Star Wars Convention

The largest and most attended of all Star Wars conventions. In the summer of 2005, the completion of the Star Wars saga hit like a tidal wave. By the time the convention was to take place, people had been lined up outside of movie theaters from here to a galaxy far, far away.

How do you get 50,000 of the most dedicated fans in the known universe through a store selling everything Star Wars? At past conventions, the lines had been literally hours long just to get into the store. With hundreds of products to choose from, attendees faced the equally daunting task of deciding what to buy. These were the challenges posed to the Event Rental Team at American Metro.

In order to help solve this challenge, we had a few questions of our own:

• What is the physical layout of the sales floor?
• How many people are expected per day?
• How far do the runners have to go to get the product?
• What are your hours of operation?
• What are the times of the breakout sessions?

With these and a handful of other questions answered, we composed a solution that made a tremendous difference. Wait time was a fraction of what it had been. Accuracy of sales became the norm instead of the exception. By placing the registers in the most effective positions and programming them with color-coded, column specific keyboards, waiting at the registers was virtually eliminated.