Budgeting
How Much Will it Cost?
So much mention has been made about budgets and what you can afford in the previous chapter that now seems a good time to consider seriously the whole matter of budgeting for exhibitions. And there is one point that must be made straight away, and never forgotten: exhibitions cost more than the cost of space.
Many people, particularly those new to exhibiting, lend to think purely in terms of the cost of space when thinking of exhibition costs, but this is far from the case as the following table will show:
(Note: value "v" is for comparison purposes only. It could represent units, tens or hundreds of pounds. It could even represent man-hours.)
| 1. | Space | 150x |
| 2. | Shell | 200x |
| 3. | Display units (Depreciation over 10 exhibitions) |
60x |
| 4. | Display material (including signs) | 50x |
| 5. | Printing | 200x |
| 6. | Advertising (including postage) | 300x |
| 7. | Electrical | lOOx |
| 8. | Transport to and from exhibition | 50x |
| 9. | Allowances, meals etc. | 40x |
| 10 | Preparation and set-up costs | 50x |
| 11 | Staff wages (incl. overtime) - say 4 staff for 3 days |
300x |
| Total | 1500x |
So what seems to be an exhibition which will cost 350x in fact ends up costing four times that! And omitted from this costing is something which is very difficult to estimate: the loss arising from the fact that the staff will not be doing their normal work.
It makes sense, therefore, to plan participation in a number of exhibitions, which not only increases your sales potential but can also dramatically reduce the cost per exhibition.
Let's look at individual items on the list above and see how it would be possible to reduce costs by plan¬ning a number of exhibitions at once and looking at the most cost-effective way of carrying out each activity.