Budgeting for Costs: Producing a realistic and accurate tradeshow budget is a crucial first step towards managing your Company’s successful introduction to Trade Show retailing or exhibiting. Clearly it is imperative to include all of the hidden costs of exhibiting in your financial plan – yet many first time exhibitors fail to take this crucial step.

Producing and achieving a budget, calculating ROI or accurately predicting yield is challenging, even without experience of the complexities of Trade Show Exhibiting. It is easy to become focused on “Big Ticket” items – such as display space and stand production – however less obvious, but no less essential, elements (and their associated costs) can be overlooked or under budgeted. We can produce and manage a budget for you, utilizing our contacts and experience to ensure that you receive best value, best pitch location, and therefore best returns.

Budgeting for Time: Sourcing and bringing together all of the elements required to exhibit successfully is incredibly time consuming. Negotiating with endless suppliers, choosing designs and specs’, selecting appropriate insurances, facilitating stock storage and control mechanisms, providing stand transportation and erection, selecting and training staff, maintaining oversight of QC, H&S and personnel issues…the list is endless. All whilst fulfilling the day-to-day tasks of running your business. All this elements have to then be brought together on site, on time, and on budget – no small feat.

Alternatively; you could provide us with a brief, a budget, and a sense of your company’s ethos and aims and let us take responsibility for everything. We’ll keep you updated through regular contact, we’ll listen – then deliver – and provide a full post show de-brief.

Stand and Displays: Your display and its location can make or break your show. Having a huge volume of potential customers isn’t enough if you don’t captivate them. Presenting your products or services in an attention grabbing and innovative manner maximizes your display’s potential. If you want to purchase a display for repeated use then our contracts with specialist Trade Show graffic designers, and Show Stand producers, enable us to provide you with the best possible display at better than market price. However, in addition to the initial capital outlay of purchasing your display there are the ongoing expenses of storage and maintenance to consider. As an alternative we can provide you with a leased stand, displaying your graphics of your design or choosing; on a one off, contract, or pay as you go basis.

All show pitches are not the same and not all high cost pitches are worth their premium. Our contacts and experience can help guide you in selecting a location, negotiating its price and ensuring that it meets your aims.

Freight and Storage: Shipping of displays, stock, promotional literature, giveaway items and all the other show accoutrements to exhibition venues is expensive, time consuming and not without risk. Having the most fantastic location, display and staff won’t amount to anything if your stock or stand is broken or missing. Our associated courier company will ensure that everything that you need is collected by our own staff and vehicles, from anywhere in Europe, and transported under the protection of full Goods in Transit insurance – to be delivered directly to your pitch on time and intact. If you need hourly, daily, or weekly re-stocking, or nightly safe storage, we will ensure that stock is stored and re-supplied effectively and efficiently.

Show Extras: Electricity, floor coverings, lighting, WiFi, credit card charging etc. are all re-charged by the exhibition venue and costs can go up by 25% after the initial early booking deadline passes. The closer you get to the actual show the more you could be charged and if you forget to pre-book a required service or utility it may not be available at all. We will provide and manage all utilities, including card charging, invoicing and after show sales and customer services, if required.

Staff: They are potentially your greatest asset at show; but accommodating, transporting, and feeding – not to mention paying – staff during a show is extremely expensive. We have a network of trade show staff who are either dedicated, or widely experienced, Trade Show professionals. They have all worked extensively with us in the past, so we know their strengths. Whether you require polite and unobtrusive data gathering, subtle but effective promotion, or volume sales we have engaging and motivated professionals ready to help. They’re adept at grasping the principles of any product or business promptly, they can be trained and supervised by us, or by you and as we try to assign staff who live in the vicinity of show the venue we can often eradicate accommodation costs.

An official from the Payments Council said: “Although cash will not disappear in our lifetime, the continuing payments revolution will make it an ever smaller part of our spending. The noughties have been the decade of the debit card. Especially since chip and pin, which has speeded up transactions, it has become socially acceptable to buy small items by card now too, for example in a sandwich shop or a pub.”

If you are new to accepting credit cards, the setup process is not as daunting as you think, but nevertheless, it is something you need to be thinking about sooner rather than later. All new merchants need to be approved by a merchant bank in order for you to receive payments into your bank account via credit or debit card. This process can normally take anywhere from a month to two months! If you’ve left it to the very last minute, you could be in trouble! Sterling Daisy manages your merchant account application process to ensure that application forms are filled out correctly, sent off on time and approval is given in the minimum amount of time.

Maybe you already accept credit card payments? If this is the case then you will already understand the importance of doing so. However, if you unplug your existing terminal to take to your next event your business premises will miss out! You will have to also take into account the added costs of installing an analogue phone line to your exhibition stand, which can cost in excess of £200! Our mobile GPRS terminals have an inbuilt sim card, which removes the necessity for telephone line installation.

Unless you have a spare terminal lying around on a lengthy monthly agreement, you will no doubt struggle. Short term credit card terminal rental is the answer and we have a number of options ranging from counter top terminals to GPRS mobile terminals available on a daily rate, monthly rate or even tailored event packages. Contact our team now for more information.

Snooper approached us with only three weeks notice but we were quickly able to organise a great retail location close to the main show arena and mobilise our display stock to make the most of a beautiful bank holiday weekend in Peterborough. We called on two experienced promotional models, used all our staffing nouse to ensure the exhibition was in the capable hands of two of our best promoters and sales staff thanks to our staffing arm. Thanks to our ready to roll PDQ chip and pin credit card machines, we were able to make sure that we could accept credit cards through a secure payment processor.

Outdoor events are more of a consideration and you need to be well prepared in order to make the most of your time there. Thankfully Snooper’s competitors were nowhere to be seen at the event, helping them make the most out of the weekend.

For more information on teh availability of our promotional models, promoters or to hire one of our PDQ chip and pin credit card machines, follow the links!

Sterling Daisy partnered with two brands with different objectives at this year’s Gadget Show Live exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham. Navigon, a market leader in the European portable GPS arena use Gadget Show Live as a key medium with which to build their brand presence in the UK and to also retail directly to the visiting public. If they were to succeed, they would need to employ our events services experience. We ran a team of four sales staff who not only acted as promoters, but were trained on the full product range as well as relevant competitor products prior to the event. In addition to the sales team, a team of two promotion models from our events staffing portfolio were called into action as promoters for the brand building leads. With over 4,500 registered email entries over the week, this provides a great opportunity for Navigon to engage with new customers thanks to our promotion staff.

Our second, but equally important brand for the show was long-term partner Breffo. As we already run web fulfilment for Breffo, we know the product inside out and know that the current objective is to build a high street retail presence so this exhibition was treated like one of oure trade shows. This placed an increased importance on the Gadget Show Professional trade show and press day on Tuesday. A great deal of important trade links were built up throughout the day and once the show opened for the public, some high volume sales were achieved, surpassing expectations.

The Gadget Show “Live Hub” requested samples of the product to use during their live product review several times throughout the day, further boosting the profile of the brand without the need for any promotion staff!

In the days following the show, the success continued with the Gadget Show television show producers have also requested samples for a forthcoming episode of their popular television show so it looks like the positive effects of attending the show will continue to be felt…

With Truckfest being an outdoor event, it brings with it a different set of challenges requiring all of our experience to ensure that everything runs as planned and Snooper have the best representation possible with the maximum return on investment.

Sterling Daisy will be on hand to provide PDQ card services for chip and pin card payments throughout the exhibition. There’s little point exhibiting without the facility to take card payments through a secure card machine and this is exactly what we do. To draw further attention to the Truckmate stand, we used two promotion models from our events staffing arm. The female models we employed acted as promoters throughout the weekend and succssfully helped influence sales!

For those of you not familiar with Truckfest, here is what you can expect from the show this year;

Sunday 1st May

10.30 Good Morning and welcome to Truckfest 2011, introducing your host for the weekend – Dave King
10.40 Enter the Gladiators! Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot flex their muscles for the first time this year
10.50 Everybody’s favourite, International Super Trucks and custom 4 x 4’s sponsored by SeaFrance
11.00 Speaking of North America – please welcome Ice Road Trucker Alex Debogorski and news of your own chance to see the Ice Road!
11.10 Welcome to Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams – the world ranked number one darts player, and reigning BDO World Champion
11.20 Mercedes-Benz, our main arena sponsors, lead the exhibitor parade – watch out for the Mean Green Hybrid Truck
11.40 Gravity defying Broke FMX
12.10 Big Crunch before Lunch! Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot go head to head
12.40 Intermission
13.10 Truckers favourite BBC Radio 2 Sally ‘Traffic’ Boazman
13.20 Road Rescue Recovery demonstration from CMG
14.05 More exciting news about how you can win the ultimate Ice Road experience and the man himself Ice Road Trucker Alex Debogorski
14.25 Truckfest gives a special welcome to Eastender’s Ronnie Mitchell – Samantha Womack
14.35 Haulier Showcase
14.55 A look at yesteryear with a parade of Classic & Vintage vehicles
15.05 Broke FMX are back with their motorcycle stunt show
15.35 Intermission
16.00 Final Crunch of the day, with Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot

Monday 2nd May

10.30 Good Morning and welcome to Truckfest 2011, introducing your host for the weekend – Dave King
10.40 Enter the Gladiators! Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot flex their muscles for the first time this year
10.50 Everybody’s favourite, International Super Trucks and custom 4 x 4’s sponsored by SeaFrance
11.00 speaking of North America – please welcome Ice Road Trucker Alex Debogorski and news of your own chance to see the Ice Road
11.10 Welcome to Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams – the world ranked number one darts player, and reigning BDO World Champion
11.20 Mercedes-Benz, our main arena sponsors, lead the exhibitor parade – watch out for the Mean Green Hybrid Truck
11.40 Gravity defying Broke FMX
12.10 Big Crunch before Lunch! Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot go head to head
12.40 Intermission
12.55 Truckfest gives a special welcome to Eastender’s Stacey Slater – Lacey Turner
13.05 Road Rescue Recovery demonstration from CMG
13.50 More exciting news about how you can win the ultimate Ice Road experience and the man himself Ice Road Trucker Alex Debogorski
14.00 Haulier Showcase
14.20 A look at yesteryear with a parade of Classic & Vintage vehicles
14.30 Broke FMX are back with their motorcycle stunt show
15.00 Intermission
15.30 Grand Parade of Competition Finalists and presentation of Awards
16.15 Final Crunch of the day, with Bigfoot 17 and Slingshot

A world of homes to explore
One of the biggest home and lifestyle events of its kind, the 2011 Ideal Home Show London event includes a range of exciting attractions. Visitors can make their way through several separate zones and attractions, from sustainable houses to the latest concept living designs.
Celebrity guests
A line up of celebrity guests will be present throughout the event and demonstrations on a range of topics will also be taking place. Expert speakers in 2011 will all share the secrets of exclusive home design with design hungry Londoners, whilst celebrity chefs will heat things up with their top cooking tips. Hear from the likes of Diarmuid Gavin, Linda Barker, George Clarke, Gregg Wallace, Fiona Phillips and Suzi Perry on all things food, gardening and interiors inspired.

Take time out at the Beauty Bar
Women can take a break from walking around the Ideal Home Show London event at the Beauty Bar, where there will be plenty of pampering. If all that talk on interior design has got just a bit too much then you can relax with a refreshing manicure or make up lesson, and get some top tips on health and fitness too.
New for 2011
Running ever since 1908, the Ideal Home Show London event has been inspiring the masses to decorate, design and delight in their homes with creative tips from the experts and stunning new collections of homeware on show. To reflect the current economic climate and concerns for the environment, the 2011 show will also feature on simple and creative ways to reduce your carbon footprint and live sustainably and economically in your home.

Advice and inspiration
Having been around for over 100 years, there are some great new advances on show at this Ideal Home Show. London will be treated to the likes of the beautifully designed Ideal Classic Home, numerous room sets, and even an Eco House.

Kitchen theatre
Packed with stylish ideas for the heart of your own home, the Kitchen theatre is also home to some of the best culinary experts in the world. Take part in a Q&A or catch a kitchen demo to learn more about the art of cookery and fine dining.

Homes for Heroes
Last year, the show raised £102,000 for it’s Soldiers Charity appeal, and this year the Ideal Home Show hopes to collect even more. With 50p from every ticket purchased going towards the charity, you can do your bit for the Ideal Homes for Heroes appeal while you browse for ideas for your own home.

The Ideal Home Show London event has been and gone for 2011 unfortunately. If you are contemplating attending at the Ideal Home Show 2012 and you require promotional staff, event support, events services or any of our exhibition support products, please get in touch.

*Source: www.viewlondon.co.uk