Aluminum, Hybrid or Modular Trade Show Display System Exhibit Stands vs Full Custom Wood Exhibit Booth Stands

How do you know which tradeshow booth is right for your company? In this article we try to give you the pros and cons of each type of booth whether aluminum, hybrid, modular or custom wood. We also give you an insight into crating and shipping along with installation and dismantling and what will give you the biggest bank for your buck.

Which Type of Trade Show Booth Is Best?

Is, aluminum, hybrid, or a modular system exhibit stand really less expensive than full custom wood exhibit booth stands?

That depends on how you look at it. Maybe the answer is somewhere in the middle. It seems to me that there is an agenda in the industry, depending on who you’re talking to. Or which sales person is sitting in front if you. It might also depend on where that sales person’s core competency lays.

Yes, in years past custom wood trade show displays were bulky, and shipped in large containers. But advances in construction techniques and new materials have made that not so true anymore. With automated machinery, wood exhibits can be made modular and lightweight (by removing material on the interior structures), and can be the simplest to assemble on the show floor which saves you money on the assembly and dismantle process.

And there lies the real issue, most are seeing the trees for the forest when discussing what type of exhibit stand to purchase. When making this decision you have to look at the whole picture, the whole forest.

For instance, a full custom wood trade show exhibit will always install on the show floor faster than a full aluminum extrusion exhibit. The installation and dismantle of your exhibit, in most cases, will be one of your largest reoccurring costs of exhibiting at a Tradeshow.

Custom trade show exhibits will install and dismantle faster because they are made of larger parts. Therefore, fewer pieces. Aluminum extrusion exhibits can be time consuming to install and dismantle because there are hundreds of small parts and pieces that are very time consuming and sometimes highly complicated to assemble and dismantle on the show floor.

Seeing the Whole Picture

When you look at the cost of a new exhibit stand, be sure to look at the entire picture knowing that the ‘Install and Dismantle’ is going to be your largest reoccurring expense not the ‘Shipping and Storage’. Some exhibit companies that want to sell you custom aluminum exhibits will stand on the platform of “it will be less expensive to purchase, less expensive to ship, and less expensive to store.”  Here again you are seeing just some of the trees, not the whole forest.

The facts are that a well-engineered custom trade show display exhibit, that is crated properly, will install faster. It can be engineered to be modular (re-configure into smaller or larger booth spaces) and does not need to be heavy. Our exhibits are reverse engineered at our Orange County manufacturing facility to fit and pack into the smallest crates possible (even going so far as to make one display slightly smaller than another so as to pack one inside the other).

Crating of Custom Trade Show Exhibits

There are a lot of spooky unspoken construction practices I have seen in my years in the industry. And crating and crate storage is one of them.

How does crating and crate storage go hand in hand and what industry secrets and am I about to blow wide open? Here goes.

For years there had been little thought into how custom tradeshow exhibits are packaged into crates. The thought process has been: engineer the exhibit to breakdown into the largest sections that will fit into the largest crate that will still fit into a trailer. Sometimes, not even that amount of thought went into the engineering.

And here it is: those crates are packed with mostly air, yes, parts of the exhibit too, but a lot of air as well. Then you are being charged for storage at your exhibit manufacturer. Build big crates, collect the cost of the storage on them after the show.

Do they install quickly, yes, well, maybe. One could assume if little or no thought went into the crating of the exhibit, then how much thought went into the engineering? The biggest problem I see in this practice is it has made customers gun shy about buying another custom exhibit. So they opt for a full aluminum modular exhibit not knowing this is going to cost a ton of money to install and dismantle each time they attend a show.

We do not store crates and we never will. It is not part of our business model. We have nothing to gain by packing air into crates. Our exhibits are not only engineered to set up quickly and easily, be lightweight and modular (yes, custom modular, ask me more about this), store easily, but to also give you the biggest pop for your buck.

Custom Trade Show Displays

In conclusion, our Custom trade show booth designs will always deliver the biggest pop, don’t have to be heavy, can be the same cost to ship as modular, and can be integrated with all types of material: printed fabric, aluminum, acrylic, plastics, steel, etc. (this is called ‘integrated structural technologies’.)

Give us a call today to see how easy it is to create your next custom trade show display +1 (714) 633-5728

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