The Weighting Game

It seems everyone is concerned about their weight these days. Diets, exercise gurus, pills, potions, you name it! Well one place you can lose weight is your trade show booth. Now, this weight loss won't make you any more attractive, except of course to your boss who will love you for saving those precious shipping dollars.

Here's just a few tips of cutting the fat:

1) Ship only the graphics you need. Get a large lamp box from a local moving company and store your unused graphics at your office instead of shipping them show to show just to keep them protected in your graphics case.

2) Invest in new exhibit properties. Many new pop-up units and retractable stands are made with lighter weight materials than in the past. Just be certain to buy quality hardware. There are a lot of light units that are poorly made, and in the end, they will cost more to replace than the save in shipping.

3) Use smaller graphic units to form one large graphic instead of one huge panel. Longer units may be subject to dimensional weight standards instead of actual weight. Check with your shipping company before assuming cost based on weight. Dimensional weight can be quite expensive.

4) Take less literature. Investigate the anticipated traffic at the show and assume you will only provide a small percentage, say 10%, with literature. Brochures and flyers are quite heavy to ship. Besides, if you run out it gives you another reason to make contact with an interested visitor.

5) Rent from the show. Although the thought of spending money on something you will never own makes my skin crawl, shipping on chairs, tables, projectors and video screens can be very costly. Besides, if something happens to rented equipment on the show floor, it's not your insurance premium that goes up!

That's just a few tips to save shipping costs. Keep checking back to learn more tips on improving your trade show experiences.