Posted by

Barry Siskind

UFI’s Community Manager

At the recent EDPA,(Exhibit Designers and producers Association) meeting in Palm Springs, California 3D’s Larry Kulchawik conducted a survey which focused on international exhibiting practices. His goal was to learn how exhibit suppliers managed their customers outside their home region.

He used UFI’s definitions of the seven world regions; North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia.

One interesting, although not surprising result was that US suppliers only do 5% of their business outside their region.

The four reasons that emerged for this include:

Plenty of business at home,

Customers manage international shows directly with regional suppliers, Customers do not ask for additional help with their international programs,

Cost issues.

However, suppliers from the remaining six regions report that they are active in promoting business outside their regions. The results were: Middle East 67%, Australia 42%, South America 27%, Europe 25%, Asia 23%, and Africa 12%,

One other noteworthy finding was that 65% of those who promote business outside their region use a local partner to build and install.

The survey can be found on the EDPA web-site. www.edpa.com