Smooth Sailing: Proven Tips for Trade Show Shipping

Have you ever planned the perfect vacation, but your luggage arrives late? Or worse, it never arrives at all? Now imagine you show up to the trade show you have been preparing months for, but your booth doesn’t arrive on time, arrives late or never arrives at all. 

Presenting your booth at a trade show is satisfying. Your product is shown. Deals are made. Partnerships are forged. It’s networking gone wild. Trade shows are a deal breaker. The style, quality, and features of your trade show booth will determine the long-lasting impression you make on your clients new and old, brand ambassadors, and even your competitors. However, a successful booth hinges on expert shipping to ensure your materials arrive at the event on time and in one piece. Hopefully, before you do.

Trade show shipping is an art form of its own and it entails a transportation and logistics specialist to ensure that your trade show booth is packed, transported, delivered, and set up in alignment with your set-up and tear-down schedule for the show. 

These tips will ensure that every piece falls into place and your trade show presentation goes off without a hitch.

“If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail” — Benjamin Franklin. 

Flawless logistics require perfect timing and planning. To ensure everything is in place and on time, you need to coordinate with your shipping partner, arrange where, when, and how your booth materials will arrive and how the arrival will transition to a successful setup. You will likely need to plan multiple journeys, as your booth will need to make it back to HQ or on to the next trade show event. Determine a shipping timeline and delivery date that gives you plenty of time to set up. Find a convenient drop-off location to make the materials available to you when you need them. Once you have a plan, coordinate every detail with your logistics partner to ensure a smooth exhibit delivery.

Choosing the Perfect Logistics Partner

Not every logistics team can handle the specific needs of trade show shipping. You need a partner who is familiar with shipping trade show booths, can handle complex shipping instructions, provides the utmost care of delicate packages, and can deliver on the exact dates you require. Many shipping companies exist that can move packages but only a few can meet the stringent requirements needed to entrust your trade show booth into their care.

Research and evaluate possible trade show transportation companies. Confirm that they have handled trade shows or event-related shipping in the past. Determine their protocols for handling delicate equipment and large crates. Verify their direct-to-destination services for high-priority packages.

Consider factors like experience, reputation, and track record when determining which trade show shipping companies are right for you.

Packaging Considerations

How should you package your trade show booth to ensure that it arrives unscathed? It is vital to protect your booth during transit. The best method is to break your booth into smaller pieces that can be secured, padded, crated, and transported more easily. Make use of the proper packaging materials for each element of your booth. Your booth structure will require different packing techniques compared to products or demo equipment that may also be part of the exhibit.

Research the correct way to secure fragile components and electronics for shipment and let your exhibit shipping partner know which items are particularly delicate. For your precious custom pieces, it may be necessary to consider custom crating and cushioning to properly protect your materials.

Documentation Requirements

There are three types of trade show shipping documents you should be aware of: Your shipping label, your Bill of Lading, and your transport insurance. 

Every crate and every item inside crates of combined materials should have a new shipping label. Check re-used creates and remove all old shipping labels or paint over them to avoid mistakes on the road. (Remember our luggage analogy?) Double-check your shipping labels to ensure they are pointing at the right destination, have the correct names and companies on them, and have contact information just in case.

Your Bill of Lading is a list of goods to be shipped and a checklist to ensure that everything arrives correctly and completely. Double-check your Bill of Lading before the shipment goes out to ensure everything is covered and use it to make sure everything arrives.

Lastly, insure your exhibit for the journey. No matter how dedicated your logistics partner may be, accidents happen. Should your valuable trade show booth materials be damaged, you want a policy that will cover the costs of quickly putting together new materials for the next show.

Cost-Effective Shipping Tips

Here are a few smart ways to reduce trade show shipping cost. 

1. Optimize Booth Design for Size and Weight Savings

The cost of trade show booth shipping is often determined by the size and weight of the materials to be shipped. Smaller, lighter trade show booth designs can help you reduce the costs of transport - which is multiplied for each trade show you attend. Using lighter materials and building larger structures from small, modular pieces can significantly reduce the cost to ship your entire exhibit.

2. Consolidate Shipping to Reduce Costs

Consider shipping all your materials in a larger, composite shipping container. Crate smaller packages together into a larger package and send all your materials on a single trip. This can reduce the cost of sending multiple small packages and reduce the risk of any individual package being lost or damaged enroute.

3. Use Advance Warehousing for Storage Consolidation

An advance warehouse allows you to ship your trade show materials days and weeks in advance, instead of trying to line up arrival times perfectly with your set-up window. The warehouse will accept, store, and deliver to the event site. This allows you to avoid marshaling yard charges and be among the first to receive your trade show booth when the set-up window begins. By using the advanced warehouse, you will have peace of mind and less stress about your booth shipping.

4. Consider Shipping Alternatives and Transit Times

Transit times are a big consideration for both local and international shipping because you must be ready to set up on time. Talk to your logistics partner about planning ahead for transit times and consider shipping alternatives that better meet your needs. Giving your partner a longer window to arrive on time can help to save money on logistics.

Bigger Dot Delivers

Hiring the right partner for shipping your trade show booth is like investing in trade show insurance. At Bigger Dot, we take pride in our trade show exhibit shipping success rate. We’ve done it for small brands at large trade shows, we've done it for large brands at small trade shows, and we can do it for you. Before you ship, let’s talk.