Thought for Food Trade Show Display
We recently finished a fun project for Swiss Valley Farms that included the design and production of a custom trade show display, photography and design for light boxes, a 3-1/2 minute looping video for an LED display, building of the shipping crates, and all of the coordination of those items.
The trade show display, light boxes and video for Swiss Valley Farms/Faribault.
We had about a month to pull everything together. Finding willing partners down the street from us at BrightBox Industries, Inc., we set out to the task. As BrightBox’s name implies, they make custom light boxes. But they’re also known for a variety of display work; primarily in-store displays, but they are also up to the trade show task.
The Fancy Food Show is an important show for The Caves of Faribault, a subsidiary company of Swiss Valley Farms, so they wanted to showcase a variety of their cheeses in this quality setting. Our design reflected the upscale nature of the show, including a cherrywood display reminiscent of a parade of homes quality kitchen, complete with a granite solid surface backsplash. (Well, at least it looked like granite.)
Lauren Albracht, Marketing Specialist at Swiss Valley Farms, was heavily involved throughout the design process. One of her goals was to make sure the display worked extra hard for her company by being multi-functional for other shows. She explains, “We are very excited about the flexibility this booth provides. We can change the lightbox graphics and video reel to adapt to new product introductions and speak to different audiences at the shows we attend.”
There was one added challenge in designing this custom display: the final assembly of the display had to be accomplished without any tools and all parts needed to be shipped in one crate.
This wasn’t some kind of test just for the sake of it, it is a substantial cost consideration. When you set up a display at some union facilities, if you use any tools, you are required to hire the union to do it for you. This can be quite expensive. So each piece was designed to be put together with wing nuts and bolts. The LED display simply hung on a bracket with customized bolts that could be hand tightened. The TV bracket itself was first affixed to the display with eight bolts secured by wing nuts on the backside.
The shipping crate was also designed with cost-savings in mind. By combining everything in one box, our client saved hundreds of dollars in material handling fees on just this one show.
For the video to be played on the LED display, we loaded everything onto a USB flash drive that could be played through a laptop. The computer was hidden behind doors on the front of the display. By putting the video file on a flash drive instead of a DVD we were able to retain the HD quality of the video. (A regular DVD would have to be burned at Standard Definition.)
With the orange "cow crossing" signs on every side of the shipping crate, Swiss Valley Farms should be able to find their crate amongst others quite easily.
Lastly, as you can see in the photo, we created some customized graphics for the shipping crate’s exterior. The reason? Our client shared a story from trade shows past where, upon arrival at their assigned booth space before the show, their crate was not there. When they told the trade show event people about the problem, the reply was that everything had been delivered so our client would have to “go find it”. (Helpful, huh?) This entailed walking the trade show floor trying to figure out which shipping crate was theirs. Without any identifying marks on the crate, they had to resort to looking at the manifest sheets on each and every one until they found it. But now having an identifiable crate (with the “cow crossing signs”), if this ever happens again, it will take them a fraction of the time to find their crate and display materials.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.