Marketing used trade show displays and retail trade show displays and booths have changed dramatically over the last few years.

Historically, trade show booths and displays were sold in a showroom setting — much like how you traditionally buy a piece of furniture or a car. You would go to a physical storefront where you would talk to a salesperson who would give you the grand tour of the shop, showing you various trade show displays, banner stands, panel systems and the like.

This physical meeting gave you the opportunity to evaluate the establishment and it’s employees. You could ask questions and get a feel for the level of professionalism in the company. Over time you would establish a customer/vendor relationship through this face-to-face meeting.

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Today, trade show booths and displays are sold much more differently. Instead of a traditional bricks and mortar store, many trade show products are sold online where you neither see a shop nor meet a person. In many cases you may not even talk to a person at all — you simply fill out an online order form and the product is either delivered to you or dropped shipped directly to the trade show.

So what are the causes of this shift from a physical storefront to online marketplace, and what are the repercussions for you, the end customer?

Online Trade Show Display Sales - The Ecommerce Revolution

Make no mistake about this ecommerce statistic: According to the US government census, the 4th quarter 1996 ecommerce sales was 0.6% of all retail sales. Compare that number with the 1st quarter 2007 ecommerce sales which was 3.2% of all retail sales. That is over a 5 fold increase in the past decade and all indications are that ecommerce sales will continue to grow.

Given the immense potential for online sales, many manufacturers have relaxed their distributor qualifications. By allowing for internet sales, new distributors often no longer needed as much financial resources to start a trade show display business online. In fact, many trade show display companies on the internet are run from small home offices.

This relaxing of the distributor requirements that allowed many more online trade show businesses to be started also created much more competition among distributors, forcing retail prices down and squeezing distributor margins to razor-thin levels for some of the more ubiquitous products like pop up displays.

Over the last few years, however, retail prices for virtually all trade show products — pop up displays, panel systems, banner stands, trade show flooring, etc — have dropped considerably.

Trade Show Display Commoditization and Segmentation

Up through the 1990s and prior to the ecommerce revolution, the trade show display market had been rather staid. There were a relatively small number of manufacturers and their distributors were making hefty margins . They were quite content with their bread-and-butter products like pop up displays and panel systems. There were not many choices in terms of panel materials and graphics.

Most products from different manufacturers were basically the same in terms of design and form. This was a period of product commoditization for the entire industry.

During the 2000’s, in addition to the ecommerce effect on distribution channels, new manufacturers entered the market at the same time technological advances made graphics and textile processing cheaper. Now there were more options for panel printing like having Lexan polycarbonate and encapsulating a high DPI full-color CMYK print with a laminate to protect the finish.

A mini revitalization was starting in the trade show booth market as manufacturers came up with newer ideas for product designs.