While my last post was all about a trend (fad?) I see in our industry, Green Trade Show Exhibits, today I'd like to talk about a much more practical need in the trade show industry - portability and flexibility.

Portable, Modular trade show exhibits are the holy grail of exhibits.  If it were feasible and practical, they'd all be built with this in mind.  The problem is, its difficult to define a way to make each and every exhibit modular.  Some exhibits are just so extravagant, that they will always be difficult to setup, tear down, and move across the country.

Portable exhibits are often thought of as cheap or cheesy because many companies don't put a lot of thought or effort into their execution.  If you look hard, however, you'll see that there are a ton of great quality portable, modular, and scalable exhibits on the market.

• Read More...

No, not Green-colored exhibits.  Green as in sustainable, earth-friendly, recycled, carbon-footprint considered, granola-eating, green.  I'm not sure if the green movement is growing or not, but we are increasingly receiving more and more calls about earth friendly exhibits.  So much so, in fact, that we created a line of them.

We did some market research to understand the consumer and what they were clammoring for with this green stuff.  I'll be honest, I haven't fully bought into 'being 100% green' myself, but its growing on me.  What we found was that they wanted every aspect of the exhibit to have some thought about it on how to make it more earth friendly.  Based on that, we did the following with the exhibits:

• Recycled fabrics/material for panels
• An overall lighter exhibit, which decreases shipping charges and carbon used to ship
• Formaldehyde-free plywood
• Lighter, recycled shipping cases
• Trade-in/recycling program when the exhibit reaches end-of-life

So that is what we are doing to provide for this part of the market.  Have you done anything special to accomodate earth-friendly conscious customers?

• Read More...

As I mentioned in my 'Hello Trade Show World' post, I'm an avid follower of new technology and love to keep up to date with the latest things going on in the consumer and mobile tech world.  One of the most interesting trends I've noticed lately is the use of Augmented Reality in our every day world.

If you haven't experienced augmented reality, and you have a smart phone, the easiest way is by downloading an app called Layar.  Once you fire that up, you'll see that if you hold it up while you are walking around, it adds context and information to what you look at in your every day life.  For instance, if you were walking by a restaurant, reviews and ratings would pop up on the screen.

So.... what does this have to do with trade shows?

• Read More...

Hi everyone, this is my obligatory 'hello world' post for my first blog.  I wanted to give some background on myself and some insight into the types of things I'm looking forward to writing about. 

I work in the Washington, D.C. metro area for a trade show exhibit design, fabrication, and consulting company. While we work with companies small and large, being in the D.C. area means that many of our clients are massive government and defense contractors.  Their needs exceed just simple exhibit design services; for them we provide the full-gamut of trade show offerings.  From exhibit storage to international shipping, set-up, tear-downs, online exhibit management and scheduling and more  - working for these large companies is a great experience because there is exposure to so many different aspects of the trade show world.

Outside of my trade show work, I'm a big time tech nerd.  I love new technology, these new communication platforms that are popping up online, and collaboration tools.  I love the latest and greatest cell phones, 3D TVs, and other bleeding edge consumer technologies.

• Read More...