I’ve been on the road quite a bit lately. That is nothing unusual in this business, but over the last few weeks I’ve had the chance to be at several different events. A few stops included Texas for the Texas Randy, Wisconsin for Derse’s groundbreaking, and back in my hometown of Chicago for the ExSys Awards. Different places and different reasons for being there, but I kept coming back to the same thought: There are a lot of moving parts behind this industry.
At Derse, I watched them break ground on a new 300,000-square-foot global headquarters in Oak Creek. More than 225 employees will eventually work there. Brett Haney, CEO of Derse, talked about a process that took roughly eight years, with a pandemic in the middle of it.
Eight years is a long time to work toward something… But that is what investment looks like. You decide where you are going and keep working until somebody finally puts a shovel in the ground. That same idea carries onto the show floor.
This issue spends a lot of time on installation and dismantle (I&D) and transportation, two parts of the business most attendees never think about until something goes wrong. A booth does not just appear. Freight must arrive, crews must be ready, flooring goes down, walls go up, and graphics, lighting, and A/V get installed. Somebody must keep the sequence moving and solve problems before the doors open.
Then, when the show is over, they do it all again in reverse. That takes skill. The people who succeed in I&D work with their hands, think ahead, solve problems, and rely on the people around them. They build reputations one show at a time, and what starts as a job can become a real career.
Transportation is getting squeezed, too. Fuel prices, changing rates, driver issues, congestion, and long waits at show sites make a difficult job even harder. If the timing is wrong or communication breaks down, everybody behind it feels the delay.
There is no magic answer.
What keeps coming up is planning, communication, relationships, and people who know what they are doing. Maybe that is what all of this comes back to.
We celebrate the finished exhibit, the awards, the new buildings, and the big announcements. But underneath all of it are people doing the work. Somebody drove the truck. Somebody unloaded it. Somebody laid the floor. Somebody hung the sign. Somebody fixed the problem. Somebody trained the next person. Somebody showed up when it mattered.
After more than 30 years of covering this business, I still think that is one of the best things about it. Whatever comes next, it will still take good people willing to show up and do the work.
That is what keeps us moving.
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