We Manage Your Brand’s Physical Experience at the Fair, End to End.

The plan is drawn up separately for each project, considering production price, the number and volume of the parts to be transported, delivery and installation time, the rules of the venue and organiser, customs procedures and whether the stand will be reused at later fairs. Production is handled through the in-house workshop and the coordination of sub-production; shipping and the necessary customs formalities are followed as part of the project’s logistics planning.

Venue rules are the concrete part of this plan and are taken into account from the start: at Hannover, cranes and forklifts are used only through forwarders approved by Deutsche Messe; at Cologne, only Koelnmesse’s contract partners use cranes and similar equipment. At Cologne, Koelnmesse also recommends that customs formalities are handled by the contract carrier, and goods from abroad need three copies of a proforma invoice in German; these steps are written into the shipping plan from the outset and followed up.

The organiser’s technical office intervenes in projects that fall outside the set criteria, informs the participant and asks for corrections. The main reasons are: falling outside the boundaries of the allocated area, exceeding the planned height, not meeting the technical dimensions or distances for the area and layout, blocking emergency exits and access hatches and doors, and not using, or not specifying, materials that meet occupational safety requirements. These criteria vary from venue to venue.

The approval threshold differs from fair to fair. At Messe Frankfurt, according to its portal, the structures that need approval include stands over 100 m², two-storey stands, special structures and structures higher than 4 metres; at Koelnmesse, single-storey stands that follow the Technical Guidelines need no approval, while special structures and two-storey structures do. Fire-class certificates for materials are requested according to the rules of the organiser and the country.

A double deck widens the space vertically where floor area is tight. At fairs and for companies with heavy hosting, dealer and visitor traffic, it allows the meeting and hospitality area to be set on a separate level from the display area; companies with large floor areas may need one too. In planning, the build of the second level, the structural calculation, the organiser’s approval and the installation schedule are considered together.

The approval framework differs by venue: at Messe Frankfurt and Koelnmesse two-storey structures need approval, and at Hannover multi-storey structures do. Approval drawings and technical applications are generally uploaded to the organiser’s platform by Inside on the participant’s behalf. The hall’s ceiling height and the organiser’s height limit are checked at the start of the design; the clear height a double deck needs is assessed together with that information.

The decision depends on how many fairs the stand will be used at. If the stand will be used at several fairs, its parts are designed for reuse from the start and the investment is spread across those uses; a stand designed for one fair has its parts produced again for later fairs. For a reused stand, storage and maintenance are added as permanent costs.

A custom-decor stand that was not designed for reuse has its parts produced again for each fair, so the total of planned uses is taken into account from the start.

Services such as electricity, water, rigging and forklift/crane work are ordered through the organiser’s portal or service shop; at Hannover, for example, cranes and forklifts are used only through forwarders approved by Deutsche Messe. Stand design, production, furniture and graphics belong to the exhibitor or the stand builder. Which items are mandatory is set out in the exhibitor manual or the service portal and varies by fair; these items have order deadlines.

This split affects the budget: mandatory items cannot be freely chosen. The mandatory items and their deadlines are taken from the exhibitor manual.

Six weeks before the fair, the organiser asks the exhibitor for the stand project image, the marked overall external dimensions, the layout image and the electricity request; the organiser sets the final upload date and announces it to the exhibitor. Inside makes the upload on the exhibitor’s behalf. The lock date is found with two calculations: the organiser’s deadline for submitting plans, and the count back from set-up for production, graphics and shipping. Whichever is earlier is the lock date.

Where the organiser requires approval, construction may not start before the plans are stamped. At Messe Frankfurt the plans are submitted no later than six weeks before set-up; at Koelnmesse the approval request is submitted at least six weeks before construction work begins. The deadline and the approval threshold differ from venue to venue and from event to event.

Price per square metre is only one part of the cost, and often not the largest. The items that set the total are: the space fee paid to the venue, stand production, shipping and customs, installation labour, the venue’s mandatory services (electricity, rigging, forklift), graphic production, furniture rental and, if the stand will be reused, storage. The difference between two stands of the same size usually comes from the sum of these items, not from production.

Within production, cost is set by the number of surfaces and level of detail: closed volumes, special ceilings, recessed lighting and smooth painted surfaces raise the cost; open structure, standard panels and printed surfaces cost less. A quote given per square metre that doesn’t say which of these it includes isn’t comparable. A quote is requested as an itemised list.

An ATA Carnet is a temporary import document: it covers goods that enter a country and leave unchanged after the fair. Exhibited products and demonstration equipment fall under it. Consumables are outside its scope. Whether stand material is accepted in the destination country depends on that country’s practice.

A carnet covers only goods that return unchanged; a carnet is not issued for goods rented out abroad for a fee or processed abroad. A carnet is valid for one year at most. In Turkey the carnet is obtained through TOBB’s authorised chambers. Not every country taking part in the carnet system accepts carnets for every purpose. Which goods go under the carnet and which go under another regime is determined when the shipping list is drawn up. The participant’s products are outside Inside’s transport and planning; Inside does not transport them, receives them at the fairground and, at the end of the fair, hands them to the carrier the participant names.

The first thing considered in planning flow is how many sides of the stand are open: across in-line, corner, peninsula and island stands the number of open sides grows, so the stand is visible from more directions and can be entered from more directions. The second is closed meeting space: as its share grows, the stand can look more closed from outside, so the share and position of the meeting space are planned together with the open sides.

Storage is a separate cost item; if it is not in the first budget, it appears later. Storage is priced by volume, maintenance by material. Dismantling and packing labour, storage space, transport, protection requirements, maintenance before reuse and completing missing components are included in the calculation.

The calculation divides the initial cost by the expected number of uses and adds graphic renewal and storage for each use. For a custom stand that was not designed for reuse, the parts are produced again for each fair.

Informa Markets’ Better Stands programme aims to move away from single-use stands built on space-only sites and towards reusable structures. The programme has three levels, Bronze, Silver and Gold, and space-only stands are independently verified at the end of the event. The programme’s page says the cost of reusable stands is generally lower than that of disposable stands.

At Bronze, the stand structure and walls, platform, furniture and equipment, and lighting are assessed; Silver adds fascia and overhead signage, rigged structures, ceilings and display facilities; Gold also includes graphics, decorative items and floor covering. Before signing the participation contract, the fair’s guide is checked; the minimum level required differs by event.

Technical rules differ from venue to venue and from event to event. The main differences are in the approval threshold and the plan submission time; the table below shows four examples.

The information to give in advance is the participant’s own requests and requests about the products to be exhibited: special requests such as a suspended ceiling or a graphic area, and whether an on-site team is wanted to assemble the products. This information goes into the design and into the applications on the organiser’s exhibitor portal from the start.

Inside receives them at the fairground; details can vary with the participant and the fair. The participant’s representatives therefore don’t need to be at the fairground a day early just for this. At the end of the fair, the remaining products are handed to the carrier the participant names or has an agreement with; the necessary paperwork is collected, the handover is photographed and sent to the participant. The transport arrangement, the carrier’s liability and any transport agreements with the organiser belong to the carrier and the participant. At fairs where ceiling structures can be used, if the participant wants it, a suspended ceiling or graphic area can be designed and built within the weight and space information given by the organiser; this request is passed to Inside in advance, and a separate ceiling-structure usage fee is charged for a stand prepared in this form.

The return on a fair investment is tracked with measures defined before the fair; they include the number of qualified conversations, total cost per conversation and the value of business closed in the period after the fair. The definition of a “qualified conversation” is written before the fair. Total cost includes space fee, stand, shipping, accommodation and staff days.

A short note is written before the fair: the definition of a qualified conversation, the target number and the recording method. Conversations are recorded on site.