Brenda Long

When you’re starting a business and you don’t have deep pockets, family money, or venture capital, you learn to be creative. Resourceful. A little scrappy. 

This is one of those stories. Not necessarily practical or convenient—but definitely scrappy. 

Avionté was founded in 2005, and after a couple of intense years of development, we officially launched in 2007—just in time to make our big debut at our first-ever industry event: the ASA Staffing World conference in San Antonio, Texas. There was just one small problem. 

Actually, three. 

We had no booth. 

No money. 

And most of our tiny team was busy supporting one of our very first clients during their go-live week. 

But that last part turned out to be a blessing—because the client was headquartered in San Antonio. And so was Staffing World! 

So, what do you do when you’ve got no time, no budget, and barely any people? Throw in the towel and say, “We’ll catch it next year”?

Not a chance! 

We called a friend who owned a display company. By some miracle, he told us a medical company had just upgraded their booth—and their old one happened to be blue and green, sort of close to our brand colors… if you turned the lights down really low. Beggars can’t be choosers. We’ll take it. 

Then we found out how much it cost to ship that booth. Let’s just say… that wasn’t happening. 

So, we hatched a plan.

We loaded the booth into a trailer, hitched it to the back of Founder John Long’s minivan, and sent John and Avionté’s first employee—and still one of our own today—Doug Gilbertson—on a 21-hour road trip from Minnesota to San Antonio. It was genius: save money on shipping, get the booth there, and have Doug on-site to support our client and lift the heavy stuff. 

A few car troubles, some weather delays, and several questionable gas station snacks later, the booth finally arrived. 

One last hurdle: we hadn’t paid for “material handling,” the service that moves your booth from the loading dock to the show floor. So, Doug waited in line in the minivan behind a long row of official-looking semi-trucks, and when his turn came, he pled ignorance, slipped the forklift driver a few bucks, and pleaded with him to deliver it to booth #509. (Okay, that might not have been the real number, but you get the idea.) 

And just like that, our first Staffing World booth made it onto the floor. 

The rest of the team was there, ready to help assemble it. We’d never done it before, the directions were questionable, and there were about 200 mystery parts. But we weren’t about to pay for assembly labor. We figured, if we can build enterprise staffing software, surely we can build a trade show booth. 

Hours later—WAY more hours than it should have taken—the booth finally stood tall. Blue-ish. Green-ish. Slightly crooked. But ours. 

And it worked. Avionté had officially arrived. 

For more than ten years after that, we continued to assemble our own booth every year—calling it “team building” and the unofficial price of admission to Staffing World. 

Scrappy? Absolutely.

Smart? Maybe.

Worth it? Every single time. 

Brenda Long