December 3, 2020

Exhibitor Magazine Tracks COVID-19 Impact

Exhibitor Magazine has been doing a superb job of keeping their fingers on the pulse of the tradeshow industry. Since the pandemic essentially closed down the industry in March, they’ve done numerous surveys of exhibitors and exhibit industry suppliers. They recently had another webinar where Editor Travis Stanton went over the results of their latest survey, taken of over 1000 respondents. This is the fourth such survey they’ve done, and it took place in mid-November. If you’re an exhibitor or in the exhibit industry and haven’t reviewed the results, it’s worth a look. Both the webinar and the resultant White Paper have been posted on their website. Check for links below.

A few top-line results from their executive summary shows the deep and wide impact the pandemic has had on the industry as a whole:

When asked how long it would take to get back business full bore if the restrictions were lifted today, a majority of the survey respondents said it would take about three months.

An image from the full White Paper (c) Exhibitor Media Group.

Many exhibitors are waiting longer to commit to appearing at shows; roughly a third are waiting until the final four months before a show to make a commitment.

Over two-thirds of exhibitors say that their exhibiting budgets have been cut; more than half of those are at least 50-percent budget reductions.

Virtual event participation is up: Over two-thirds over those surveyed say they have participated in virtual events.

Finally, the Exhibitor editorial staff is making a prediction that live tradeshows and events will slowly come back to life during the first half of next year, but that it will be at least until the first or second quarter of 2022 before we’ll see anything we can call “normal.”

Here’s a link to the replay. And here’s a link to the white paper with the full results.

Check out their full on-demand video library here.

January 8, 2018

TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, January 8, 2018: Charles Pappas

Welcome to a new year – so glad you found us online! This week’s interview on the TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee features the author of a new book called “Flying Cars, Zombie Dogs and Robot Overlords.” Charles Pappas, a senior writer at Exhibitor Magazine, was kind enough to sit down with me and discuss this unique historical look at expos, exhibitions and tradeshows:

This week’s ONE GOOD THING: The new Beck album, Colors.

December 13, 2017

Exhibitor Magazine Offers Budgeting Numbers in Latest Issue

What does a custom exhibit cost on average? How much does it cost to store your exhibit? What’s the cost per lead when exhibiting at a tradeshow?

The answers to these and many other questions are revealed in the November issue of Exhibitor Magazine. You should check out the full magazine article for everything here, but it might be fun to look at just a few items for the sake of this post.

For instance, to answer the first question: what does a custom exhibit cost on average? According to the article, which quoted from the Experiential Designers & Producers Association’s 2017 Economic (Custom) Survey, the current average falls between $137 and $161.17 per square foot. In-line exhibits average $1,370 per lineal foot. Double-deck islands average $237 per square foot of total area.

Okay, let’s try another: exhibit storage. From the same survey, exhibit storage industry average is $.30 monthly per cubic foot, or $4.39 monthly per square foot.

How about the cost per lead? From a sales lead survey done by Exhibitor Magazine, only three in ten exhibit managers track the cost per lead generated at shows they attend, the average figure per lead among those who do is $164.91. I would suspect that number fluctuates widely over industries. And if you were to search for average cost per lead, you’ll get a very disparate cost from industry to industry. When you start to dissect lead cost numbers, you run into a litany of qualifications: what exactly is a lead? How are they qualified? How were they generated? And so on. But having that figure is a good bit of data; it’s often been shown that leads generated at tradeshows are more qualified and lower cost than leads generated other ways.

And finally, one bit of data from the article that jumped out at me: Exhibit-House Markups. How much does an exhibit house markup their prices from their suppliers? Keep in mind that this markup is generally the only way for an exhibit house to cover the cost of salaries, keeping the lights on, marketing, and so on. I’ve always been curious about this item and have never seen this information published. So, here’s the skinny:

Raw materials used in construction/fabrication: 93%
Subcontracted materials and special purchases: 67%
Subcontracted labor: 55%
Transportation: 28%
Show services: 27%
Installation-and-dismantle labor: 29%

This information came from the same EDPA 2017 economic survey as mentioned earlier.

Be sure to check out the remainder of numbers in the article, including average exhibit house charges, labor union charges, electrical, international exhibiting numbers and more. Good stuff to keep handy as you plan your budgets for 2018.

November 16, 2009

Tradeshow Budgeting Guidelines – An Update

The latest issue of Exhibitor Magazine hit my mailbox last week, highlighted by their annual look at industry cost averages.

Now I’m not going to throw all of their numbers out for you. If you want ’em all, check out their website or buy the magazine. They usually release the current online version a few weeks after the paper version has been out.

But I do want to take a gander at a few of the numbers in general terms.

A few of the main figures that we always work with our clients and prospects here at Interpretive Exhibits are: industry average cost for custom booths, inline booths, and design and fabrication.

Several years back I compiled a short list from various sources, and the averages were something like this (figures from 2000 – 2002):

Average cost for new, custom construction:
Island: $130 per square foot
In-Line: $1,230 per linear foot

Average cost for exhibit design (hourly): $80 – $85
Average cost for graphic design (hourly): $70 – $75

According to the figures just released in the November 2009 issue of Exhibitor Magazine, rates are up approximately 25% since the beginning of the decade, or less than 3% per year. According to data from InflationData.com, the yearly average from 2000 – 2008 is 2.89%.

The figures through September of 2009 shows mostly negative inflation, and those figures were not included – but obviously they would pull the 10-year average down.

Conclusion: Nothing really surprising here – actually I would view the figures as somewhat encouraging as some of the basic costs of designing and fabricating a custom booth are in line with inflation.

Without giving out the actual figures compiled by Exhibit Magazine – after all, they did the work and until they post them online I don’t think it’s fair to jump the shark with their specific numbers – it appears that the key figures we track in the exhibit industry have risen in line with other prices.

PS. When Exhibitor releases those numbers online, I’ll look to post a link do you can review all of the figures.