The most common event merchandise mistake is not ordering the wrong thing. It is ordering the right thing against the show date.
Count back from the receiving deadline
If you are using the advance warehouse — and for anything the booth cannot function without, you should be — the deadline is typically two to three weeks before the show opens. That is the date the merchandise has to be delivered by, and everything else stacks behind it.
The stack
Freight to the warehouse. Inspection and packing. Production, which for standard domestic products is roughly 10–15 business days after artwork approval. Artwork approval, which runs at your organization's pace, not the supplier's. And product selection before any of that.
Added up, a straightforward domestic giveaway wants six to eight weeks before the show, and that assumes approvals come back quickly.
What pushes it earlier
Custom manufacturing, overseas production, custom packaging, multiple products that have to match, or a pre-production sample. Any one of these adds weeks. Two of them and you are planning a quarter ahead.
What ordering late actually costs
Rush production carries a fee, which is the visible cost. The real one is that the options narrow: fewer products, fewer decoration methods, and no room to fix a proof that comes back wrong. You end up choosing from what can be made in time rather than what suits the audience.
If you are already late
Say so immediately. There are usually options — a different product, a simpler decoration, a split delivery with the essentials first — but they need to be discussed before anything is ordered, not after.
Advance warehouses covers the deadline, and the planning checklist covers the rest of the sequence.