International Trade Show participation is growing in leaps and bounds. Working outside the USA can be a very confusing and intimidating probability. Absolute Exhibits does fifty percent of our domestic business with companies coming from outside the USA. In the past five or six years the tables have been turned and we have taken clients to Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Macao, and just recently we proposed an exhibit in Dubai.

Today's business climate demands that as a full service exhibit house we can take our domestic clients internationally. Your challenge is to catch the attention of qualified prospects by standing head and shoulders above the competition. How can you do that if you are not familiar with even the rules and regulations in a particular country? The experienced staff of Absolute Exhibits has been helping businesses achieve that special image of success on the international Trade Show floor.

What's so different about Global Exhibiting? In the U.S., trade shows are viewed as a place to gather a lot of information very quickly and visitors do not typically spend much time at any particular exhibit. Outside the U.S. it is quite the opposite. Trade shows attract higher-level Attendees and serve as a venue for holding high-level meetings and negotiating major contracts. Visitors spend significant amounts of time in the stands which creates the need for private meeting and hospitality areas. Trade fairs, as they are known outside the U.S., are a highly respected marketing medium with a much longer history. Shows often run longer in hours each day as well as in the number of opening days. Shows are frequently much larger - filling many halls - and visitors need more time to cover the physical area. Many trade fairs are open to the public for a day or more - usually at the end. The public can include children and students with teachers - and they often come in droves.

We begin by spending the time and effort in getting to know a client's business, marketing, and image goals. Our proficiency is evident in all phases of the exhibit experience. From helping our client devise a realistic budget to creating a practical but effective design, our goal is a well-planned, distinctive, and unforgettable representation of our client's individual corporate image. Then we translate everything we do here and move it to the worldwide stage. We have a group of both foreign employees, as well as secure partnerships, to build exhibits across the world, with your budgetary needs at the forefront. We design in our US office with our knowledge of your tradeshow floor in London, Dusseldorf, Rio, or Sydney. As we design, in most cases with tubular aluminum we have resources that work in or are based on every continent. We also custom design – and that pricing can be amazingly inexpensive! Talk to your account executive. You will be amazed at how helpful we can be in your Trade Show planning.

As I sit on the show floor at PMA - Produce Marketing Association Fresh Summit , the annual premier show in the United States for the produce industry, I am once again reminded of the value of relationships in our industry. This year Absolute Exhibits was honored to service the needs of nearly 50 exhibitors at this world class event and we couldn’t have done it without a team behind us!

While many exhibit builders and I&D companies will speak in vein of the general service contractors, GES, Freeman, Champion, and the like, Absolute Exhibits values the relationships we have developed with these companies. As the largest supplier of rental exhibits at the 2009 PMA show held in at the Anaheim Convention Center this year, it was key for us to work in unison with the general services Contractor, GES. Through careful preshow preplanning meetings and coordination with GES, the staff of Absolute Exhibits was able to coordinate early move in dates, pre-move in electrical setup, early hanging sign rigging, and extended Dismantle time.

What does this all mean and why does it matter? All the planning and coordination, the pulling of strings, and the levying of the power of long fostered relationships translates into savings for our customers! Less Overtime and more straight time hours to work, less time trucks sit waiting to be loaded and unloaded, and the best crews assigned to get tasks completed mean lower costs and higher savings. Tradeshow are about return on investments. Bringing in leads and closing more deals increases ROI but so does lowering costs.

While the goal of Absolute Exhibits is to make the process of transport, install, and Dismantle of exhibits appear to be no sweat, the reality is that this all happens because of hard work and preplanning. Not all exhibit and I&D companies have the same relationships. Like so many things in life, it is not just what you know but who you know too!

In a weak economy, business competition is more fierce than in good times. One key to success is watching your competitors. On my bookmark bar in my web browser, I keep a folder entitled “competitors” in which I keep a comprehensive list of links to nearly fifty exhibit companies I like to keep an eye on.

Each week I visit ten websites belonging to the opposition and thus hit each competitor’s website about once a month. This routine takes me about 15 minutes each week. Often I find that not much if anything has changed from my prior visit, however occasionally you find something that sparks interest or provokes a thought. Recently I had a moment of clarity while performing this exercise. What I found is that most of our contemporaries are clearly great artists but I can’t tell if they are great craftsmen!

Interestingly, what I have found is that most exhibit company websites are full of great looking renderings of exhibits. These renderings are wonderful works of art, and very interesting concepts for tradeshow exhibits, but where are the pictures of the completed exhibit booths? At Absolute Exhibits, we too are great artists! Our design department creates beautiful computer designs and renderings that make for very nice images, however our business is to build the design - we are craftsmen.

When you browse our website, www.absoluteexhibits.com, you will find not just a bunch of artistic renderings but proof, proof that we can build high image, quality tradeshow exhibit booths. The proof is in the form of photographs of exhibits on the tradeshow floor. Updated monthly, the image galleries of our site contain pictures of exhibits citing show name, and location. Real photographs of real exhibits build by Absolute Exhibits, not just concepts that never have come to realization. We are artists but most importantly, we are craftsmen.

When we begin the courtship process with a prospective client, it is rare that we are the only exhibit company they are looking at working with. Current economic conditions dictate that we all must be ruthless shoppers, on the hunt for the best value. Not all exhibits are built the same and a rendering can be very deceiving. During the shopping process, don’t accept renderings as reality, ask for pictures of exhibits built in a similar fashion by the prospective supplier to that of what is being pitched. No pictures, no references, no deal! Be sure to work with an exhibit supplier who has done it many times before, practice makes perfect!

Todd Koren
President & CEO, Absolute Exhibits, Inc.