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Rental Exhibits Aren’t What They Used to Be. THANK GOODNESS!

February 9th, 2011 Mel White 1 COMMENT

We’ve Come a Long Way in Exhibit Rentals

Rental Exhibit

Rental Exhibit

Not so long ago, the choices were limited to pop ups, panel displays, and bent and dirty aluminum extrusion from the show contractor. You could spot a rental booth from clear across the show hall. All that has changed . . . Thank goodness! More often than not, you couldn’t spot a rental if you were staring at it. Rental exhibits are no longer cookie-cutter, off-the-shelf kits. Most manufacturers welcome modifying and customizing existing rental kits or creating new designs. They’re individually designed just like purchased exhibits.

On average, 25% of the overall cost of an island rental exhibit is custom components, not including the graphics. It’s really interesting because a large percentage of exhibitors understand this very clearly and have come to expect it. At Classic Exhibits, we work with new exhibitors all the time who are shocked by the amount of customization available with rental exhibits.

A great example of customization for a rental exhibit is a recent project we did for Griffin Technologies through our distributor–Tradeshow STOP in Nashville. A large portion of the exhibit consisted of our aluminum extrusion profiles, but we added custom cedar beams, interior wood walls, cabinets, and an electric fireplace with a mantle. This design also called for custom globe lighting. Griffin does a great job of adding finishing touches to their booth such as furniture and accessories. Last year they used a customized Volkswagen van that they drove from Nashville to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show. It was a huge hit.

Rental Exhibit -- Griffin Technologies

Rental Exhibit -- Griffin Technologies

In today’s market, companies are renting for different reasons. In the past, it was all about saving money at the expense of design and functionality. Now they rent because they want a unique design for each show. Marketing managers become heroes because they give their companies a fresh look each and every time within a manageable budget. Quite often it’s as simple as adding accent wing panels, custom shelves, workstations, or curved extrusion that convinces everyone on the show floor that you own your exhibit.

Most rentals also include turnkey services, including the exhibit rental components, graphics, round trip shipping, and I & D services. This allows the marketing manager to focus on what they do best – Marketing.

Another factor to consider includes no more storage issues, which is a huge benefit for most companies. And in many states, there are user or personal property taxes that you have to pay for storing your exhibit in your own facility. Of course you also avoid added insurance costs.

The process of renting an exhibit is virtually the same as purchasing an exhibit, but once all of the decisions are made you can walk away from it. Plus you have a choice to either do the same exhibit for future shows, or head in an entirely different direction.

My favorite part of my job is to preview the exhibits. It’s gratifying to see the results of everyone’s hard work and effort that goes into every project. It’s especially rewarding with rental exhibits because I find myself shaking my head and saying, “Rental exhibits aren’t what they used to be. THANK GOODNESS!”

–Jim Shelman
General Manager, Classic Exhibits Rental Division

Trade Show Rental Exhibit

Trade Show Rental Exhibit

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Posted in Classic Rentals | 1 Comment »

Word on the Street — January 31st thru February 4th

February 6th, 2011 Mel White 7 COMMENTS
Too Big

Word on the Street by Kevin Carty

When a Company Gets “Too BIG”!

Please indulge me for a few minutes. I really need to rant about a project from last week.

Now, I have no intention of naming names. However, I think this story has merit for being told, if for no other reason than to highlight what I hope Classic Exhibits never becomes, i.e., a company “Too BIG.”

Some background . . . We are currently working on a large interior retail project. It’s for the Flagship Store for a very well-known cable provider in the US. This Flagship location will highlight its services and is set to open the second week of March. If successful, the company will replicate this look at locations across the US. It’s a very exciting project that commands a lot of creativity, patience, and dedication not only by the team at Classic, but also by all the supporting vendors.

Unfortunately, this is where we hit a bit of a hitch in our giddy-up last week, and the story behind this blog entry.

You see, there is a small (by comparison to the rest of the project) accent material that we are incorporating in the project. This product is not only innovative, but really adds a distinctive design element to the entire project.

One element in the design calls for this accent piece to be formed or bent on a very slight radius. So, we reached out to the vendor to inquire about bending or forming the product. We were told it could but only if the vendor did the forming. Time, unfortunately, does not allow for them to do the forming, so we asked if they had a sample sheet so we could try forming it at Classic. Thankfully, they had a sheet in stock that we could buy, so we placed the order this past Friday.

Now, it is important to mention that this vendor is within a three-hour drive from our main manufacturing facility in Portland.

Processes and ProceduresWhen we received the confirmation back for the sample sheet we noticed something very odd! The delivery date for the material wasn’t this Friday, but next Friday, for something on the shelf and within a one-day delivery. Naturally, we called to inquire why it would take so long if they had it sitting right there. The answer floored me. I am pretty sure I have never heard this in my 16 plus years managing a business.

The answer — “I am sorry but clearly you do not understand that we are a BIG company, and within BIG companies, certain processes and timelines have to be met and/or followed.”

Really?!?!?!

We asked what being a “BIG” company had to do with their ability to go out and grab a sheet of material in their warehouse and place it on their shipping dock for our carrier to pick-up. We again were told that they were a “BIG” company and were sorry if we did not understand what “BIG” companies have to go through in the way of processes and procedures.

As you might imagine, the encounter left me both angry and perplexed about their company’s processes, practices, and procedures — especially when the vendor knows how this material is being used and how lucrative the project would be over the coming months and years for them. Not to mention the visibility it would give them to hundreds of thousands of consumers across the USA.

By Friday night, I got to thinking. If this is what it means to be a “BIG” company, then quite honestly I do not want to part of it. Now don’t misunderstand me. All companies must have established processes and procedures. Classic Exhibits is no exception. We couldn’t run our business without them. But, processes and procedures should not be so inflexible that they defy common sense. They should not put customer service reps. in a position to defend what is clearly illogical to anyone who has spent any time managing a business.

Think of policies, processes, and procedures like the white and yellow lines on the highway. They are there for a reason — to manage traffic flow. But if there are no opportunities to pass or to exit left or right, then at some point when a car is moving too slowly, too fast, or when there’s an accident, the entire traffic flow comes to a halt.

I’m smart enough to recognize that this is not the practice and vision of larger companies because at the end of the day that sort of mindset serves to only prohibit sales growth, not promote it.

Hopefully, we all stay “small” regardless of the growth our companies experience!

Thanks for letting me rant. 🙂

Be well and have a great week ahead.

–Kevin Carty

http://twitter.com/kevin_carty
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-carty/3/800/32a

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Posted in Kevin Carty, Uncategorized, Word on the Street | 7 Comments »

Design Monday — Almost 6 Years (But Who’s Counting?!)

February 1st, 2011 Mel White COMMENTS
Design Monday by Classic Exhibits

Design Monday Gallery

When we launched Design Monday on April 18, 2005, our objective was simple (and perhaps a little naive): to transform the image of Classic Exhibits from a medium-sized systems manufacturer to a leader in innovative portable, modular, and hybrid displays. At the time, we were designing and building some of the industry’s most creative trade show solutions. However, as we joke about it now, the industry perception of Classic Exhibits was “five guys in a garage making folding panel and pop up displays.” We hadn’t been that company for many years, but we had done a lousy job of marketing our new designs and communicating the changes at Classic Exhibits.

Strategy:

Shortly after EXHIBITOR Show 2005, we decided to experiment with emailing two or three designs from our Design Library to our Distributor List. The email (via CoolerEmail) would show renderings with design details and prices. The designs generally fell into three categories:   Standard kits, modified kits, or more often, design requests from distributors for specific projects.

Consistency was the key. Once we started Design Monday, we knew we had to continue sending designs every week regardless of our schedule or other commitments. Our Design, Sales, Marketing, and Project Management teams all took ownership, which made the task easier, although no less time-consuming. We are proud to say that since 4/18/2005, we’ve only missed two weeks (when Christmas fell on a Weekend or Monday). During that time we have sent over 700 designs in five plus years.

Design Monday by Classic Exhibits

Design Monday

Design Monday has evolved over the years. We experimented with multiple templates and links to our website. There is a Design Monday Gallery on the Classic website as well as on our Distributors’ Exhibit Design Search sites. Design Monday was the inspiration for Exhibit Design Search when we needed an online tool to sort and filter the displays.

The repetition has allowed us to test new designs, launch new systems (Sacagawea, Perfect 10, Magellan, etc.), and promote services, such as our Rental Department. Classic Exhibits stays “top-of-mind” with our distributors since we’re in touch via email once a week.

If there is one oddity about Design Monday, it’s that we email it at noon PST on Sunday. Why? We want it to be one of first emails our distributors read Monday morning. Of course, we also benefit from those workaholic distributors who read and respond to Design Monday on Sunday. A distributor who lives on the East Coast once told us that his daughter always knows when it is 3 pm EST on Sunday. His phone chimes announcing an email, and she says, “Daddy, it’s Design Monday!”

Measurement and Results:

From a pure quantitative basis, Design Monday has been easy to measure. We use CoolerEmail. Cooler, like other email tracking programs such as Constant Contact, allows us to track usage by email address, by individual links, and by user. We know if someone has read Design Monday once, twice, or fifteen times. Over the past five years, our read rate has never fallen below 35 percent per week and typically hovers around 50 percent. In addition, our email database has grown 10X over that same period and our sales volume has increased 4X.

Anyone familiar with Classic Exhibits, as a distributor, supplier, or competitor, can attest to our transformation since 2005. Suffice to say, we are one of the leaders in portable, modular, and hybrid exhibit design and manufacturing. We’ll leave the praise of Classic to others, but we will acknowledge that it’s been a long time since anyone thought of us as “Five guys in a garage.”

To see Design Monday in Exhibit Design Search:

http://www.classicexhibits.com/trade-show-exhibit-design-search/gallery/default/design-monday/4/

To see Design Monday on the Classic Home page, scroll to the Design Monday image on the left-hand menu:

http://www.classicexhibits.com/

Online Design Monday:

Currently, there are fewer than 700 designs in the Design Monday online database. As select designs have become standard kits, we have assigned them kit #’s and moved them into the appropriate product gallery. Keeping them in Design Monday would create duplicates and possible confusion with distributors and end-users.

–Mel White
http://www.linkedin.com/in/melmwhite
mel@classicexhibits.com

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Posted in Classic Exhibit Systems, Mel White | No Comments »

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