In the past 3-5 years exhibit houses have been seeking out partnerships with exhibit houses in distant venue cities to keep the costs of their clients rental exhibits low. Although we see an upturn in the exhibit industry – everyone is still concerned with their budget and we all must work together to keep costs down.
If you own your exhibit, and many still do, then your exhibit company can send a supervisor and use I&D labor from the show city. That is pretty much a done deal. However, be aware that show labor costs are all over the board and are sold in different manners and as the owner of the ultimate pocketbook you need to find out how much your exhibit company is being charged and in what manner and do some comparison shopping yourself. As an example one of our venues in which we offer I&D is Las Vegas – I recently had sent our I&D rates for CES and one of our exhibit house clients called and told me that they were being charged $28 and hour more than we were charging! So buyer be aware.
What if you are procuring a rental property? We have found that most people still like to deal with their local exhibit house as their go-between – even if their exhibit house does not have rental equipment. And even if they do are you really willing to pay for cross country shipping and then local I&D labor charges? Ask your exhibit house if they possibly have a partnership with another exhibit company that can bring your costs down. We have a division called Wholesale Exhibits that sells only to exhibit houses and with the discounts we give – the end-user’s prices are still very much in line or less for this service.
