EVENTS
BY PAUL CAPLIN
NORTH CAROLINA VAPERS CARNIVALE - NOVEMBER 18-19, 2017
So this was to be my third visit to North Carolina in the past couple of years,
and to be honest I didn’t really know what to expect.
I have had a couple of strange, to say the least, experiences the
past couple of times coming to this State, one of them involving
mass riots in Charlotte between armed police and angry mobs.
We arrived the day before the show, and as usual, UPS had man-
aged to loose our shipments, and as we were aware that we had
a booth and very little to put on it in the way of magazines and
branding, embarked on an Apprentice-style mission to not only
find a printers who could make us some banners for our booth
within two hours, but to find someone back at home to design
them at 8pm on a Friday night due to the five hour time difference.
Somehow we pulled this impossible mission off and managed to
find an accommodating printers, as well as a designer who could
get us our desired artwork in time to have it printed. It seemed
that the curse of North Carolina may be finally lifting.
The morning of the show came round, and we headed off to what
we thought was going to be a small, intimate local vape expo,
much like the one we experienced two years ago. However when
we arrived at the venue, the NC State Fair Exposition Center in
Raleigh, we found an open air arena consisting of a sort of market
/ boot sale, along with various exhibition halls dotted around the
grounds. We were greeted by one of the organisers and invited
into the expo and then shown to our booth. To my surprise, the
show actually looked quite large, with some great booths, and
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many, many vendors. There must have been over 100 vendors
exhibiting, and there seemed to be a buzz about this show, some-
thing that has seriously been lacking from many American shows
in the past year. There was a host of new faces, companies that
we had never met before, as well as some of the old guard. This
was a fantastic sign that the decline that we have seen over the
past year in the States due to the FDA scares were finally on the
about turn.
Day one had a great business to business turnout, then as the
day went on, the consumers flooded in. It was impressive to see
so many people attend what I thought would be a small local
show, especially as so many USA shows have had poor turn outs
from both consumers and B2B alike. The show seemed to be well
organised and everyone seemed to be happy. Talking to a few of
the vendors, they told me that they were doing good business at
the show and there also seemed to be a very happy carnival-type
vibe at the expo, which was really nice to see. There were stilt
walkers, jugglers and exhibitionists walking around taking photos
with consumers and the whole atmosphere seemed to be happy
and vendors, consumers and businesses alike all seemed to en-
joy what I would refer to as a celebration of vaping