Is anyone else feeling as disappointed as me?

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Aw thank you!...at least you didn't think I was an actual cat!

I'm not as young as people think I am...I'm nearer to 40 than I am 20 (however I shall not divulge may age on a public forum...Channing Tatum might be reading!) ;)

Lol I was imagining some crazy old cat woman from your avatar too - not some young kitty like you!
 
"Houston we have a problem"

Never have I thought that I would experience a situation that I would feel that sentence would be SO appropriate!

I have not long arrived home from working on the SSQ stand at Olympia.
I sat on the demo chair for 8 hrs straight yesterday and loved every minute of it.
I can assure you all that at our team meeting last night, the talk was on how we could improve on how things had panned out during the day.
Samuel has worked like a Trojan to bring us the new system and thankfully today it was proven to work like a dream.
Yesterday we suffered a wi-fi failure, it wasn't just our stand, but due to the sheer volume of customers that are at our stand, it makes everything VERY obvious that we have a problem.

EVERY single member of the team yesterday would have given the right arm to have made things better for the patient customers that queued far longer than we wanted them to have to :(

I remember visiting the stand 10- 15 years ago when I was competing, and even though it was busy, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
Most of the stock items were there, you had some show deals, but we mostly went to the show, especially the CND stand, to talk to the people that we would never normally get the chance to meet; to watch the masters at work doing demos; to chat to fellow geeks.

The industry had changed.
Sweet Squared invest a huge amount in Education, marketing and developing new product launches.
The large amount of customers purchasing Shellac means that the deals that they bring have to be centred around it.

The cost of putting on a 2-day show would make your eyes water!
That cost has to be made somehow, massive discounts would not achieve that.
The number of people buying the larger show deals means that there is literally NO room to store all of the sundries like solar oil etc.
they had a mini warehouse at our stand this time, there were in excess of 20 people just picking and packing the products!

There was plenty of room around the demo desks, and I was constantly having conversations with people in the queue as well.

I think due to the nature of how sweet squared have decided to run the stand, people need to do as lots of people have suggested and weigh up whether queuing is worth what they are purchasing or whether it would be better to order online on the Tuesday.
I'm also confused as to why some have mentioned being disappointed when they queued for hours only to find out that they couldn't buy what they wanted.
The show deal sheets were handed out the minute you entered the stand?

To say that because the show experience wasn't how you would have liked it to be, you will consider changing to another brand is a tad short sighted?

If you chose a brand that is massively popular, you must have made that decision based on customer demand, it wouldn't be good business surely to change brands on those reasons?

I have read the thread on the train home, and thank you to the people that put a smile back on my face with your positive comments.
The ones that are justifiably feeling disappointed after their experience, you are really entitled to feel that way and sometimes it feels better to rant.
I hope that you know now that we wished we could always meet and exceed your expectations.
Roll on Excel ! X
 
Hmm. A tad harsh I feel.

Spare a thought for the other exhibitors at Olympia. A goodly proportion of their prospective customers were in a queue for several hours, after which many were too knackered to even contemplate looking at other stands!

Sorry if you think I was being harsh!i just get so fed up with s2 constantly being under fire. What ever they do is never enough in some people on here's eyes and I sometimes feel this forum is used to attack them at any given opportunity. Show me any business out there that runs smoothly 100 percent if the time and never disappoints their clients, I think you'd be hard pushed to find one !
I also however question how many of those prospective customers would actually have even bothered going to the show had s2 not attended???
 
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"Houston we have a problem"

Never have I thought that I would experience a situation that I would feel that sentence would be SO appropriate!

I have not long arrived home from working on the SSQ stand at Olympia.
I sat on the demo chair for 8 hrs straight yesterday and loved every minute of it.
I can assure you all that at our team meeting last night, the talk was on how we could improve on how things had panned out during the day.
Samuel has worked like a Trojan to bring us the new system and thankfully today it was proven to work like a dream.
Yesterday we suffered a wi-fi failure, it wasn't just our stand, but due to the sheer volume of customers that are at our stand, it makes everything VERY obvious that we have a problem.

EVERY single member of the team yesterday would have given the right arm to have made things better for the patient customers that queued far longer than we wanted them to have to :(

I remember visiting the stand 10- 15 years ago when I was competing, and even though it was busy, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
Most of the stock items were there, you had some show deals, but we mostly went to the show, especially the CND stand, to talk to the people that we would never normally get the chance to meet; to watch the masters at work doing demos; to chat to fellow geeks.

The industry had changed.
Sweet Squared invest a huge amount in Education, marketing and developing new product launches.
The large amount of customers purchasing Shellac means that the deals that they bring have to be centred around it.

The cost of putting on a 2-day show would make your eyes water!
That cost has to be made somehow, massive discounts would not achieve that.
The number of people buying the larger show deals means that there is literally NO room to store all of the sundries like solar oil etc.
they had a mini warehouse at our stand this time, there were in excess of 20 people just picking and packing the products!

There was plenty of room around the demo desks, and I was constantly having conversations with people in the queue as well.

I think due to the nature of how sweet squared have decided to run the stand, people need to do as lots of people have suggested and weigh up whether queuing is worth what they are purchasing or whether it would be better to order online on the Tuesday.
I'm also confused as to why some have mentioned being disappointed when they queued for hours only to find out that they couldn't buy what they wanted.
The show deal sheets were handed out the minute you entered the stand?

To say that because the show experience wasn't how you would have liked it to be, you will consider changing to another brand is a tad short sighted?

If you chose a brand that is massively popular, you must have made that decision based on customer demand, it wouldn't be good business surely to change brands on those reasons?

I have read the thread on the train home, and thank you to the people that put a smile back on my face with your positive comments.
The ones that are justifiably feeling disappointed after their experience, you are really entitled to feel that way and sometimes it feels better to rant.
I hope that you know now that we wished we could always meet and exceed your expectations.
Roll on Excel ! X

You must be simply exhausted! Hope you find time for a lie in and some much needed sleep today...if not, at least a nice soak in the bath to rest your feet!

Trade shows are hard. Arrive at 5.30am, set up the stand, they open the doors early so no chance for a quick team briefing or even a wee. The fact you guys were swamped by 10am must have been pretty overwhelming for you all, and of course the extra challenge of technical problems must have been the icing on the cake! I can bet you all had no breaks and that lunch was a tiny bite of a sandwich if you were lucky!

Well done on all you achieved despite the circumstances suggesting you should have crumbled. I can bet you're all relieved it's over now though, and that you all thanked your lucky stars that Monday wasn't anything like Sunday! Lol.
 
"Houston we have a problem"


I can assure you all that at our team meeting last night, the talk was on how we could improve on how things had panned out during the day.
Samuel has worked like a Trojan to bring us the new system and thankfully today it was proven to work like a dream.
Yesterday we suffered a wi-fi failure, it wasn't just our stand, but due to the sheer volume of customers that are at our stand, it makes everything VERY obvious that we have a problem.

EVERY single member of the team yesterday would have given the right arm to have made things better for the patient customers that queued far longer than we wanted them to have to :(

I remember visiting the stand 10- 15 years ago when I was competing, and even though it was busy, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
Most of the stock items were there, you had some show deals, but we mostly went to the show, especially the CND stand, to talk to the people that we would never normally get the chance to meet; to watch the masters at work doing demos; to chat to fellow geeks.

The industry had changed.
Sweet Squared invest a huge amount in Education, marketing and developing new product launches.
The large amount of customers purchasing Shellac means that the deals that they bring have to be centred around it.

The cost of putting on a 2-day show would make your eyes water!
That cost has to be made somehow, massive discounts would not achieve that.


I didn't quote the whole post as it was quite long....but i thought that was an extramly good and helpful post.

As i said in another post "why cant you have more staff and a bigger stand, but then i know nothing about logistics and distribution!"
You've answered that question for me, it sounds way more complicated than i'd ever imagined!

I think a lot of us geeks don't really know what exactly goes into an operation like this but cos you posted this post I'm getting more of an idea, it's good to get a small insight into the behind the scenes.

I for one am going to Excel cos it's on my birthday! :D and i'd like to visit S2, but if i think the queue is too big for me i wont visit it (the same goes for other stands, I'll wait an hour then i'll give up lol, apart from harmony as I'm a die-hard Gelish fan) , but at least by reading this thread i know what I could possiably expect and i can make the chioce at the time.

But I'm sure come excel everything will run smoothly. x :Love::Love:
 
I joined the queue Monday afternoon, was through in about 30 mins and got half of what I wanted as they had sold out, but then bought it on the website this morning.

I do kimono dressing at events, and it doesn't matter how many people you have working on your stall or how quick you are it seems never enough if you are popular. The other issue is space. Only so many people can FIT into a stall, and they were pretty jam packed. Any more people and they would not have had room to work. They had one of the biggest plots so probably can't go bigger.

Tech always breaks at events, because you can't test it before hand much and card machines go really slow, as everyone is on the same signal. I think a lot of the time was taken up with people registering for an account at the tills. Maybe next year, people WITH a sweet number and those who need to register can be separated.

Someone could go round with a tablet, registering people in the queue.
 
Sorry if you think I was being harsh!i just get so fed up with s2 constantly being under fire. What ever they do is never enough in some people on here's eyes and I sometimes feel this forum is used to attack them at any given opportunity. Show me any business out there that runs smoothly 100 percent if the time and never disappoints their clients, I think you'd be hard pushed to find one !
I also however question how many of those prospective customers would actually have even bothered going to the show had s2 not attended???

well said Helen!

Yes it was a long queue and yes i was fed up after and didnt bother with much of the rest of the show but i was only able to be at the show for 3 hours and i chose to spend that time at s2 and chatting with the lovely samantha....how many other Directors do you know who would stand there all day chatting to people who were queueing for hours???NONE that is how many but s2 do care and do try and make the shows go smoother by trying different things out...they dont have to change they could just have a stand and make us queue even longer!!!
My problem was the fact we were given books to tick in what we wanted to hand over when we got to the tills BUT some people were getting to the tills and THEN choosing what they wanted and taking a long time choosing, this didnt help and isnt fair. we were all in the same boat but we all managed to use the 3 hour queueing to decide what we wanted!!!!

Helen (wellyb) came up with an idea in the queue that i think would maybe work...MR GEEK, at the event we all were given app details and ordered our phones/ipads...could we not arrive at the show and be given details of an app where we could order and then collect at a given time slot??that way we could actually watch demos and see the rest of the show??would that be possible??? Helen (welly) came up with that idea not me xxx

whatever you decide for the next show im sure will be fab and im sure we all queue irrelevant!!!xx
 
Are all the queues really bad?! Or just S2/CND?

I read earlier that S2 had technology issues? If that's the case and the problems get sorted this evening then maybe the wait time will be much better tomorrow?

How long did you have to wait at other popular suppliers stalls - say OPI and Harmony? Just as bad or was s2 a one off?

I've just happily bought mine from the website, not a queue in sight, I have seen the queue at s2 at professional beauty before and see no point in queuing for hours when there are no offers anyway. So people know they are going to have to queue, if you don't want to then don't. :Love:
 
.how many other Directors do you know who would stand there all day chatting to people who were queueing for hours??


Um, I spent two whole days chatting to people on our stand, and I'm the Director of our company!
Not to mention the owner of Swissdermyl himself, Eric Rabbath, who flew from Geneva for the whole weekend to meet our customers.
Many, many companies go out of their way to make the show experience, and the buying experience as a whole, the best possible.
We took orders before the show and took them with us, so that people could pick them up and avoid paying postage, and we made the show offers available to those unable or unwilling to attend for a whole WEEK afterwards.
No one company has a monopoly on good service...
 
I've just happily bought mine from the website, not a queue in sight, I have seen the queue at s2 at professional beauty before and see no point in queuing for hours when there are no offers anyway. So people know they are going to have to queue, if you don't want to then don't. :Love:
Actually there were many many offers at the show as there always are. :biggrin:

I could list the speial deals if you want --- and many things that if ordered were sent free of charge to avoid the inconvenience of carrying heavy bags around at the show!

Nice touch also is that if people are on the Lovecnd salon locator, their purchases counted towards that as everything was linked to the customer number so they did not loose out by purchasing at the show ...

Customer number also meant that no unauthorised or untrained could purchase (another concern for many at shows).

Many many positive things that have been asked for have been addressed as these were big concerns for many in the past. The Sweets do listen carefully and acted but funnily enough I havent seen any appreciation yet for addresing these much talked about issues (but maybe I've missed that?).
 
Um, I spent two whole days chatting to people on our stand, and I'm the Director of our company!
Not to mention the owner of Swissdermyl himself, Eric Rabbath, who flew from Geneva for the whole weekend to meet our customers.
Many, many companies go out of their way to make the show experience, and the buying experience as a whole, the best possible.
We took orders before the show and took them with us, so that people could pick them up and avoid paying postage, and we made the show offers available to those unable or unwilling to attend for a whole WEEK afterwards.
No one company has a monopoly on good service...

Small is beautiful, Lynne. Someone once told me that. :Love:

There is simply no way that S2 could offer to bring orders to shows with the numbers of orders and the organization it would take to bring thousands of parcels and get them handed out to the right people! :eek:

And in the past because of these same huge numbers, we were all so busy demoing and serving customers that we never had the time to talk as much as we would have liked to!! Our challenge at S2 is to adapt to the numbers and still connect with our 'family' of nail artists and now Beauty therapists. BIG challenge and I think we met that expectation.

Samantha tells me that many returned to the stand just to say thank you for the wonderful interaction they had had with all of our totally brilliant and fabulous Education Ambassadors.

We had a fantastic show with a few glitches (what's new there) .. I think that the way everyone rose to the occasion and met some adversity (our team and customers alike) was AWESOME! Bravo to all. :Love:
 
Actually there were many many offers at the show as there always are. :biggrin:

I could list the speial deals if you want --- and many things that if ordered were sent free of charge to avoid the inconvenience of carrying heavy bags around at the show!

Nice touch also is that if people are on the Lovecnd salon locator, their purchases counted towards that as everything was linked to the customer number so they did not loose out by purchasing at the show ...

Customer number also meant that no unauthorised or untrained could purchase (another concern for many at shows).

Many many positive things that have been asked for have been addressed as these were big concerns for many in the past. The Sweets do listen carefully and acted but funnily enough I havent seen any appreciation yet for addresing these much talked about issues (but maybe I've missed that?).

Any offers on the new shellac or additives? Other than you get an additive included with the two colours. Fair enough if there are offers on packs but for a lot of us that has had shellac from the start we don't need these offers therefore waiting 2 hours in a queue is a waste of time, especially when I have free delivery anyway as I've ordered enough for it.
 
I am so happy to have been there yesterday. I was the first one to order and got everything as needed, thank you everyone. I came back to the stand later to watch a bit of demo and was so happy to have met Nataliya! x:Love:

My drop ship order of Vinylux deal is arrive after 2 pm. FAB FAB FAB!
 
Any offers on the new shellac or additives? Other than you get an additive included with the two colours. Fair enough if there are offers on packs but for a lot of us that has had shellac from the start we don't need these offers therefore waiting 2 hours in a queue is a waste of time, especially when I have free delivery anyway as I've ordered enough for it.

yes there was, you can get Nude collection with Additives. You get an order booklet to tick what you need before you go to the till. x
 
I am so happy to have been there yesterday. I was the first one to order and got everything as needed, thank you everyone. I came back to the stand later to watch a bit of demo and was so happy to have met Nataliya! x:Love:

My drop ship order of Vinylux deal is arrive after 2 pm. FAB FAB FAB!
Nataliya is most definitely worth a 3 hour queue! :Love:
 
I liked this year's set up better than last year's. I liked that people queuing to order weren't smushed in with the people queuing to pick up their orders. My main problem with trying to make a purchase at shows is people cutting in and me getting stepped on, but with a neat queue, my toes were saved. (I won't say where I queued this year, but someone ran over my foot with their stupid luggage and didn't even apologize or look back or anything! Rude!) I thought the gallery/museum-like displays of the products was neat. I thought having the demos all around the stand was nice. And the info desk off to the side so it doesn't get in the way of the queuing was a good idea. I really wasn't looking for offers or discounts, so I was surprised to see items paired together and slightly discounted. And Gigi, I did appreciate that I was asked for my S2 account before making my purchase. I saw a lot of familiar faces (including the Sweets), but I was too shy to say hi since no one would know me anyway. haha! I can't imagine how much time, money, and effort must've went into it all.
 
I liked this year's set up better than last year's. I liked that people queuing to order weren't smushed in with the people queuing to pick up their orders. My main problem with trying to make a purchase at shows is people cutting in and me getting stepped on, but with a neat queue, my toes were saved. (I won't say where I queued this year, but someone ran over my foot with their stupid luggage and didn't even apologize or look back or anything! Rude!) I thought the gallery/museum-like displays of the products was neat. I thought having the demos all around the stand was nice. And the info desk off to the side so it doesn't get in the way of the queuing was a good idea. I really wasn't looking for offers or discounts, so I was surprised to see items paired together and slightly discounted. And Gigi, I did appreciate that I was asked for my S2 account before making my purchase. I saw a lot of familiar faces (including the Sweets), but I was too shy to say hi since no one would know me anyway. haha! I can't imagine how much time, money, and effort must've went into it all.

Thank you for that, Lee. :Love: We have been working on the changes since the last show! lol Completely new gorgeous stand etc so yes a big investment all round but I think very worth it as Monday showed when all went perfectly!! Next time do not be shy .. we know you .. I bet Mrs geek would have recognised you and I certainluy would have if I'd been there and given you a long awaited hug. x Thank you also for representing S2 and CND so well in the competition, Lee! Well done. xx
 
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I didn't place top 3 anywhere, but I got an exclusive t-shirt from it all! Woohoo! :lol:
 
Competitions are a great learning experience and very few first-timers place as you really need the experience of it all and get to know what exactly is wanted.

Takes guts to do it and I'm sure you will be on the map next time around. xx
 
I haven't read through all of the posts here but I definitely get the gist!

I spent almost the whole of the show up on the gallery working on the Nailympics so watched from afar. S2 is always rammed but this time: WOW!!

I know how hard they've worked on crowd control every show and they spend more and more on making it better. They don't want to upset customers or other stands!! And as for just wanting your money.....um, yes they want that too! After all they are a business. As technicians, don't you want your clients money even if you do sometimes upset some of them by having no room in your appnt book??

I have to say, I don't get this moaning about 'show deals'! If you want a bargain go to all the market stall that are on the periphery! Shows are about learning from demos, talking to the experts about any problems you're experiencing etc. They should be a mini teaching course and all for the price of your travel! With so many experts and demos on that stand there was time for everyone.

I just do not get queueing for 3 hrs then complaining! Don't queue!

That stand was genius and, in my opinion, an 'industry standard' for how modern design, company investment and technology can work for businesses (except when WiFi fails!!!)
 

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