The Opportunity
Building the Main Street USA theme came with practical considerations. The conference occupied the tradeshow floor at the Gaylord Opryland, and a floor of that size is difficult to navigate without a clear structure. On the design side, since McKesson already owned custom properties from prior years, the plan needed to combine those existing pieces with new fabrication and rental inventory into a single, consistent environment.
The floor also had to make room for industry sponsors, with their spaces integrated into the space so they felt part of the main event. The result would be measured from three directions, since McKesson surveys attendees, sponsors, and internal stakeholders after every show.
The Solution
Sparks designed a central street that ran the length of the hall, with storefronts and demo zones on either side. Attendees entered beneath a banner reading “Come on into Your Town, USA!” and moved along a central street lined with storefronts, each housing a category of McKesson solutions.
McKesson’s solutions were placed into freestanding storefront facades, each styled as a type of business anyone would recognize from a small-town main street. For example, the pharmacy, a brick facade with a blue awning and a hand-lettered sign, held the solutions for pharmacy operations. The individual demo stations within the storefronts were labeled by product — e.g., Technician Development, Core Vaccines Hub, Front End Solutions — so attendees could easily find and engage with the topics that were most relevant to them.
Each zone offered three ways to learn. Demo stations gave attendees hands-on, one-to-one demonstrations with a McKesson representative. Product displays, including retail-style shelving in the Front End Solutions zone, showed the physical products. Theater presentations covered topics for a larger group. Consultation areas sat alongside them, where attendees could bring questions to McKesson and local industry experts. With this range of options, it was easy for attendees to start a dialogue with the brand about their most pressing questions.
Main Street didn’t stop at the exhibit hall doors. A Broadcast Center, built as a brick storefront to match the floor, stood in the Opryland atrium outside the hall. Inside, a desk with microphones and cameras hosted a daily lineup of live interviews and podcast recordings, including segments with McKesson’s Pharmacy of the Year finalists and its National Independent Advisory Board. The day’s schedule was posted on screens outside.
The Broadcast Center gave attendees a reason to stop on the way in and a place for McKesson to put its own people and programs on camera, extending the conversation the floor was built for into the rest of the venue.
Main Street had a rhythm to it. Refreshments such as coffee, cookies, and popcorn appeared as pop-ups at different times during the show, so there was always something new happening somewhere on the floor. A photo moment near the hall entrance — an oversized acoustic guitar against a mural reading Nashville Looks Good on You — gave attendees a reason to stop and a picture to take home.
These moments kept attendees moving and coming back, creating a vibrant and contagious energy at the event — the show floor was the place to be.
Sponsor exhibits ran along the edges of the hall, off the central street, with McKesson’s zones between them. An attendee walking Main Street passed the sponsors on either side, keeping them close to the main path while allowing them to easily explore the sponsorship offerings.
The Impact
Main Street USA turned a tradeshow floor into a destination attendees instantly understood on arrival and work their way through without help. McKesson’s solutions were sorted, signed, and staffed, and the result was a buzzing floor that deeply engaged its audience.
3
show days
8
weeks of fabrication
2,500
attendees
Beyond the Metrics
What attendees do because of an experience is the measure that matters most, and the Main Street floor was designed to change two behaviors.
- The floor put McKesson on the pharmacist’s side of the counter: Many independent pharmacists spend their working lives behind a counter. Main Street USA put McKesson in the same setting. A pharmacist walking into Dolly’s Pharmacy to see a demo was standing in a version of their own business, talking to someone who had built it for them. That is a different relationship from a vendor showing a product at a booth. The floor spoke for itself, conveying that McKesson understands the shape of an independent pharmacist’s world.
- A theme that gets better with repetition: Most conference themes are replaced annually, on the assumption that attendees want novelty. McKesson made the opposite bet, and it paid off. A returning attendee in 2025 already knew how the floor worked, where the categories were, and what a storefront meant. They could start using the floor immediately rather than learning a new layout, which compounded the effects of the design. Because Sparks seamlessly integrated McKesson’s existing structures from previous years with new fabrication, the cost-effective space felt familiar but improved.
A Note on Partners
Sparks was responsible for the design, management, and build-out of the tradeshow floor, and collaborated with McKesson’s other agency partners on the overall event, including the general session, continuing education sessions, and registration.
The build combined client-owned custom properties, new custom exhibitry, and a broad selection of Sparks rentals.
Frequently Asked Questions About McKesson ideaShare 2025
McKesson ideaShare is McKesson’s annual conference for independent pharmacy owners and their teams. It combines a general session, continuing education, and a tradeshow floor where attendees meet McKesson solution experts and industry sponsors. ideaShare 2025 took place July 10–12 at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville.
Sparks designed, managed, and built the tradeshow floor as Main Street USA, organizing McKesson’s solutions into familiar storefronts with hands-on demos, product displays, and theater presentations inside each one. Sparks also integrated sponsor spaces along Main Street and produced the Broadcast Center for the show’s live programming.
A themed tradeshow floor is one organized around a single visual and spatial idea rather than a grid of booths. The theme gives the floor a structure attendees can read, so that navigating the space feels like moving through a place they already understand. Main Street USA is one example. The storefronts told attendees what they would find inside before they read a sign.
How do you design a tradeshow floor that’s easy to navigate?
Start with how attendees will decide where to go, then build the layout around those decisions. On the ideaShare floor, that meant grouping McKesson’s solutions into categories, giving each category a recognizable storefront, and labeling the demos inside in plain language. A clear central path connected them, so an attendee could see the whole street from the entrance. Sparks’s guidance on planning a trade show exhibit covers the strategy work that comes before layout.
A custom build is created from scratch for a specific show. A hybrid build combines new custom fabrication with rental inventory and, in some cases, properties the client already owns. ideaShare 2025 was a hybrid. At that scale, Sparks combined client-owned custom properties, new custom exhibitry, and Sparks rentals, investing in new fabrication where it would have the most visible effect.
Give them reasons to stay that aren’t only products. On the ideaShare floor, refreshments and pop-ups appeared at different times during the show, so there was always a reason to walk the street again. Demo stations and consultation areas gave attendees something to do in each storefront beyond look at it.
Healthcare attendees tend to come with specific questions and limited time, and they respond to hands-on demonstrations over display. The ideaShare floor was built around that. Every storefront housed one-to-one demos and consultation areas, and the labels named the subject — vaccines, technician development, front-end solutions — so an attendee could go directly to the conversation they came for.
By giving them a place in the same environment rather than a separate section. At ideaShare, sponsor spaces sat within key settings off Main Street, designed to read as part of the town. That approach keeps traffic moving between the client’s content and the sponsors’ without asking attendees to leave one area for another.
