Three New Rental Displays with 20 ft. Lightboxes from Classic Rental Solutions. All feature SuperNova LED lightboxes with backlit fabric graphics. Accessories include charging tables, genius bars, reception counters, and pedestals.
Click on the individual images to see more details.
Through October 2019, Classic Rental Solutions (CRS) delivered over 283 rental projects this year. Mostly larger customized inlines or islands. That’s a lot of rentals and a healthy increase over the previous year.
With so many Classic Exhibits Distributors adding rental inventories, you may be wondering why our sales continue to surge. It’s simple. Our size and manufacturing capabilities give us six rental advantages. Those advantages benefit you, a Classic Distributor, and your clients.
Our designers are dedicated to rental designs. They don’t dabble in purchase design requests. CRS typically delivers complete rental designs within 3 to 4 days of your design requests.
We’ll work directly with you and/or with your clients on conference calls to review their vision for the design and functionality of their booth. Experience has shown us that the closing ratio improves significantly when our designers work directly with exhibitors.
Need ideas? Our three Rental Galleries (with over 300 designs) provide a great starting point to generate concepts and budget ranges as well.
Do you get bogged down in the present, making it challenging to focus on future opportunities. Let us manage your rental projects to avoid disrupting your in-house production load. We’ll design it, build it, and communicate the progress all along the way. This makes it easy for you, and allows your team to focus on existing jobs and new opportunities.
Nearly every CRS rental ships directly to the trade show and has for over 10 years. We’re really, really good at getting it right at every stage.
Almost every rental exhibit CRS designs and produces has custom elements. We understand the importance of including key features that set your projects apart. This is also true for the more economical budgets.
We’re not limited to 20 modular wall panels or two or three counters. Our rental inventory is virtually unlimited. In almost all cases, we can design and build to your specifications.
Classic Exhibits has always been a leader in innovation and new product development. CRS is in the same facility. Our design offerings include these new products, which constantly provides a fresh new look. It also provides a substantial sales advantage, especially in competitive situations where that one new element can really make a difference.
Here are three examples of game-changing products that Classic has introduced:
At Classic, we’re extremely flexible! We don’t have strict policies that restrict us from assisting you. Our goal is to win projects and be successful with every opportunity. We understand that. So when it comes to special requests, like tight timelines, custom colors and components, or large quantity orders that require us to invest in more inventory, we’ll do everything we can to accommodate your needs. We can’t always say “yes,” but we’re going to do everything possible not to say “no.”
We know what it takes for you to earn your customer’s business and trust. That’s why it’s so important to communicate and to assure them that their projects are coming together successfully. In today’s long-distance business relationships, it’s critical that customers are confident the project is going smoothly especially if they’ve never visited our facilities.
At CRS, we follow a strict process for every project, which includes updates along the way. And when your orders are completed and staged, we send detailed staging photos, packing photos, setup instructions, and packing lists. It’s your assurance that every expectation has been met with success.
I’ve been in this business for over 35 years and love what I do. Every project is a new challenge, whether large or small. Our CRS team is committed to designing, producing, and managing the best possible rental solutions for your customers. The most exciting part of my job is walking through the shop each day, and seeing our completed projects being staged and getting ready to ship to trade shows all across the country. That never gets old to me.
I look forward to partnering with you on your next, or possibly first, project with us!
Jim Shelman, GM Classic Rental Solutions, jshelman@classicexhibits.com
For over 13 years, I was on the distributor side of the exhibit business, working directly with local clients/exhibitors while I owned Exhibits Northwest. During that time, I experienced firsthand what was important to our customers and what we needed to do to make them feel comfortable. I found that the more confident we were, the more confident our customers became with us. They expected us to be the experts and to guide them through the process, and we understood that’s what we were there to do, and we enjoyed doing it.
It reminds me of a twenty-year span where I would go on shopping sprees for business clothes about every two to three years. This was back when we were all dressing up to go into the office every day, and wearing slacks, with dress shirts, ties, and a sports jacket. I know, I just dated myself big time.
I always shopped at the same Nordstrom store in Portland, and Pam in the Men’s Suits Department helped me every time. Once I became confident with her guidance and direction, I had no reason to ever consider shopping anywhere else. Early on, she learned what styles I liked, and what I was comfortable with. She always shared what was new, made great suggestions, and guided me through the process.
She would walk throughout the store, selecting my size in pants, shirts, and jackets, and color coordinate them for me. I simply stayed in the dressing room and tried everything on to decide what I was going to buy. She was super confident, and clearly plugged-in as an expert in men’s clothing. It was about a two-hour process, and then I was set for another two to three years. I really admired and appreciated Pam’s confidence and her approach, and I trusted her judgement. But more importantly, I became very comfortable with the process, and I knew what I could expect every time, and I was happy with my purchases. It was always a no hassle experience for me. To no one’s surprise, Pam was a Top 50 salesperson for Nordstrom nationwide.
We’re all looking for this type of buying experience, where we work with people and companies that truly get it and are experts in their field. And we want them to guide us through the process and help us feel comfortable with our purchasing decisions.
At Classic Rental Solutions, our goal is to make our customers feel the same way that Pam made me feel as her customer through all those years. We want to earn that same trust and confidence to deliver successful experiences every time.
Renting an exhibit is more complex than buying men’s clothes, but here’s what we set out to do for our customers for every project:
If you shop around, you’ll discover that these comprehensive services are rarely offered by other providers.
As I always like to say, a lot of companies rent exhibits, but we offer a complete rental program. That’s what makes us different.
We’re constantly adding new designs to our inline, island, and accessories website galleries, and we offer rebrand and custom design services. And we’re always happy to jump on a design call. We’ll make structural and functional suggestions and try to come up with cost savings ideas.
As a division of Classic Exhibits Inc., CRS is supported by a full-service shop that produces our rental components in-house. This allows us to offer customization for every design. And our inventory is virtually unlimited. If we’re out of something, we produce more to fulfill new orders. And that’s very rare in our industry. All the designs shown on our website are always available, as long as we have a standard lead time. We don’t shy away from rush orders either.
We have fun doing what we do, because we build something new and different every day. It can be stressful at times, but it’s very rewarding to be a part of our customer’s successful projects from the beginning to the end. And we’re like little kids when we receive show photos with a positive note saying how successful the show was. That’s what it’s all about.
For more information about Classic Rental Solutions, please contact Jim Shelman @ jshelman@classicexhibits.com or call 503-345-0525 x 103.
Trade Show Rentals have undergone a seismic shift not only in design but also in sales. And, this trend will continue in 2019 and beyond. This week, we chatted with Jim Shelman, the General Manager of Classic Rental Solutions. So what should you expect as an exhibitor or a Classic Exhibits Distributor Partner? More of the same, which is a VERY GOOD THING.
A lot of things have changed, but there are two things that really stand out to me as major changes. One, is the implementation of customization to rental designs. Almost every order we produce includes some element of customization to provide specific needs that exhibitors request during the design process. Today, it’s difficult to spot a rental design, versus a purchased design on the show floor.
The other thing that stands out are the reasons exhibitors decide to rent vs. purchase.
In the past, the primary reason to rent had more to do with only exhibiting in one or two shows per year, and if you were unsure of your long-term show schedule. The thought process was to test the waters with a rental, see how it goes, and purchase once you’ve committed to exhibiting in multiple shows per year. Now, it has become more about design flexibility, and perhaps not wanting to be stuck with the same design show after show. Or, maybe not wanting to deal with storing, shipping, or repairing a purchased exhibit.
Today, many exhibitors approach each show as a clean slate by working with new rental designs that match their specific show-to-show needs.
There are several factors. With the risk of sounding corny, I’ll credit our team of dedicated people, and our incredible distributors, but I also think it’s because of our business model. We understand how important it is to be flexible, and to offer customized design services, and continuously add new custom designs to our rental gallery through our Exhibit Design Search feature on our website. And we’re committed to adding inventory as needed, to fulfill new opportunities for our distributors.
Another key factor is that we have the unique support from our in-house manufacturing professionals that produce new exhibits for our 200+ Distributor Partner Network. All of our rental components are produced right here, and we’re able to make last minute modifications.
I like to make it clear that we don’t just offer rentals, but that we offer a complete rental program. From start to finish, we have detailed processes that are followed by our production team and project managers. Every rental project gets staged and photographed before shipping. The highest quality standards are strictly enforced. We include setup instructions, and staging and packing photos with every order. After orders are returned, we provide a complete check-in report to close-out the project.
Several years ago, we implemented our Rental Rewards Program, which offers a reward discount of 2% of the total rental and graphics order when your exhibit returns without major damage and/or missing components. The program also offers two annual prize-drawings, and other rewards for our distributor network.
The seasonal nature of the trade show industry is always challenging. Everything hits at once several times throughout the year, which makes it challenging at times, but we plan and adjust accordingly. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so it’s never a real surprise, but it can hit at slightly different times.
2019 should be an amazing year for us. I would say that our biggest opportunities will be to continue to work on larger island design projects. We’re doing larger projects all the time, and I expect that trend to continue.
Another big opportunity that I’m anticipating is doing more large quantity component orders. We do large quantity orders for workstation kiosks, monitor stands, iPad kiosks, counters, and charging stations. Our large inventory, and willingness to add more, allows us to offer quantities that others typically don’t have available.
Some of the newer exhibitors think that they are limited to standard designs, and they’re surprised when we start the design process and realize that we offer so much more than they were expecting.
For those who aren’t aware and haven’t worked with us, I wish that they understood our full capabilities, and our design flexibility. And that we offer a complete rental program with nothing but high-quality “like-new” components. I want them to understand that we can offer something unique for their client base. Something that has proven to work successfully for distributors all over the country.
Yes, we ship a fair amount of event-related projects. In the last couple of months, we had multiple large quantity orders for charging stations. And last week we shipped (49) backlit counters to the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.
Our Gravitee Modular System has been a great addition to our rental program. It works extremely well for towers and conference rooms, but also for entire island and inline designs. It’s super-fast and easy to setup and disassemble, so it’s used as much as possible to save on labor costs. We see a substantial savings in time during our staging process here in our shop as well. We have a large inventory of standard and custom panel sizes, and we’ll continue to add to it.
Yes, I’m planning to be there, and here are three of many questions that I would welcome during our conversations.
I’m looking forward to the show, and I’d be happy to schedule meetings during, before, or after show hours.
You can contact Jim Shelman at jshelman@classicexhibits.com or at 503-345-0525 ext, 103.
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Classic Exhibits Inc. designs and manufacturers portable, modular, hybrid, custom, rental exhibit solutions. Classic Exhibits products are represented by an extensive distributor network in North America and in select International markets. For more information, contact us at 866-652-2100 or www.classicexhibits.com.
