25 Shows a Year: How Government Contractors Can Schedule the Whole Exhibit Calendar at Once

One show is a project. Twenty-five shows is a program. Many contractors supporting federal agencies exhibit at a conference almost every other week, from a spring summit in Chicago to a year-end briefing back in Washington, DC.

At that pace, booking each shipment as its show gets close stops working. Deadlines start overlapping, materials come back from one event just in time to leave for the next, and the whole calendar depends on someone remembering. Here's how to run the year as one plan instead of 25 separate scrambles.

Start with the whole calendar, not the next show

The single most useful thing you can do is send your shipper the year's show calendar as soon as you have it. It doesn't need to be final. Dates, cities and a rough idea of what's going to each show are enough to start.

With the full calendar in hand, your coach can spot the tight turnarounds early: two shows a week apart, a display that has to go straight from one city to the next, or a show whose advance warehouse deadline falls in the middle of another event.

Hear from your coach 90 days before every event

Even a well-run program can miss a deadline when the team is heads-down on the current show. That's why we built NorthStar 365.

Share the year's calendar with us once, and your Shipping Coach reaches out 90 days before each event to plan the outbound and return shipping. A show that opens April 14 hears from us around mid-January. A show that opens June 9, around mid-March. Nobody on your team has to keep a separate list of shipping dates. NorthStar 365 is optional, and there's no added cost for NorthStar customers.

Let the materials live somewhere between shows

Shipping a display back to your office after every event, only to send it out again two weeks later, adds cost, handling and risk. For a busy calendar, it often makes more sense for the materials to stay out of the office altogether.

With short and long-term storage, your display and materials have somewhere to live between shows, and your coach ships them straight from storage to the next event.

Recurring shows get easier every time

Most of a contractor's calendar repeats year to year: the same conferences, often the same venues. Once your process is set up with one coach, the time your team spends managing event shipping goes down with every show. Your coach already knows your materials, your packing and how each venue works.

You can read more about how we work with government contractors running full agency show calendars.

How ready is your show calendar?

Send us the calendar now, and your Shipping Coach will show you where your program is covered and where it still depends on someone remembering the next deadline. Email shippingcoach@northstarexpress.com, call 703-532-0520, or request a quote.

About the author
Rex Houlihan is the CEO of NorthStar Express, a trade show and event shipping company in Falls Church, Virginia that has been shipping to events for 35 years. Rex also created Coast2Coast4ALS, a cross-country bike ride raising awareness and funds for the ALS community. Connect with Rex on LinkedIn.