I spent the last several days in an exhibit booth at the annual FGS Conference, held this year in Little Rock, Arkansas. For my part, I had a great time, visiting with friends from years past, and selling FRPC product. It was a bit exhausting, and for me that part isn’t over yet. I plan to pull out in a few minutes, and head for Denver (1000 miles) and then on home to Bountiful, Utah (another 530 miles). [Update – It’s Monday morning, and I’m in Fort Collins, Colorado. I logged over 1000 miles yesterday, so have only 500 to go. Should be home in about 8 hours!]
The exhibit hall was fairly slow most of the conference, although we had one massive flurry of folks yesterday when an extra 300 or so people came into the hall for a special class sponsored by Ancestry.com. For about 30 minutes we stayed very busy. There were probably about 750 people registered for the conference, besides walk-ins and the Ancestry 300. It wasn’t like the good old days, but taking the lousy economy into account, I think it actually went pretty well.
I sold lots of Dollarhide’s new Civil War Era books as well as his Census Substitutes & States Census Records volumes one (Eastern States) and volume 2 (Western States). I also sold massive quantities of Dollarhide’s Map Guide to the U.S. Census Map Packets, as well as our 38 Generation Pedigree Wall Charts. About 20 of Kevan Hansen’s Map Guide to German Parish Registers also sold. Beyond that, sales of the day-to-day books for genealogy research were pretty slow. I spoke with a few of the other venders after the conference, and most said they did okay, but with much reduced sales over past years. The majority figured that if we made expenses we were doing well, considering the recession.
The FGS Conference will be in Knoxville, Tennessee next year. I plan to be there… Now for that short drive home.
