By Reno Macri, founder and director of exhibition and event company Enigma Visual Solutions.
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With environmental issues like climate change and the flow of plastics into our oceans becoming a more prominent part of mainstream consciousness, a growing number of businesses feel that they have a moral duty to step up, contribute towards solutions and adopt a more eco-friendly approach to how they do business.
One of the ways that some businesses are choosing to do this is to turn to eco-friendly trade show booths. However, aside from feeling a moral duty or obligation, there are a variety of reasons why such an investment can be beneficial. Here, we take a look at four reasons why you should be investing in an eco-friendly booth this year.
1. Enhance Your Reputation
One of the biggest advantages of investing in an eco-friendly trade show booth is the opportunity to build a positive reputation linked to showing concern for the environment. Increasingly, evidence suggests that establishing such a reputation is important not only customers - or potential customers - but also for your own employees.
In fact, research from Tandberg shows that more than half of all global consumers (53%) prefer to buy products and services from brands with a strong environmental reputation. Moreover, eight out of ten workers said they would prefer to work for an environmentally ethical employer.
Working with exhibition stand builders to create an eco-friendly booth is a great way of publicly demonstrating environmental consciousness and improving your reputation. You can even use your social media accounts, your website and trade publications to highlight the eco-friendly nature of your stand, so that more people become aware.
The advantages mean that attendees may be more likely to want to do business with you in the future, and that potential business partners may be more likely to want to be associated with your brand as well.
2. Benefit from Re-usability
When you prioritise an eco-friendly trade show booth, you will find that some of the decisions you make have plus points in terms of enabling the stand to be re-used in the future. For example, a modular exhibition stand can be easily taken down and re-used, without help from exhibition stand builders.
Re-usable stands, or re-usable components, will help you to save on future costs associated with design and creation and will also help you to save time during the preparation stage of any future exhibiting efforts.
Moreover, eco-friendly stands minimise the amount of paper, cardboard and single-use plastics that are required. This may mean, for example, replacing signs and banners with digital screens, which can be easily re-used, with the text being extremely easy to modify for each subsequent trade show.
"It's not necessary to use printed papers and posters at trade shows," says Allan Smith, writing for the Huffington Post. "using technological alternatives such as digital signage and big display screens is the smart choice...it's a one-time investment that saves the cost of buying and printing banners and display stands."
3. Cut Transport & Storage Costs
Most eco-friendly stands will be modular exhibition stands, rather than custom or bespoke stands. This is relevant, because custom stands tend to be constructed from wood which makes them bulky. As a result, they are more difficult to store and harder to transport to and from the trade show.
As Richard Edwards points out in an article published by Marketing Donut, modular exhibition stands tend to be flat-packed, meaning they take up less storage space and less space when being moved. This, in turn, can lead to reduced fuel costs, as heavy vehicles will not be needed to transport the stand.
This is a significant advantage linked to eco-friendliness, because both transport and storage rank among the biggest costs that exhibiting companies face; especially if you are attending trade shows multiple times a year, or attending shows that are a significant distance away from where your business is actually based.
If you are planning to attend trade shows or exhibitions regularly, these savings can become substantial, allowing you to attend more events and exhibit on a more regular basis.
4. Sell Your Stand Afterwards
Finally, even for those who are not planning on exhibiting regularly, there are advantages to investing in eco-friendly options and one of the biggest pros is the ability to re-sell your stand on the second hand market afterwards, either to another business, or back to the company you bought it from.
Exhibitor Online cite Ray Rogowicz, CEO and president of ExhibitTrader.com Inc. in reporting that pre-owned exhibition stands sell for around 50-75% of the cost of a new stand. This is obviously a plus point for a company buying the second hand stand, but also for a company selling their stand.
Re-selling your exhibition stand means that you can potentially recoup as much as 75% of the amount of you initially spent on it. In turn, this could result in a drastic reduction in the total cost associated with your exhibiting efforts, while simultaneously helping someone else to reduce their costs as well.
Of course, the simple act of re-selling your stand can also further boost your 'green' credentials.
The Final Word
In the modern world, it is increasingly important for businesses to adopt an ethical approach, which is why the popularity of eco-friendly trade show booths is growing all the time. Being seen to be doing your part can enhance your reputation and improve the likelihood of people wanting to buy your products or services. Moreover, an eco-friendly trade show booth can save time and money on future exhibition efforts, and can make it more likely that you will be able to recoup some of the money you spend on exhibiting.
Reno Macri is a founder and director of a leading exhibition and event company Enigma Visual Solutions, specialising in exhibition stands and exhibition services in UK. He enjoys sharing his thoughts on upcoming marketing ideas and design trends. Feel free to follow him on Twitter.
