Marc Barros

Guest Post: Welcome to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the largest gathering of technology products, retail buyers, picture-taking media, PR representatives, taxi drivers, and porn stars (yes, the Adult Video Awards are held every year on the same weekend in the Sands Expo Center). This only happens in Vegas, right?

My name is Marc Barros, CEO of Seattle-based VholdR, and I’ll be your guide on how to succeed at CES as a startup competing against billion-dollar companies.

Regardless of your size, CES is the launching pad for thousands of products every year and your mission is to break through the noise. You have to scream louder than Sony’s 65 new TV models, outsmart the Samsung PR army, and be more aggressive than the thousands of vendors squeezed into the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The crew that sets up Microsoft’s booth is bigger than your entire company—okay, more like ten times bigger. So as you carry your own booth in your checked luggage while riding first class on Southwest Airlines you start to realize you have four days to impact your business for the whole year—while at the same time facing a terrible economy.

Your job at CES is really simple: Find retail buyers, media, and anyone else who can move your business forward.

Here are the three principles I recommend:

1. ) Make Your Booth Loud:

‘Loud’ doesn’t mean annoying music or a repetitious product demo. It means having a booth full of friendly people who exude energy and invite everyone in. A crowd really does draw a crowd here at CES—the more inviting you look, the more people you’ll pull in.

Now, they say your booth can’t go into the walkway, but that doesn’t mean your people can’t! If you yourself aren’t nice and friendly then you need to find friends, family, or any young people who are, get them excited about your product, and have them help you man the booth.

If you’re launching a new product the walk-through traffic can make the difference in meeting random media contacts and new retailers. It’s very rare that the person you’re talking to is the editor for the New York Times, but you never know, so treat everyone as if they‘re just that. Badges are deceiving, but your sincerity and energy will be contagious. You’re just a startup? They’ll never know it!

2.) Don’t Be Afraid of…the Media:

I think this is the first rule for any startup, but at CES that means that when you see an orange media badge on someone carrying a camera that says ‘Reuters’ you stop and talk to them. Be aware! They may just start interviewing you on the spot, even if you left your make-up artist and hair stylist back at the booth. Meeting Jim Barry, CEA Spokesman, is a must. If he likes your product he’ll take it with him on all his TV interviews.

Find the booths for NBC, CNN, FOX, and ABC and make friends with the producer who decides which random products make it on TV. Enter your product for any and all new product contests—even if it means getting the ‘The Last Gadget Standing’ group to interview your product after the competition has closed. Now I know we all love our own products, but remember—THE MEDIA DO NOT COME TO YOU, YOU MUST FIND THEM!

3.) Carry Your Product Everywhere:

Realize that your most important contacts will probably come from outside of the booth. At lunch you just may sit down across the table from the buying team of a major car audio retailer and by the end of the discussion you initiated, they’re coming back to your booth to find out how they can stock the product in all their stores.

The best part of making a physical product is when people ask what you do because you can show them! Your 10’ x 10’ booth always looks bigger on the paper you laid it out on back at the office, but the secret to a great booth is the discoveries you make outside of it. Learn what the different colored badges mean, keep your product with you, and start a conversation with everyone. The fruits of your CES labor may take weeks or months to mature and each year does get easier, but learning how to out maneuver amongst your billion-dollar competitors is critical to your success.

Good Luck!

Marc Barros is CEO of VholdR, maker of a head-mounted camera to chronicle extreme sports.

(Guest posts are the opinions of their authors and don't necessarily reflect the views of TechFlash or its staff.)