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For anyone who has been to a trade show, they know booths come in three
varieties:
- The custom booth: Ranges from boxy modular components to custom
scaffolding with beautiful woodwork. These range from quite expensive to
very expensive.
- The collapsing booth: This is typically a curved wall in the back of the
booth that can collapse down to a single container with wheels meant for
a single sales person to tote from show to show. By industry terms,
these are extremely affordable, running as low as $1000-$1500 for the
collapsing wall (blank wall only however, artwork costs extra).
- The generic booth: This is where a lot of small companies
live... basically just a banner hung in the back of a bare booth. At
about $100 for a reasonable banner, and another $100 for a few folding
tables and chair, this is by far the most economical way to do a show.
Like any other small company attending a show, we wanted a bit more splash to
set us apart but had a hard time justifying the booth costs. So instead of
going with a collapable wall with some custom artwork, we took the $2000 and
decided to see how far we could stretch it by building our own custom booth.
What you see below is the result of numerous trips to Home Depot and a bunch
of evenings spent in the garage using nothing more than a table saw, router,
and drill press.
Where do you start...
Having never built a booth before, the first question that arises is where do
you start? Like any good engineer, I started with a rough specification.
Some of this was obvious due to show rules:
- 10x10 foot booth space
- Maximum 8ft high at the back
- Maximum 4ft high from the midpoint of the booth
- Assembly process longer than 1/2 hr requires union guy
- Anything on wheels must be pushed by union guy
- Anything more than 75lbs must be moved by union guy
- Anything brought through loading doors must be 'received' by union guy
For those of you not familiar with the show setup process, much of it is done
by unions. The amount of union involvment varies from city to city (and thus
show to show)... at least that's what I've been told. As the objective is to
minimize cost, one of the design goals was to avoid union fees (we actually
did have to move the carpet 10 ft for which we had to pay $135 for a union guy
but that's another story).
Other design goals related to transporation. The show was in another city so
we had to be able to break everything down and stuff it in an SUV. This put a
lot of constraints on materials and construction as everything needs to
collapse while still being sturdy for the show.
Beyond that, my only other requirement was that we needed to demo a software
product. That meant having computers, screens, etc... at an easy to use
height and location. I figured the way to go would be two podiums so we could
do two independent demos at the same time and add a shelf at the back of the
booth to hold other stuff like cards, flyers, etc... I also figured we should
have a cabinet at the back to store ugly stuff like jackets, laptop bags, and
the like.
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For anyone who has been to a trade show, they know booths come in three
varieties: