Having supported the FIT Show every year since its inception, Liniar is proud to announce we’ll be exhibiting once more in 2017. Moving to the NEC in Birmingham means the exhibition for window fabricators and installers continues to grow – and Liniar has taken the largest stand at the show.
We’re delighted to extend an invitation to you and members of your team to visit the FIT Show at the NEC this year.
You can avoid registration queues by completing a few details online in advance of your visit, in order to gain free entry to the show. We look forward to seeing you on the Liniar stand – Hall 5, Stand L10.
Simply book in advance to arrive by rail using this special link and receive 25% off the cost of your tickets to the FIT Show!
Preparing for an exhibition is never a simple task – but when you’re responsible for the largest stand at the show, it can come with a whole new level of challenges!
Join Sue Davenport, Marketing Director and FIT Show Project Manager Helen Noble, as they blog about Liniar and Avantek’s build-up to the window industry’s biggest exhibition in recent years – the FIT Show, which will be held at the NEC Birmingham from 23-25 May 2017.
As this is the fourth time Liniar has exhibited at the FIT Show, some elements are pretty straightforward for the team. Before Christmas we’d already booked our stand space, pre-booked hotel rooms on the complex and discussed our objectives for the show. We’ve also been speaking to a number of stand designers and builders over the last few months.
With a mere 15 weeks to go, we’re now keen to start firming up on the details and getting on with our project plan, as we still have other targets and deadlines to meet away from the exhibition.
The big decision to be made this week is selecting a design and build partner to work with; we’ve been looking for someone with the right attributes for us to help us achieve our vision and objectives – and happily, we can now move ahead as the budget for our preferred design comes in within our target.
Because our stand this year will be shared between Liniar and our sister company Avantek, there have been quite a few considerations to take into account. Two different brands with two very different product types to display makes for an interesting stand with a number of complications – but we’re happy with the balance we’re hopefully going to achieve with our final stand layout.
We’re all excited to start moving ahead now this big decision has been made!
We’ve already begun to invite our customers to the FIT Show as we’ve been given our registration links by the organisers. We’ve also planned our social media plans and campaigns, which are now in full swing as we head towards May. If you’d like to register to attend the show for free, please visit our page now.
We attended a FIT Show Exhibitor briefing day last week, which was a great opportunity to catch up with Nickie, Paul, Matthew, Sara and Rik from the FIT Show team, as well as watching seminars from a few good speakers. As with all learning opportunities, we picked up a few tips and ideas – we just need to put them into practice now!
Whilst at the briefing day we met members of the NEC team, which was really useful. There are a number of things we need to speak to them about now we know our final stand design and requirements, so it was great to put faces to names.
The FIT Show team have issued all exhibitors with small cardboard figures – Mr & Mrs FIT – who they want us to photograph and post on social media with a hashtag to help promote the show. We come back to the office and one of the team immediately makes up the models with the wrong head on the wrong body, making the installer female – well, we’re all about equal rights!
This week we decide on the giveaways we’ll be taking to the show for our stand visitors as well as confirming the literature we’ll need. Although our suppliers are great, we don’t want everything turning up at the last minute so we try to get ahead as far as we can with ordering items from third parties.
We also invite the team members we’d like to staff the stand at the show for the duration, which includes the build-up and breakdown periods. Because our team always installs the products themselves, there needs to be a good degree of communication between the design and technical teams and the stand builder, to ensure timings work out (in addition to all the apertures being the right size!).
Finally, all the Liniar products, their dimensions, colours and finishes have now been agreed internally, so we go ahead and place orders with our fabricator in order to get them made for the show in plenty of time.
Don’t forget you can register to attend the FIT Show by visiting our direct link.
It’s been a busy few days this week; our project plan deadline dates are creeping closer, so we have been determined to start ticking them off in a flurry of satisfaction!
We visited our stand builder last week and met the team there. It was good to see the stand creation process at their purpose built facility and we were able to discuss the Liniar/Avantek stand and our objectives for the show in far more detail. We always create our main stand graphics in-house, so being able to see the place that our designs will come to life is a great opportunity for our team.
This week we have been looking at uniform options for the team working on the stand. Trying to find a balance between the two brands on one stand provides challenges in practically every area of the project. Luckily for us, both teams are pretty easy going and it didn’t take long to find an option that will work for everyone.
All of the stand team members have now been registered for their exhibitor badges (phew – 1 big stand, 2 companies, lots of experienced staff = a long process). Fingers crossed we haven’t missed anyone!
And, after lots of team brainstorming and sketching; ‘Does this work?’; ‘How about trying this?’ we have designed our first advert to kick start the FIT Show series. Keep an eye out it!
We like to keep an eye on which of our customers have registered to come and see us at the show and it’s great to see the number go up each week. Don’t forget to add your name to the list by visiting our direct link.
We’re having a double deck stand this year, with the upper deck being a hospitality area for customers to grab a coffee and some nibbles and rest their aching feet. This means we need to put in a food order with the NEC catering team, so we’ve been looking at menu options and trying to decide what to order.
This is never as simple as it sounds. We’re essentially guessing how many visitors we’ll get on each day, what time of day they’ll arrive, how many would like food, how many hot drinks, cold drinks etc… with the added complication this year that the FIT Show is potentially going to have more visitors than in previous years at Telford.
We don’t want to order too much and waste food, but also don’t want to run out – so in the end we put a little science around it, add a touch of educated guesswork and hope for the best!
We’ve also been looking at lead capture this week. Obviously one of our objectives is to meet people and to scan their badges so we can keep in touch with them after the show.
We have a choice this year of renting the traditional scanners, or of using an iPhone app to scan visitors. The latter would give us the potential to add more information about a particular person, or note that they wanted us to follow up the meeting with a call or more information. The downside to this is that it would mean some stand staff having their smartphones out on the stand – usually a big ‘no no’ for us, as they can be distracting. We finally come to a decision that we’re all happy with – the next step is to set up the segments we’ll be scanning against.
Our gala dinner invitations were also designed this week. We’re conscious we need to send them out soon, so we’re keeping in line with the theme, which this year is burlesque, and have now sent them off to be printed.
We had another meeting with our stand builder this week. The meeting was planned to be a couple of hours, but ended up at almost four hours long as there was so much detail to discuss!
The design process doesn’t end when the overall stand concept is agreed, as the whole team has so many ideas about showcasing Liniar’s vast product range. We also don’t stand still when it comes to creating new marketing support tools, so it becomes a logistical discussion about how many sample boxes, resources and brochures we should actually take with us to show people.
We’ll have iPads next to the main products, so all the literature will be displayed electronically. We’ll also be taking our interactive table, which was such a hit with visitors last year – and we can display videos and PDFs on that too. But we still recognise that people want to take information away with them, so we’ve been having lots of discussions about how to get that balance right (whilst not taking up too much room with storage!)
The stand builder is thankfully very accommodating and came up with some great ideas, so the plans have now gone back to be slightly tweaked – none of the changes are major.
This week we’ve also finalised our list of which staff will be going to the show – both for the hugely important build-up and breakdown days at either side of the exhibition itself, and to welcome visitors to the stand during the three days of the show.
We’re hearing lots of news about how others’ FIT Show plans are coming along, and the buzz is really building now!
We’ve started creating the graphic designs for all the walls around the stand and our products at the FIT Show. With a 360m² stand, as you can imagine, that’s a lot of space to cover!
As we create the designs ourselves within our small in-house team, we can move quickly and share ideas, so there are lots of discussions about style, colours, font sizes, and actual content. We’re aware that visitors don’t particularly want to stand and read a whole wall of text, but need to give them information about products. Our aim is therefore to keep text as concise as possible whilst being informative.
Whilst producing wall graphics for the stand itself, we’re also creating artwork for a range of posters that will be displayed in both ladies and gents toilets in Hall 6 at the FIT Show! We’re going for a cheeky theme with these posters, which are all intended to raise a smile and drive visitors to our stand – so make sure you look out for them when you pay a visit!
This week we’ve also placed an order with our uniform supplier, who will be embroidering Liniar and Avantek logos onto shirts for the people working on the stand. We’ve learned from previous years that everyone prefers to wear different styles of shirt, so they’ve all chosen their own and given them to us for the bulk embroidery order. This keeps things simpler and ensures everyone is happy with the cut and fit of their shirts, whilst keeping everyone looking smart and uniform on the stand.
We’ve also ordered name badges for anyone who hasn’t had one before (together with one or two who can’t find their badge from last year…).
We’re launching a brand new system at the FIT Show, so we’ve also been busy preparing literature to hand out – all of which includes lots of technical information. We’re conscious of print deadlines so need to get everything signed off in the next week or so to ensure we get everything back in time.
Our stand giveaways have arrived and we’re really pleased with them! We hope our visitors are too!
To get yours, you’ll be able to download a voucher – but for now, make sure you’re registered to attend!
We had exciting news this week – our uPVC ModLok bi-folding door was awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise, in the Innovation category! As this product is one of our showcase products, and will be featured on the FIT Show stand, we’ve now incorporated the Queen’s Award logo onto the graphics, as the whole team is proud of this achievement and want to share it with our customers!
We’re now into the fast-moving process of deadlines, deadlines, deadlines… as we approach the last few weeks before the show, getting things done on time becomes even more critical.
For example, we’ve not only revamped three of our existing brochures in the last few weeks, we’ve created a brand new ‘bible’ of Liniar products in our Specification Guide, which we’ll be launching at the show.
We brought out the first edition in early 2015, and since then have given it a complete facelift and increased it by almost 150%, from 94 pages to over 234!
All of the pages need carefully checking before it goes to print, which involves proofreading and technical checking of dimensions, U-values and accreditations, so quite a few people are involved. As long as we get the final artwork off to our printing company next week, we’ll get them back in time for the FIT Show, but it’s going to be tight!
We’ve also had another meeting with the stand builder, which went well and reassured us that they are on the case. They print the graphics themselves in-house, so we still have time to make final changes if we need to, which gives us some comfort.
This week we’ve also filmed short videos with a few key people who’ll be on our stand at the show, so that visitors can get to know who they are. They’re now being edited by our resident video editor Cassie, and will start appearing over the next couple of weeks – look out for them on our social media channels!
The countdown is really on now… click the link and make sure you’re registered to attend!
This is it – next week the doors will be open and visitors flooding into the NEC in Birmingham for the FIT Show.
Last week we completed all of the graphics for our stand. We always try to include lots of interesting designs and informative features around the stand for visitors to discover, and this year is no exception. One of our walls features a huge 45m² graphic, which we hope will look amazing when it’s in place!
We make sure purchase orders have been raised for every item we’re purchasing and that the costs are recorded properly – this not only keeps us in line with financial reporting standards, but will make things much easier when we return from the exhibition and carry out a full reconciliation and ROI analysis.
The final week before the show is always fraught with last-minute requests and changes, and making sure everything we’ve ordered over the last few weeks has been delivered. We’re happy to report that everything’s under control; the last items to be delivered (including our new Spec Guides) will definitely be here by Friday so we can load them all up to take to the show.
This week we held a meeting with all of the staff that will be working on the stand at the FIT Show, making sure they all know the important logistics (where they need to be and when), the full details of every product on the stand and also the objectives we’ve set for the show. We handed out passes, including the contractor passes for our build-up team, as well as the embroidered shirts they’ll be wearing.
Thursday saw a massive team effort putting together packs for our visitors to the stand, so everything is to hand when we get there. We have packs containing branded goodies for installers, other packs for specifiers, and bags with literature about all the different products we’re exhibiting – as well as making sure we’ve sorted all the files to load onto iPads, TV screens and our interactive table.
Friday we’ll be loading the vehicles with products, tools, literature and all the other components that will add the finishing touches to our stand. There’s lots of heavy lifting involved so it’s a good job we’re all pretty strong (and can ask for help when we need it!)
After that it’s off to the NEC for build up – so this will be our final blog until after the show itself.
If you STILL haven’t registered for your tickets, don’t forget to visit the FIT Show registration page to avoid queuing on the day. We look forward to seeing you there!
