Lighter Walls = Cheaper Loads

Environmentalists may be happy to know that, in one industry at least, the days of heavy wood consumption are over – even if that wasn't the original intention. The rise in shipping and drayage charges, combined with budget cutbacks brought on by the economic downturn, have caused companies to demand ever-lighter materials for their tradeshow exhibits.

Anyone who's walked an exhibition floor regularly over the last few years has seen the move from heavy wood and steel to fabric and aluminum. Technological advances – such as those that allow graphics companies to print on fabric, and display companies to stretch fabric around bendable aluminum tubing – have led to the popularity of lightweight materials as structural exhibit components.

"It's not a new trend," observed Rob Majerowski, creative director for MG Design. "It's been around for five or six years, but people are going nuts with it now. If you look at E3 and shows like that, where they have all those wild exhibits made of fabric and aluminum, it's hard to imagine what we did before we had those materials."

But it isn't just technological progress that has hastened this trend; costs have as well. The lighter the exhibit, the less a company pays in shipping and drayage. Since companies started tightening belts three years ago, exhibit managers have been forced to ferret out every option for saving money.

Alicia Knudson, associate manager of marketing communications for SuperGen, said that before leaving her role as the company's exhibit manager she worked with design company Access TCA to reduce the weight of SuperGen's booth. "It used to take three trucks to get us to a show," said Knudson, adding that she knows of several other companies that are making the move to lighter booths.

In Majerowski's experience, the opportunity to save money on shipping and drayage has played a "huge, colossal" part in the transition to lighter materials. Building a new exhibit is one thing, he said, but companies lately have become more conscious of the long-term costs of exhibit ownership: storing it, shipping it, getting it from the dock to the exhibit space. "That's the bulk of their expense," he said. "Every client is saying, 'You have to reduce my yearly shipping and setup expenses.'"

In fact, the savings a company can realize are substantial. One striking example is found at Opus Solutions, which has, among others, event services and event transportation divisions. According to Opus CEO Grant Hammersly, the company currently has in its warehouse two 20'x20' exhibits that are comparable in every way but one: Exhibit X is about 9,500 pounds lighter than exhibit Y. With exhibit X weighing in at 2,500 pounds and exhibit Y at a whopping 12,000, Hammersly estimated the difference between them for shipping by ground or air freight would be about $6,000 one way.

"So let's say both clients are doing about 20 shows per year. Then client Y is paying $120,000 more than client X just for shipping," Hammersly said. "With the money they would save by going to a lighter exhibit, like exhibitor X's, exhibitor Y could do 10 more shows per year."

And that's not even getting into the cost of drayage, which both Hammersly and Majerowski said is an even bigger concern than shipping. (On the X and Y exhibits in the Opus example, for instance, Hammersly pointed out that, at the going rate of 60 cents per hundredweight, client Y would pay $7,200 for drayage at one show, while client X would pay only $1,500.)

Of course, exhibitors are happy about the money they're able to save by lightening up. But what impact does it have on the designers and shippers?

Steve Bradley, vice president of sales and marketing for MICE|North America, said clients going to fabric for their larger structures, putting a clamp on wood and other traditional materials, is part of the reason so many custom builders have gone out of business.

But diversified companies like MICE – which owns modular display maker Marler Haley and also has a vast network of warehouses across the United States – are well positioned to withstand the crunch. Bradley said one of the things MICE has done to absorb the loss created by a drop in demand for heavy custom builds is to cut down on return shipments of the exhibits it manages. He explained: "If we send something to Vegas and the client has a show there two months later, we just leave it there. Or if they're on a multi-city tour, we go from city to city, instead of always returning the exhibit to home base for repairs and updates."

Majerowski said the transition to lighter materials has caused MG Design to outsource much more fabrication than it used to since, as he put it, "We're not good seamstresses, and that's essentially what it is with those lighter materials: sewing. Not to mention all the tube-bending into different shapes."

MG recoups a little money on what it outsources, but most of the savings to the client is put toward other elements in its exhibit marketing program. "We're able to use the client's budget more smartly. In fact," he said, "most of them expect that from us these days."

Hammersly said the average weight of a shipment Opus Transportation handles has dropped more than 50 percent since the late 1990s, from about 4,500 to below 2,000 pounds. He attributed that to two factors: companies doing smaller exhibits, and the exhibits being made of lighter materials.

So, does that mean he makes less money per shipment as well? "Yes, it does," Hammersly conceded. But, he added, Opus is willing to take the loss on shipping if it means building a good relationship with a client that may do 40 or 50 events a year.