More and more companies are taking advantage of international trade shows in order to promote their brand internationally. And with this trend comes a number of important considerations. We’ve covered international exhibiting in a few other blog posts, but we haven’t talked in detail about what may be the biggest consideration when exhibiting internationally: whether to take advantage of a rental booth or ship your trade show exhibits overseas.
To Ship Or Not To Ship
One of the toughest parts of international exhibiting is the difficulty of shipping or transporting your trade show exhibits. Moving large exhibit components can be difficult even in a domestic context, but when you throw in the extra distance and the need to go overseas and the shipping costs quickly become quite expensive. That’s not to mention the extra hassle or fees of going through international customs.
But, international shipping may be the only way to go if you have custom-built trade show exhibits that are integral to your exhibiting plans. If that is in fact the case, there are a number of ways to make shipping your exhibits less expensive and less risky.
If shipping is in fact a must, then you should make sure to plan far ahead and build-in time for delays in order to get everything in place in time for the show. Shipping by air is usually quicker but is also likely to be more expensive (and even impossible for very bulky or heavy items). On the other hand, shipping by sea can be slow and is susceptible to delays. Make sure that you build in a couple days for customs to go through your items and while you should pack them well to minimize the chances of breakage, you should also make sure that customs agents can get into them.
Renting Trade Show Exhibits Abroad
The other option for exhibiting internationally is to take advantage of a rental booth in the country where you will be exhibiting. This way you don’t have to worry about shipping your own trade show exhibits potentially thousands of miles. Instead, you can rent a booth to use locally and then you only need to worry about transporting personnel instead.
This option can save you a significant chunk of change by making it unnecessary to pay for shipping long distances. It does mean, however, that you will need to make arrangements to lease a rental booth in a foreign country which can be challenging as well. Despite this challenge, it appears that taking advantage of rental exhibits abroad is a very popular option, with nearly 40% of respondents in a Exhibitor magazine poll saying that they rent abroad instead of shipping their own trade show exhibits overseas.
Using a rental booth when exhibiting abroad means that you don’t have to worry about damaging your own trade show exhibits and it provides you with the flexibility of renting which means that you can change your exhibits and not be stuck with the same old design that you may own. This gives you more options when exhibiting overseas and allows you to focus on what is the most important which is developing international relationships and generating sales leads overseas.
A Third Option For Overseas Exhibiting
Although we initially set this up as a kind of ‘one or the other’ situation. The fact is that there is a third option for producing trade show exhibits for international use. This is what they call the ‘build-and-burn’ option. In other words, you can create a custom exhibit that is built for a one-time use and then discard it once you are done with your show. This can provide a great deal of flexibility, though it is usually more expensive and obviously more wasteful than utilizing a rental exhibit. But, if your needs are more particular than can be met with the rental options available, you do have a third option that you can use.
Business Opportunities Drive International Trade Show Traffic
More and more companies are taking their trade show exhibits overseas and exhibiting in a new country in order to help discover new markets for their products and establish strategic relationships in other countries. As emerging markets in the Americas and Asia continue to provide opportunities for business we should only expect this trend to accelerate. And If you are looking for new trade show exhibits or information on rental booths, don’t forget to contact the experts at Blazer Exhibits & Events. We’ll hook up you with exactly what you need.