The right show, not the biggest one.
The flagship show in your category is the one everyone has heard of, the one your competitors exhibit at, and often the one where you will be a small stand in a far hall that buyers never reach. The show that pays is frequently a smaller regional one.
- Shortlist
- Assess
- Ask around
- Recommend
Decided before the deposit, not after.
Part of trade shows
The problem
You are choosing a show by its reputation, not by who walks the floor.
Visitor numbers tell you how many people came. They tell you nothing about whether any of them buy what you sell.
Big, and wrong
A hundred thousand visitors, almost none of them buying your category. You are paying for a crowd.
The far hall
Late booking puts you where footfall dies. The stand cost the same as the good position.
The buyers stayed home
In some categories the decision makers stopped attending years ago and send junior staff to look at nothing.
The honest part
The useful information about a show is not published.
Organisers sell space, so their figures are marketing. What matters is who actually attends with authority, and that is trade knowledge.
- Published visitor numbers count everyone through the door
- Whether serious buyers still attend is known locally and not written down
- Hall position decides your traffic more than stand size does
- Some shows have quietly become domestic while still calling themselves international
What we do
We check who is really in the aisles.
We look at the exhibitor and visitor profile against the channel map for your category, and we ask people who went last year.
Audience
Who attends, at what seniority, from which countries, and whether they buy your category.
Competitors
Who exhibits, at what scale, and what that tells you about where the trade actually goes.
Cost against reach
Stand, travel, staff and material against the number of real conversations the show can plausibly produce.
Alternatives
The regional or specialist show that may put you in front of better buyers for less.
How a round runs
A recommendation with the reasoning, in time to act on it.
Good stand positions and early rates go months ahead, so this work is worth doing early in the year.
Shortlist
The shows in your category and region, with dates and booking deadlines.
Assess
Each one checked on audience, competitors, cost and position.
Ask around
Our people talk to exhibitors and visitors from last year and report what they say.
Recommend
A ranked answer with the reasoning, including the case for not exhibiting at all.
We exhibited at the biggest show in the category for three years. The orders all came from a regional show a third of the size.
Questions
Answered plainly.
Not covered here?
Ask it on the call. If the honest answer is that this module is not what you need, we will say so and point you at the one that is.
Book a callNo, and that is deliberate. Agencies in China will build you a stand more cheaply than we could. We have no interest in which show you pick, which is what makes the advice worth having.
Six to nine months before the show, ideally more. The good hall positions and the early rates go first, and the pre-show meeting work needs a run-up.
We will say so. For some companies the money is better spent on distributor recruitment than on a stand, and we would rather tell you that than take the work.
Yes. It is worth knowing what you are walking into, and there is usually still time to fix the position, the meetings and the staffing.
Also in trade shows
The rest of the work.
The first move
Is that show worth it?
Tell us the show you are considering and what you sell. We will tell you plainly whether your buyers walk that floor.