Chrome InterBike Urban Yard Pavilion

Project Brief

• Size: 2800+ sf (260 Sq m)

• Location: Las Vegas NV

• Role: Environment co-owner, Booth design, sourcing, project execution and budgets.  

For several years, Chrome exhibited at Interbike, the premier trade show and convention for the US cycling industry.  A little known fact is that while the show was expensive to attend, with major brands spending upwards of a million dollars to exhibit, Chrome never paid a dime other than hotel and travel costs for its staff.  How?  Because Chrome made a smart deal with the show’s owner: You give us space and we will bring the party.  And every year they exhibited, Chrome’s booth was the largest, best activated and one of the best attended in the venue.  The key was making the  space about more than just Chrome.  We spoke to the larger movement around urban cycling and mobility.  We saw it as a fun zone, a magnet and haven for city riders: fixie kids, bike-to-bar hoppers and messenger wannabes (and also real bike messengers).  We gave display space to allied exhibitors and designed a constant stream of activities riders wanted to engage with:  You could print a teeshirt, have a custom bag made, see your new sneakers being vulcanized, race gold sprints, or just watch Amanda dance, DJ and lip-sync on the roof of the Chrome van in a cloud of weed haze.  

Project Highlights

Peeing Cherubs

To introduce a new waterproof seam sealing technology, I was asked to create a display that doused water on the product and did so in an interactive way. Water is tricky and exactly the kind of thing you don’t want to have to do in a trade show environment.   I came up with a solution that involved coating a plywood box with waterproof truck bed liner.  Hand pumps would provide the pressure interactively and a statue, a copy of the famous Manneken Pis, the nozzle.