Choosing the Right Pop-Up Display For Today And For Future Expansion

With a little foresight and planning, your company’s purchase of a pop-up display for your trade show booth today can continue returning on your investment well into the future. Most often, companies purchase pop-up displays for their convenience and economy in immediate use, and a well-designed pop-up system will certainly provide that. Short-term considerations like portability and ease of set-up, teardown, and packing are key factors, as are immediate savings on drayage and professional installation. How do you choose a pop-up display that can continue serving as an integral part of your company’s marketing efforts as you expand your trade show presence in future?

Think In The Long Term

• Framing The Future – Pop-up displays come in a wide variety of quality levels, ranging from aluminum to fiberglass and carbon fiber. Aluminum is often the least expensive material, though it also tends to have the shortest useful life, due to its tendency to dent and bend with heavy use, and it can corrode over time. Fiberglass is lighter in weight than aluminum, but it’s also more flexible, so it is less likely to sustain lasting damage. Carbon fiber is even more lightweight and durable than fiberglass and is generally the most expensive material of the three, due to its nearly indestructible nature. Whichever frame material you are considering, check the manufacturer’s warranty. Top-quality pop-ups will come with a lifetime frame warranty.

• Put Your Best Face Forward – Chances are, your company will change graphics many time over the life of your pop-up frame. For that reason, your first consideration should be that the material your graphics are printed on provides crisp print and bold color. You should choose a material that is reasonably durable, crease-resistant, and colorfast, but there is an important balance for great tradeshow exhibit design: If you change graphics frequently, you don’t need to pay for the most durable material on the market. Buy the material and printing process that will stay perfect for the length of time you plan to use the graphic.

• Planned Uses – It’s likely that if you are buying your first pop-up display, it’s planned for use as your trade show booth’s backwall. What else could you use that pop-up for in future? If your pop-up is part of a system that includes the accessories you need, you can add shelves for merchandise or floor models, literature racks, monitor mounts for a multimedia display, or workstations for interactive displays or for taking orders. You may want to add a bubble display to announce new products or services, or a marquee banner to call out a specific message. Be sure the pop-up system you’re looking at has all the accessories you can foresee using.

• Expandability – When your trade show display grows, one smart use for your pop-up display is to convert it from a backwall to a stand-alone or part of an island. Well-designed pop-ups offer you the opportunity to place graphics on the back, so you have a two-sided display that can be used as a sidewall, and some allow you to combine pop-up units to create an island. If your island is made of modular units, you get the benefits of a large, impressive piece without the drawbacks of requiring professional installation, drayage, and storage when the island is not in use.