Trade stand or outdoor booth design - fast and light

November 29, 2023 3:30 PM

I do trade stands at farm & rural shows (my target demographic) in New Zealand. Normally I get a company to put up small marquee, set my posters up and wait for the hordes (I get half my jobs this way). I do this alone with no support and logistics gets tiring. So I’ve started going lighter and wondering how light is too light, and asking here to see what mefites may have seen in tradeshows in other parts of the planet that you liked or that you installed for your self.

Shows are frequently chaotic and one often ends up with problem neighbours, or a very low traffic position and needing to reorganise site or move. This is not easy with a tent. So I’ve started taking a large patio umbrella and three roll-up posters - and found I get as good if not better results - I think partly as I'm more on show / harder to walk by, and it's really easy to move if I have to.

For my next show I have a bigger (5 x 5 metre), more open site in a great position (end of a single row so I can show to three sides - I'm making a screen for one side to affix to poles - I'll probably use strawbales in some way too as they also make good seats).

My best clients or main contact people are m/f couples, single women, and single guys, and they tend to be practical no-nonsense people,and as far as I can see put up my too much fanciness.

posted by unearthed to Work & Money (7 answers total)

What’s your approximate budget? This affects things very very substantially (at least in my trade show experience). Also, what is the wind usually like and how often does it rain?
posted by aramaic at 5:24 PM on November 29, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks. Budget - as low as possible; I'm known for repurposing industrial items into my designs, so where I can I'll do that - scaffold items etc.
Rain is rare there this time of year.
Wind - yes it usually gets up in the afternoons, I always have lots of tethers and tie downs.

At this point I'm looking at a custom printed tough fabric screen maybe this between me and my one neighbour - and anchored between two tethered vertical poles and a piece of rebar hammed into ground.
posted by unearthed at 5:56 PM on November 29, 2023

Your idea seems reasonable (and durable!), although I might use a metal fencing post type of thing (like this product only much larger; that one is only a couple feet tall and obviously inadequate for your needs). That way you don't have to rely entirely on metal posts being available at the show site.

If you think you may occasionally use rebar as the main support (rather than just a ground anchor) note that long bits of rebar can bend/flex quite a lot more easily and freely than people think. Incidentally, for the rebar anchors maybe weld on some lugs on (even just a carbon-steel nut, as long as its not galvanized) so that you can attach guy lines to it more securely.

Also look into maybe building your own collapsible version of a retractable banner stand. The commercial ones are going to be heavier than you probably want (the storage tube is part of the assembly, so there's a big metal tube at the base, because they're built to survive being shipped by UPS and insane trade show logistics staff, but you could make something similar without too much hassle I'd think. One advantage of the banner stand approach is that you can set more than one at different locations/angles, so that people coming from multiple directions can see the signage without potentially irritating your show neighbors.

Obviously, the trade show versions are not built to deal with wind or uneven ground, so you'd want your leg system to have provision for being anchored into the ground via guy lines and spikes or the like (home swing sets sometimes have nifty manually-installed helical anchors that would be perfect), but if you're handy with metalworking this should be easy, and if you're not then it would be a fairly simple job for a miscellaneous metals fabricator (or even a random person with a welding machine and a metal drill).
posted by aramaic at 7:57 PM on November 29, 2023

Response by poster: Yeah I don't think I can better the banner stands I already use (as in images), I have drilled their bases so I can pin them down, and I tie therm from top, but if I do my screen I'll fix them to that.

My site is super flat, it's a playing field rest of year, I am toying with using a couple of small helical piles to hold the uprights as I'd like to demonstrate the tech.

I'm also hoping people might put up images of shows they've been to of stands or booths they liked, I don't care if its rural or urban, or what the stand is selling, although if it's a stand that's designed to appeal to women that's great as women are ~80% of my clients.
posted by unearthed at 12:12 AM on November 30, 2023

You are the person a pop-up canopy tent was made for.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 12:06 PM on November 30, 2023

Best answer: although if it's a stand that's designed to appeal to women that's great as women are ~80% of my clients.

This would seem to be more a question of market research & advertising segmentation, rather than exhibit signage? In other words, not the equipment you are using to convey the message, but rather the message itself.
posted by aramaic at 3:42 PM on November 30, 2023

Response by poster: Thanks aramaic I formed this question poorly as, yes I was hoping people would send me photos of stands, stalls and booths that they're seen recently that match my criteria - or that they found apealing. I just thought 'out loud' on the way to forming my question. I'll reframe my question and ask again in a week or so.
posted by unearthed at 10:55 AM on December 4, 2023