Taking your show on the road; using Indiana suppliers for your trade-show exhibit.

• Author: Prata, Kathleen

Few companies need to be sold on the benefits of trade-show marketing. Those planning exhibits should be aware that there's no need to shop for services outside of Indiana. The state is home to a number of exhibit suppliers offering products from the portable to the prodigious.

There is literally a trade show for almost every market or service, and the number of trade shows continues to grow. More than 10,000 take place in the United States each year.

Michael Parrott, president and CEO of ICON Inc. in Fort Wayne, believes that with the increased globalization of business, trade-show marketing has taken on new import, especially since European businesses rely particularly heavily on this marketing medium. His company has entered the global market and has produced exhibits for companies in England, Japan, Korea and many European countries.

"In my opinion, there's no better marketing tool than going to shows," says Larry Minnick, president of The Exhibit House in Indianapolis. "The customers are coming to you. It's hands-on demonstration."

Minnick's company has been in operation for more than 12 years. The Exhibit House specializes in custom design work and has a wide range of clients from a number of different fields. Each design is unique. Some exhibits are even larger than most homes. The company recently produced a 6,300-square-foot, 20-foot-high RCA exhibit for Thomson Consumer Electronics.

The company's custom displays may have price tags running into the upper-six-figure level. But the company also distributes portable display systems that cost less than $1,000.

Parrott's company, ICON, operates two divisions--Customcraft for custom designs and Displaysource, which distributes portable and modular exhibit systems. Displaysource's portable systems include those made by Nimlok Display and Exhibit Systems and Radius Portable Panel Systems. In addition to Customcraft's custom displays, the division designs and manufactures ExhibitPak, a self-contained portable display unit.

Custom displays make up 80 percent of ICON's work through the Customcraft division. The company has just completed the initial phase of a million-dollar-plus project for United Technologies, a project Parrott describes as a very sophisticated system.

"This is the most interesting thing we've done as a company through Customcraft," Parrot says. "It's has a stealth-like look, all black, and is a very exotic display, which promotes graphics very vividly. It's a very...