Any thoughts?
3 Replies
It deoends on your industry to a large extent. With whom you will be meeting, and what their culture is like vis-a-vis their expectation of your dress (and their own dress), is paramount
For example, if you're meeting with traditional business execs / managers, you're likely thinking suit, and you won't be taken seriously in jeans. If you're meeting with software engineers from silicon valley, they may sneer at you wearing a suit but take you more seriously if you're wearing a cool t-shirt.
Entertainment industry/tech mostly
Okay. I can make a decent guess (and I will below) but I highly recommend you just outright ask your manager and coworkers what the expectations are and what others wear.
Without guidance from them, my guess would be to pack, for a couple days, roughly, as follows. Derbies (brown, burgundy, black, but not tan); a couple pairs of dress trousers (probably two of the following: charcoal, navy, brown, light brown / taupe, olive -- ideally one in flannel, worsted rather than woolen if being specific); a couple good shirts (maybe one ice blue dress shirt, one white or ice blue oxford cloth button-down or similar), maybe one good button-front shirt that's a bit more casual like a flannel shirt, one sport coat (gray, brown, olive, or navy, as a base color are easy, but not looking an orphaned suit jacket), plus some more casual clothes as needed. I'd probably not bother with a tie unless told/seen otherwise but it's easy to fit one into the bag.
That would let you go to a "more formal-ish business casual" with a sport coat and trousers, but you could easily lose the sport coat and put on a more casual button-front shirt (or wear one more casually, ie, top buttons unbuttoned rather than buttoned with tie).
Sensible derbies are formal enough to not be odd, yet informal enough that if you walk around town in them nobody will raise eyebrows. Nobody really pays attention to shoes except when they're wrong.
Good jeans can let you dress down for the evening, or if you totally whiff the dress code and are overdressed, for the convention. Good jeans with an oxford cloth button-down shirt is a classic combo, dressed up enough that people know you're trying to look good, but barely formal at all.
But remember, all of that is more of a guess based on what I have personally seen at trade shows etc. Your boss and coworkers know way better what's expected than I do.
Plus the trade shows I've visited were pure tech, where sales people had a wide range of formality, ranging from jeans-and-tees to full suits. Show-goers were mostly dressed full casual, shorts-and-tees. So that doesn't translate directly to your case, ie, take what I wrote with a boatload of salt instead of just a grain :)