Category: EP News

In a word, “experience” is what makes us trade show booth rental specialists. Not just experience in designing trade show rental booths, but in-depth trade show industry experience that spans 30 years. And not just 30 years of trade show rental experience, we bring in-depth engineering and manufacturing knowledge from our experience with the portable modular side of the trade show industry.

With 2 industry patents, you can tell we are passionate about booth construction materials and mechanical design. But honestly, what we really enjoy is how these materials and newer processes can be used to create a cost-effective, captivating trade show display rental that looks like a custom build. We enjoy this most when standing with our clients after install, impressed with the how well they look at the show having spent much less than the neighbors around them.

We clearly see how certain materials and processes have improved the trade show industry, opening up new rental design opportunities to give big bang for your investment. Years ago, we’d have said “don’t waste your money on a video wall, the ROI isn’t there.” However, as soon as modern video walls hit the market, we saw their advantage and quickly engineered a ground support system so our clients could have this new technology ahead of the curve. Today we are an industry leader in LED video wall rentals and integrating LED video walls into custom trade show rental designs.

 

There are 3 key components to the rental service we provide:

1) We understand the true difference between designing and building a custom exhibit for rental, versus designing and building a custom exhibit for purchase. We’ve learned that rental opens up opportunities to save costs, so you can apply that money where it gives most value. This begins with developing and growing the right rental inventory – starting with the materials. The right rental inventory applies well to current trends, but is not so unique and unusual, so that it can still provide maximum versatility.

For example, we’ve added a large variety of rental reception counters to our lineup, each one designed to fit different needs and maintain a cohesive theme that complements your brand. Maximizing locking storage is a must, but most importantly, each counter can easily be modified to fit a wide variety of booth designs. Sometimes this is done by simply changing the printed face graphic, other times by printing all sides for a richly custom look.

All trade show booths benefit from smart engineering that allow a booth to ship compact and install quickly. Our background in Modular design helps us greatly in this area. We design booths that require fewer crates and smaller install crews, translating into big savings for you.

2) We deeply understand the show floor. We know how freight moves from Advance Warehouse, through the Marshaling Yard, to your booth space. We know the best techniques for running power from the show hall to your towers, kiosks and counters of your booth design. Likewise, through experience, we know what to avoid when hanging a sign or installing a video wall. All of these can deliver your marketing message spot on and have a huge impact on lowering your show service costs, which are generally 1/3 of your total trade show investment.

3) We install every booth we rent. We are onsite, leading the install of every booth we ship, regardless of what venue or what city. Our team knows your booth intimately by the time it packs and ships from our warehouse. Who better to be there onsite to lead the team in unpacking, staging and systematically building your booth in your booth space?  Not only are we onsite, we call the show organizers directly, days in advance, to verify our freight was received, and all the service orders are in place and on schedule to avoid any delay.

Passion and Experience

Did I mention we also love to travel? We’re quite good at finding the best deals on airfare and hotels. In fact, we run much of our business on our Southwest Airline credit card, which results in lots of free travel miles. We enjoy knowing how other trade show cities work, knowing the best places to get last minute graphics printed, or where to receive last minute packages.

This is a powerful combination of passion and industry experience that allows our team to competitively design trade show exhibit rentals and service trade show markets across the country. We’re often asked if we ship and install in Orlando or other show cities, and our reply is that much of our work is outside Las Vegas. We are Rental Specialists, and we’ve found this works in our home city of Las Vegas as well as across the country.

Whether you own your trade show booth or have rented your booths in the past, talk with us to day to see how Exhibit People trade show rentals give you more flexibility to change on a dime and adapt to different shows and different booth locations. Now more than ever it makes sense to consider rental.

What does it mean to request a complete rental booth? It generally means you’re requesting a custom trade show exhibit rental that includes everything but the booth space itself. Exhibitors looking for a Complete Rental Booth Solution have secured their booth space and they now want everything else booth-related to come on one easy-to-understand invoice from the rental company. In a truly complete rental booth solution, the flooring, structure, overhead sign, custom printed graphics, AV, and furniture are all included in the price.

The only portion of a Complete Rental Booth that’s ever in question will be the Show Services. This is because these services are performed by Union Workers with a variable amount of time and materials. Many factors can influence the final cost of show services. The most common will be differences in the skill and speed you get with the workers assigned to your booth. If you’re lucky, they will be a top-level crew and their work will go smoothly.

If the show is stretched thin, your crew may be less experienced and simply take more time. Other factors may come into play as well. For example, your electrician may need to retrieve a ladder from another show hall to complete the work, and could have trouble finding one available. This is done on the clock and adds to the bill. Also, these workers are human and working against a deadline. Mistakes and damage can occur that take time to resolve.

Other Exhibit Houses likely handle these costs similarly to us, but at Exhibit People, we go the extra mile to minimize these costs for our clients. We study the floor plan, review the price sheets, and apply experience from hundreds of past shows to develop a show service estimate. Our goal is to be as close as possible, but not over the actual amount you will pay. We place orders for services, like electrical and rigging, as far in advance as possible to take advantage of advance pricing. We provide the show with drawings and descriptions of services required to ensure things aren’t left to chance. We add 10% to the show service costs for our efforts in placing the orders, using our credit card to secure orders, and finally for supervising the show service labor to make sure it all goes as quickly and smoothly as possible.

With our Complete Rental Booth Solutions, you get a quote with firm costs for booth, graphics, shipping and labor- all of which are within our complete control. Below these firm costs, we list the estimated show services, along with our 10% listed as a separate line item. Once the show ends, we request the final invoice from the show and adjust your order, changing the estimates to actual figures from the invoice. You receive a copy of the show invoice to verify the costs along with our final balance due invoice for your complete rental booth solution.

Lets dive into some detail:

What is included in your Booth Space fee? Booth space in based on a per-square-foot price. Larger booths cost more than smaller booths, naturally. Usually, all show services are separate fees. However there has been a movement in recent years to include Material Handling in the booth space fee, rather than charging separately based on weight. This is a a new concept being tested at the NAB Show held each year in Las Vegas, as well as a few others.

Included in a Complete Rental Booth price:

• Booth Design
• Flooring
• Structure
• Graphics
• AV
• Furniture
• Install and Dismantle

Flooring – Many rental companies offer only the booth structure and assume that you will order your flooring from the show’s General Contractor. This is an option but may not be your best option. A complete rental booth will always include the flooring whether it is carpet or vinyl.

Structure – This includes the walls, rooms, towers and counters that make up the bulk of your booth design. If your space is an inline booth space, then 8 feet tall may be the height limit for your space. If you have an island booth space, your height limit for ground structure is typically 16 feet. Most exhibits use the full allowable height for their walls and towers. All complete rental booths will provide all the structure of your booth so that you’re not piecing together mismatched items from different vendors.

Custom Printed Graphics – Today’s booths are pretty much 3D billboards. Advances in large format printing have allowed Exhibit Houses to print on virtually every wall surface of your booth, including your counters. A complete rental booth will include the custom-printing onto the panels or fabric, sourced from a print vendor with a solid reputation. The graphic design is typically separate, as it is very common that the exhibitor already works with a literature or web designer who is well-versed in the brand, marketing and messaging of the company. With that said, many Exhibit Houses provide graphic design at a separate hourly cost.

AV – Although you can rent TV’s and other AV from the preferred show provider, it’s usually best to allow your rental company to provide these items. They will make sure the mount fits the TV and the proper cables are included. Involving a separate vendor can delay the install should there be any incompatibilities. At Exhibit People we carry a sizable inventory of Samsung Smart TV’s from 40” to 82”. Samsung is a trusted name, their TV’s are truly made better. One benefit of stocking only Samsung TV’s is that all your TV’s will match each other no matter your booth size or design.

In addition to LED TV’s, we also specialize in LED Video Walls. We have high quality LED tiles and equipment in our rental inventory, and more importantly we know how to install them, troubleshoot them, and integrate them into our rental booth designs. This translates into significant savings, both in the rental price and the show service costs.

Furniture – You could order furniture from the show, or from industry suppliers that focus on furniture rental, but you should first evaluate the furniture offering from your booth rental company. Just like with AV, your install will go smoother and your booth look more cohesive if all your accessories come from your one provider. At Exhibit People, we don’t have a huge selection of chairs, stools, tables and lounge chairs, but the ones we do carry are high quality, look great and fit our design style completely. They are, in many cases, half the price of your other options.

Shipping – This is a firm quote. Shipping includes all costs from the shipping dock to the receiving dock. With trade shows this can include some other fees such as Marshaling Yard waiting time and special fees for weekend and holiday deliveries. There is a small fee for delivering at a specific time on a specific day.

Here at Exhibit People, we ship every custom booth rental to the show’s advance warehouse weeks before the install date, and we ship anywhere in the United States. This saves some hassle and delivery costs while also ensuring the freight is in the care of the General Contractor. Delivering to Advance Warehouse ensures the freight is at your booth space, on time, for your scheduled install.

This is a cost that is within our control, and if we are wrong with the quote we provide, we will eat the difference. Shipping fees are determined based on dimensions, weight and shipping lanes. The only variable we guess at is the exact weight. We don’t know this weight until the booth is packed, which is long after we’ve committed to a firm quote. Fortunately we have done this for decades and are fairly good at calculating weights.

Install and Dismantle – You may wonder why this is not considered an estimated show service. For many Exhibit Houses, Labor is estimated just like all other show services. At Exhibit People, we feel confident in our ability to give a firm labor price because we are in control of who is on our crew and we take responsibility for ensuring the show is capable and ready to perform the services as ordered. For many clients, this hands-on approach sets us apart from our competition.

A look at the common Show Services:

• General Contractor services
• Material Handling
• Electrical Power
• Electrical Labor
• Rigging Crew ( usually 2-3 man crew )
• Overhead Lighting ( optional )

General Contractor – It’s important to understand the distinction between the Organization that’s putting on the show and the General Contractor they hire to provide labor and services for the show. Most Exhibitors rent their booth space from the Organization putting on the show (CES or SEMA, for example), and separately place service orders with the General Contractor who manages the move-in and move-out (Freeman or GES are most common). Freeman is the country’s largest General Contractor and GES comes in second from what we know.

Material Handling – It’s the fee the General Contractor charges to forklift crates and store empties. This is separate from and is not the same as shipping cost. There are a few factors that determine the cost other than weight (charged per 100 lbs). Factors such as when the freight is delivered, how the freight is delivered, and how the freight is packaged. To get the best prices your freight needs to be crated and your delivery truck must have a dock height delivery trailer. Anything outside these requirements will increase the price per 100 lbs.

Electrical Power – In other words, the amount of watts/amps needed to power all your AV equipment and product demos in the booth. For example, TV’s usually require 150 watts, laptops – 100 watts, individual LED booth lights – 25 watts. You simply add these together to determine the amount of power your booth will need. There are other considerations, for instance, your install may require that flat extension cords are taped along the floor before your carpet or vinyl flooring is installed over it, in order to hide the cords. Many show venues require that you order a minimum of 500 watts for each extension cord when providing this service. We plan and draw up electrical layouts in advance, allowing us to ensure that power minimums are met and minimizing cost whenever possible.

Electrician Labor – Most booth designs will require extension cords to be taped in place along the show floor in the booth space, running power under the booth flooring to specific locations, such as the reception counter or demo stations – this is called Floor Work and will require an Electrician. Also, if you have TV’s to hang and connect to outlets, that’s considered Booth Work and the same crew, or possibly a different crew, will come to do that when your install reaches that point. Not all venues require Union Workers to hang and plug in TV’s. The new trend is to allow install crews and exhibitors to hang them when they can.

Rigging – Union Stagehand workers handle all the suspension of booth elements from the ceiling, such as truss or hanging signs. They are the guys with the large Condor lifts that you can see across the show floor during install and dismantle. When power is required above for lights or video walls, Stagehands coordinate with Electricians to provide the power.

Hopefully this detailed explanation not only helps you fully understand what a Complete Rental Solution is, you now even better understand your options involved in a Complete Rental Solution. If you’d like to discuss more, simply give us a call or shoot us an email.

New clients will often list booth storage as one of their top requirements in a booth design. We’d like to review the pros and cons of trade show booth storage in some detail, and make some suggestions.

When asked, “What do you need to store in your booth space, and how often will you access this storage during the show hours”? Clients often give a quick answer based one convenience alone.

If you ask the booth staff, they want to arrive to the booth space and have a place to store their computers, purses and bags of literature, samples and giveaways. If you ask the Exhibit Manager, they may add the need for giveaway items and/or products to be stored. They are usually planning to store all of their literature and giveaways within the booth, as well as the boxes they came in for quick repacking after the show. If you then tell the Exhibit Manager how much they are paying for their booth per square foot, they will often cringe at the thought of using valuable booth space for storage.

There are ways you can manage storage items with very little inconvenience. We like to consider all types of booth storage and other clever ways to significantly reduce the required storage within the booth space to save money while giving up very little in terms of time and hassle.

 

A look at the common types of booth storage:

Locking counter storage – This may be the most common type of storage. Most booths have at least one counter and its easy to plan to store items in the base of that counter or other counters as well. It’s common for these counter doors to lock to secure your items when your away from your booth space.

Behind the booth storage – If your booth is an inline booth space or split island booth space with a neighboring booth on one side, its common to store items in the narrow space between the two booths. Most shows request that you give an 18” walkway behind your booth for electrical access, but very often this is ignored. If your strategy is to store behind your booth, it’s easy to plan for it to be installed with whatever space behind that suits your needs.

Towers with closet door access – It’s common for a client to want a locking storage closet in their booth. This is especially true for clients that need the space inside counters for computers, hubs and routers, and especially if they have a good amount of giveaway items to manage. We can add doors to most of our tower designs, providing quick and inconspicuous storage for your whole booth staff.

Full on storage / computer server rooms – This solution is considered in larger booths. If you booth space is large and your booth staffs many people, you may have a special need for a command central or break room. We often see requests for a small locking storage room that can serve as a data hub, a storage room, and staff break room. The outer walls of these storage rooms can provide great usable space for graphic messaging or mounted TV’s with demo counters.

Storage Lockers – Some larger shows offer small storage lockers for rent. These are metal lockers with wire panels, locking doors and rolling wheels. They are typically 3 feet wide by 4 feet deep by 6 feet tall. When you order these lockers, the show delivers them to your booth space. Once you’ve loaded it up, they move it to a location off the show floor where you can access during the show as needed. These offer security and convenience and can be a great solution to consider. You need to first find out if the show is offering these before comparing this solution against others.

 

Here are some ideas to discuss before diving into your booth design:

Use your hotel rooms to store items – Consider keeping literature, giveaways, boxes and small cases in one of your hotel rooms with a folding airline luggage cart. Take what you need each day of the show and wheel out your literature, samples, etc. that have accumulated in the booth space by the end of each day.

Yes, this requires someone to wheel these items each morning and after each day the show closes, but our experience shows that the benefits in cost and reduced clutter outweigh the minor inconvenience. Many exhibitors would find that this savings allows them to easily afford at least one room close to the show hall even if all other staff is staying offsite at a lower cost hotel. Who knows, maybe you’re the lucky booth staffer with a sweet hotel room, all you have to do is wheel a small cart!

Use peel away graphics to access storage space inside tower – This option has a few noteworthy benefits. Your booth structure may require towers to have some depth to be stable. Sure you don’t want to waste that internal space, but you may also not want a door to disrupt the clean crisp booth graphic message.

There are easy ways to use this space without the added cost of a locking door, with peel away graphic panels. This option is meant for items that you won’t need to access during the show, such as those empty packing boxes and small traveling cases, because peeling the panel back too many times can weaken the adhesive tape. This can include your inventory of giveaways and literature that you will only access before and after the show each day.

Have your install/dismantle crew take some items offsite that they can bring back at the end of the show – This option appeals to many of our clients. It cost nothing and can be a great hassle free solution for storing your boxes and small cases that you will want back soon after the show closes.  As you likely know, most shows need 2-4 hours to return empty storage, but your install and dismantle crew is allowed on the show floor as soon as the show officially ends. At that time they can return your boxes and cases, and you can be packing up soon after the show ends.

Overall, once you understand the cost impact of dedicating space in your booth for storage, and you evaluate what’s truly needed during the show each day, you will make better cost-saving booth design decisions. Working with an install crew like Exhibit People, you will have the added option to enlist our help in storing and returning smaller storage items at the end of show.

Talk with any of our Project Managers to brainstorm how best to handle your storage needs. We’ll help you weigh your options and think outside of the box in the process.

In a post COVID-19 pandemic world when face masks are no longer mandatory, people will still want to feel safe attending face to face gatherings that promote social distancing. For trade shows, most attending will want to know everyone on the show floor will get their temperature checked, which is super easy to implement.

Another suggestion is rapid test saliva swabs for all attendees and exhibitors the night before. This is more extreme but also possible as most people traveling for a 3 day show arrive the day before anyway.

Even with these measures in place it’s natural to expect that people will still prefer to keep social distance between themselves and others, just in case a few infected people get past the system.

Unexpected positive result

Fortunately these new trade show exhibition marketing strategies may also result in an unexpected fresh looking and inviting booth design that is also a safer trade show design idea. For good or bad, exhibit design have historically evolved to pack more into the space provided. More trade show display counters, more meeting tables and more storage space for more booth staff to stash their belongings. The result are uninviting trade show booth designs that require aggressive staff to pull attendees from the aisles.

Retail stores don’t do this? When you enter many retail stores the sales counters are set back towards the middle so that the entrances remain open and inviting. Shoppers want to step in, look around and decide where to go – simple right?

With a need for safer distance at trade shows event marketers willing to provide attendees a safer booth space may fair better than ones that change nothing post Covid-19. Trade show marketing in an open inviting space that allow for a margin for safely is key. Uncluttered exhibition booth designs with open spaces and set back reception counters will let attendees step off the aisle to understand your message and layout before engaging booth staff. It could be that furniture should be minimized.

Today with large format graphics, large TV’s and LED video walls its far easier to fully deliver your eye catching primary messages from the aisle as attendees approach. This allows your exhibition booth to focus on the main take away you want to achieve.

If you sell software then focus on the demo station that allows safe distance. If you show and sell new product, consider pedestals that allow safe distance with hand sanitizers nearby. For many attendees interested in your products and services simply want to meet key people to make a connection. These are simply booth ideas that can’t be done as effectively in a zoom meeting.

Regarding literature, why bring it? It’s far better to make a digital connection with attendees using QR codes. They simply take a photo of the QR image and instantly get routed to any web page you’ve prepared. You’re booth could have multiple QR codes, one to schedule a zoom demo in the days following your show.

Stir things up!

So, post Covid-19, we have the opportunity to stir things up in a more effective fresh sort of way.

In this effort, we’ve developed a number of post Covid-19 Trade Show display Ideas to get you thinking about the double benefits of safer more approachable open booth designs. These are custom exhibits tailored to your needs.

As always, when your ready to brainstorm just shoot us an email or give us a call. We’re ready to help! If you want to see safer designs as they are developed then you need only follow us on social media.

We will get through this together!

We invite you to experience our new and improved website. We made it better in every way in order to help you browse our latest rental designs and learn about our growing custom capabilities and services.

Check out the new LED Video Wall design ideas and the priced Video Wall Packages. Leverage this fast growing technology in your booth!