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5 Situations Where Renting A Trade Show Booth Is Your Best Option

You rent the space you use at a trade show. You rent the badge scanner. In a sense, you even “rent” the utilities you’ll need at a show. So why spend the money to buy a booth, when that can be rented, too?

There’s nothing wrong with purchasing an exhibit, and we’ll discuss when that’s your best option. But first, let’s discuss some of the reasons why you might want to rent your booth next time:

1) You Want To Try Before You Buy:

Perhaps you’re not sure what type of exhibit will work best for your organization. In that situation, you can rent a specific kind of booth to see whether it meets your needs, before you actually shell out the bucks for the whole thing.

You’ll end up spending about a third of the cost of buying that booth. But in some situations, it’s just what you need to do to convince management that this is the direction your trade show strategy needs. But obviously, if you plan to do three or more shows with a rental booth, it’ll be cheaper to purchase.

The good news is that many exhibit suppliers (including us) offer a credit toward the purchase of a rented display, if the deal is done within thirty days.

2) You Need To Test The Trade Show Waters:

Maybe your company hasn’t exhibited at trade shows before, or at least not for a very long time. If you’ve got a booth, it’s way too outdated to represent your company now. If you don’t have a booth, how can you put your best foot forward on the show floor?

You rent, that’s how. For a relatively small investment, you can make a respectable splash at your “test” show with a rental booth. No one has to know it’s a rental, so you can appear as large and established as your competitors, without the huge outlay of capital.

And don’t forget that owning a booth—much like owning a boat—comes with a lot of expenses between shows for things like storage, insurance, upkeep, repair and refurbishing. Those expenditures should be factored into your decision making process, too.

3) You’re Over-Booked:

Even established companies that own exhibits sometimes find themselves in a situation where two important shows overlap, which means they’re short one booth.

In these circumstances, renting a booth for the overlapping show can make a great deal of sense. First, it allows you the opportunity to give this second display whatever look you want, so it can look as close to—or as far from—your own exhibit as you’d like it to.

Second, with a rented exhibit, the company providing the rental usually handles delivery, set-up and tear down. This means you don’t need to have people on-site before and after the show to address those tasks. You also don’t have the extra expenses associated with having your own staff out of town for assembly and striking of the booth. You show up and it’s already set up and ready for you, and you simply leave on the last day of the show.

4) Your Foot Print Is Getting Larger:

For a variety of reasons, many exhibitors find they want to—or need to—expand their exhibiting space at certain shows. When this need comes up late in the planning stages (say, when a new product is ready for introduction before a new exhibit can be built, or management decides at the last minute that they want a product presentation area in the booth), renting additional exhibit properties may be the most easy and convenient way to go.

Exhibit companies invest large amounts of money in their rental inventory, so they have the components in stock to spread out and fill the space you’ve booked, providing all the room you need for that new product introduction or product demonstration. Their design staff can help you combine what you own with rental stock to give you a cohesive look that helps to present your company in its best light.

5) You’re An Occasional Exhibitor:

As I mentioned earlier, owning an exhibit is a costly affair. It requires the initial capital outlay to design and build, then ongoing expenses for storage, insurance, upkeep and other related costs.

But maybe your organization only participates in a couple of trade shows each year. If that’s the case, renting may be the perfect solution for you. Why?

You can take on a new look at every show you go to. With minimal expenditures for the production of graphics and signage, your booth can be different at each show, simply by pulling the components from a multi-million dollar inventory of exhibit properties.

Here at American Image Displays (and perhaps other suppliers, as well), we’ll walk you through a Needs Assessment to determine what you want your exhibit to accomplish. Then, armed with that information, our design team will take over to provide computer renderings of what your exhibit could look like.

• Once you’ve decided on a design that works for you, our warehouse staff will pull the components required, inspect them and pack them for delivery to your show.
• Finally, our own I&D team will go to the show site, set up the display to your specifications and be sure you’re completely satisfied with everything. Then they’ll disappear until the show is over, at which time you walk away and our people handle all the aspects of getting the exhibit off the show floor and back to our warehouses.

Do you see why renting an exhibit might be right for your organization? If you fall into any of the categories outlined above, you’re just the kind of client we like to work with. With an extensive rental inventory, talented designers and dedicated installers, we can make your next show not only successful, but extremely cost-effective, too. To learn more, call us at (425) 556-9511 or email [email protected].

For more, check out how to make your booths strong or how to go green with your booths.