Exhibition stand hire has been restricted to the either placing new graphic panels on old pop up frames or using an outdated panel and pole system.

Recently, there have been other products on the market using stretched canvass over lighting rigs and within frames to make the canvass look like a solid back wall to a stand.

When you think about it – most custom builds are actually rental stands as they work in exactly the same way. The customer owns the graphics and they are entitled to take them away at the end of the show or the contractor may offer to store them (for a price) however the structure of the stand is either kept as collateral by the contractor or thrown away (sorry recycled) after the show.

So why are custom built stands so expensive?

Well one answer is the simple fact that these big companies have huge overheads and need to keep the ball bouncing in order to pay the warehouse staff, the build team, the admin staff, the accountant, the graphic designer that produces all those lovely computer aided drawings we see so much of and of course the salesman who is telling you just what a difference his stand is going to make to your ROI. Then there are the vehicles that need to be kept on the road.

What you should know is that it takes time and money to prepare a pitch that may not be successful. It takes time and money to build the stand in the warehouse before it goes out to the exhibition hall. It takes time and money to take the stand to the hall with all the graphics, set it up and do everything necessary for that stand to look as good as you want it to.

Then there are the costs that the contractor has to pay to third parties. Each venue will have one supplier for the electricity so you can’t use someone else, one supplier for the Internet so you can’t use someone else, one supplier for the rigging so you can’t use someone else, there will be car parking charges that are extortionate – but you can’t park anywhere else and then there are overnight accommodation costs, fuel and food for the build staff.

Then there are other third party suppliers like the audio visual who sell the stand contractor the plasma screens, laptops, computers and such like.

It all costs money and that’s why the prices are so high. So what about an exhibition stand that you can hire?

Renting a stand is a cheap way of getting a big impact on a small budget. Hiring a stand means that you will pay a fraction of the cost of buying one and you get the complete flexibility of being able to hire another stand for your next show without having to worry whether or not it will actually fit in the new space. In our experience of over a decade providing exhibition hire stands, we have found that our clients stands usually differ in size from show to show meaning that if they had have bought a stand that they would have to have it amended each time.

We have also found that they can afford to go to multiple exhibitions rather than just one.