At least year’s Speed Dating for Dragons event, ex-Clintons Buyer Brett Smith, was asked if exhibiting on a larger stand made any difference to retailers at trade shows. Having always bought shallow 1m deep stands to save money, I’ve often wondered about the retailer perspective on this.
Shallow Savings
From a publisher’s point of view, greeting cards are flat (like paintings) and just need a gallery wall to display them on. The closer that wall of product is to the aisle (and therefore the buyers) then so much the better.
More importantly, deeper stands cost more. A 6x2m stand is twice the price of a 6x1m booth and you only get one additional metre more of wall space (assuming one side of the stand is open). Incidentally, you ideally want an open side as it means you have access to two aisles and can benefit from increased footfall.
Footfall
Footfall is vital for exhibitors. A location in a part of the hall that a people don’t visit means lower footfall, meaning less leads and weaker sales. For example, upstairs at Olympia has often attracted less traffic. It can be the same with aisles that don’t run unobstructed (by larger stands) through to the front of the Halls at the NEC. The trouble is, shallower stands are rarely near the main and busier aisles.
Location, Location…
Being in the wrong location for product type can also affect success. This one is tough for us to get completely spot on at Spring Fair with Blue Eyed Sun’s growing mixture of cards and eco-friendly giftware. Our compromise was to move to the border of Hall 2 (cards) and Hall 3 (gifts) near to other card companies like Wrendale, Rachel Ellen and The Little Dog Laughed - that all offer a mix of cards and gifts.
Not Hot Enough
You also want visitors to have warmed up a little before they get to you. Being at the front of the show is great for presence, but sometimes people aren’t ready to buy as they enter. They might go past you again on the way out at the end, but can often be tired or in a rush, so you can miss out being at the front.
Having said that, if your stand is buzzing with people you’ll always attract buyers because none of us, including retailers, likes to feel like we’re missing out. I’ve often joked about creating a company called ‘rent-a-crowd’ to draw more people onto our booth at trade shows.
It can be relatively quiet for a while, then a couple of people come on the stand and the next thing you know it’s heaving and you can’t cope with the volume. It’s always a difficult one to judge the numbers needed for staffing at shows. With the extra hotel rooms, meal and travel costs you don’t want to overpay. Equally you don’t want to miss those all important customers.
If we have too many of us on the booth, it’s not been unknown for us to pretend to take orders from one another to draw interest from passing buyers. Hard to believe isn’t it? You know… that Blue Eyed Sun isn’t mobbed every hour of the day at shows. Sigh. It happens though. However hot your product is, no matter how your stand is positioned, there will still be quiet patches - like the entire final day at Spring Fair.
It’s not my fault
Furthermore, you can have the biggest and best stand at the show with the hottest products and footfall can still be down because of external factors. As if the new layout and re-edit of Spring Fair wasn’t enough to contend with this year, a new health epidemic called the CoronaVirus was ballooning in China and just starting to spill onto our shores.
Yes, China! Where the world’s stuff is made and which always has a significant presence at the NEC show. Have you noticed how they’ve started labelling the annual foreign flu as a virus? It’s always from another country too isn’t it? Newspapers rub their hands with glee as they reach more eyeballs and sell more ads, whilst the rest of us run around dripping in fear and anxiety checking their sites and pages for updates.
We all had reason to be a tad nervous attending the NEC this year. Given that we’re shaking hands and kissing cheeks all day, it wasn’t entirely unwarranted. I grabbed a hand sanitiser dispenser (couldn’t find anything for cheeks) and had it available on the stand. Plus we ran like hell from anyone who looked like they were about to sneeze! Fingers crossed. So far, so good.
Since we started exhibiting, we’ve been through so many of these external issues. We once had a show in Scotland that we were flying to immediately after 9/11, there’s been foot in mouth disease, swine flu, snow storms, heat waves and once our hall flooded at Harrogate. Whatever the issue, there will always be someone blaming this external factor for their poor show.
Sure, they have an impact, and yet we’ve always seen serious buyers, who have shops that need stocking, attending shows despite such events.
Size isn’t everything
For a long time, my priorities at trade shows were simple: let the product do the talking and get to (and in and out of) them with minimal hassle. Whilst others spent days constructing booths, I would set up our stand up in less than two hours with only thirty minutes needed to take it down at the end. Plus the whole thing fitted into my car - saving on van hire. It was not uncommon for me to be pulling onto the M42 twenty minutes after shows closed.
I’ve done good business at shows over the years this way and it suited me for a long time. Sometimes retailers want to find a small company that they can champion. Who was I to deny them? Plus, if you go too big and need to reduce then you can look like you are doing badly. Something I used to be wary of. Anyway, size isn’t everything. Right?
Stand is Brand
Still, from time to time, I’d have a case of size envy at shows. Back in the day I’d watch contemporaries like Cavania and others do incredible jobs with their stands and always wondered whether sales increased enough to make it worth it or not.
When Brainbox Candy launched, their big pink presence reminded me of something obvious that I’d missed: your stand is your brand. It is literally a stand for who and what you are. When we were selling handcrafted cards, a handcrafted stand wasn’t massively in conflict with who we were. Things are different for us now.
This year, Blue Eyed Sun took the plunge and built its first ever space only stand. There must have been something in the air (apart from COVID-19), because so many publishers constructed amazing new stands this year. The Art File, Wrendale, Five Dollar Shake, Paper Salad, Tache Crafts, Louise Tyler, Rosanna Rossi and Belly Button (amongst many others) looked incredible. In fact, the card hall at Spring Fair looked the best I’ve ever seen it and it was a privilege to be amongst such fantastic brands. Watch a short video of Hall 2 here.
What’s the Verdict
So, what did Brett Smith say about stand sizes in the end? Well, you’ll have to attend GCA events or watch the GCA YouTube videos to find out, as you get what you pay for.
You’d think that after doing over a hundred trade shows I’d have known about the answer to the size question. I’ve done small stands and big ones now. I’ve attracted big buyers to both set ups and I’ve done strong sales and leads at both.
This year at Spring Fair was about our stand being more about our brand. We sell beautiful, design-led, quality products and are passionate about sustainability and the environment. That’s what we care most about. That’s our brand. That’s making a stand.
Baroness Brady
With 35 years of retail buying experience and product development at Habitat, Next, WH Smith and the National Trust, 
A passionate champion of British retail, 
Charlotte Biggs
Greetings Today columnist, 
Amy Hobson
Progressive Greetings Columnist, Giftware Association Vice-Chairman and Sage Business Expert, 
