Taking a stand to a fair abroad

Istanbul and Germany

the two offices we run European fairs from

About us

Freight, ATA carnet, customs

the items we carry on work abroad

Exhibition stand services

Ship it or build it there

Building in Turkey keeps control in your hands. You choose the materials, you see the pre-assembly in the workshop, and the crew on site is the crew that made it. Against that, transit time, customs paperwork and the delivery window all go into the calendar.

Control is paid for in the calendar. A stand built in Turkey has to be finished weeks earlier than a domestic job of the same size. In return, a fault spotted in the workshop is corrected in Istanbul rather than in the hall, and that single difference does more for quality abroad than anything else.

Local production shortens the freight leg but means managing quality at a distance. Samples travel by post, you never see the pre-assembly, and you meet the stand for the first time in the hall. That is reasonable on a small one-off stand and risky on a large one carrying the brand.

There is a third route: hire the structural system locally and ship only the bespoke parts from Turkey. Volume drops, character survives. Which stand types suit that approach is set out on the stand types page.

The paperwork chain

What separates a fair abroad from a domestic one is mostly paperwork. The chain runs: space contract, the venue technical manual and its approval forms, the crate list, the temporary admission document, freight papers, the insurance policy and site access permits.

A copy of every document travels with the crew. The answer to a question at the border, at the hall entry or during an inspection is usually inside that file. If the file is not in the vehicle, the same question costs hours, so both a printed and a digital set go along.

Each document needs an owner and a deadline. The commonest delay is a crate list produced late, which pushes the customs paperwork to the final day. The list is drawn up when production is planned, not when it finishes.

Some documents belong to the exhibitor and some to the contractor. That split has to be in the contract; the document each side assumed the other held tends to surface a week before the show.

Why the calendar stretches

At a domestic fair a few days between the end of production and the start of the build is enough. Abroad, freight, customs and the delivery window stretch that gap noticeably. How far depends on the country, the distance and the crossing, so leave a buffer instead of quoting a fixed number of days.

The second difference is in crew planning. Abroad, the build team arrives in the city a day early, collects the site passes and walks the hall. Flight delays, the distance to the hotel and local transport hours all enter the plan; a crew that arrives tired halves the first day.

Design sign-off moves earlier too. While an approval application runs, production cannot simply wait; the two run in parallel, but a refusal turns finished parts into scrap. So the items most likely to be questioned are left until last.

A practical rule: the calendar for a fair abroad starts several weeks earlier than for a domestic fair of the same size. Because freight and customs sit with us in our exhibition stand services, that calendar is run from one place.

Does the stand have to come back?

Under temporary admission, yes, it must leave within the permitted period. If anything is to stay, the regime is set up differently from the outset.

Can a Turkish contractor work at a European fair?

Yes. The contractor is notified to the organiser, the required documents are submitted and site passes are issued. The rules differ from venue to venue.