Trade Show Exhibition Booth Design – Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show for Boss Audio Systems

GreveCo Displays & Exhibits, based in Orange County, California, designed and built this two story custom booth for Boss Audio Systems in 2006 for the 2007 January consumer electronics 'CES' show in Las Vegas. Boss used it with great success for several consecutive years to make a serious statement as part of their core marketing strategy.

After a brief hiatus when the economy took a downturn, Boss are back and ready to use their impressive two story custom booth in a larger and expanded format at the 2013 Las Vegas consumer electronics show.

GreveCo, are pleased to now be working with Boss again as well as their parent company, Nyne, to feature their brand new product line called 'Nyne Multi Media' all in one, gigantic, expanded exhibit.

A storming success for Boss, the original booth exhibit, which was built to last, is as good as new, pristine and undated looking now as it was when it was first assembled. Visit the Boss stand at the Vegas Consumer Electrons show this year in January and see the display in action for yourself!

Boss Audio Systems Trade Show Booth – An investment

The stand, while a significant investment initially, has paid for itself several times over with the repeated usage. For the 2013 show, GreveCo will be adding six additional displays to the front of the booth. In addition the large additional display booth GreveCo is building for Nyne will be situated right next to the Boss exhibit stand, creating one very large exhibit. This new exhibit GreveCo is constructing for Nyne is pretty big and complicated, it's quite a project.

The Boss booth is a two story structure at 50ft wide, 20ft deep and 20ft tall. The Boss exhibit total floor footprint is 50ft wide and 40ft deep. Of course the second story substantially increases the usable square footage of the vendor's presence at the show. In addition, the nature of the stand makes a big impact on Boss's visible signage at the show. The booth has five offices in a hospitality area on the mezzanine floor. On the ground below the mezzanine, the booth is completely dedicated to product feature displays.
Originally Boss saw some of the work GreveCo had created for other clients at the Las Vegas show then approached us to create a unique design for them. The initial brief for the exhibit was pretty general, to create a two story booth that would stand out. GreveCo got to work on some initial design renderings, this was great for our designer who loves be given a fairly flexible remit!
On presenting the initial concepts Boss immediately loved it; we set up a face to face design meeting to go over the details of how it would work. The whole design was completed and ratified in just three minor revisions.
During the booth's design phase and as the superstructure needed to be substantial, GreveCo considered several different construction materials including using steel. Steel is the most commonly used construction material for this size and type of trade show exhibit. Ultimately, GreveCo used an all-aluminum modular designed superstructure with only the six front columns made with steel.

Innovating Modular Trade Show Exhibit – Design & Benefits

Clear benefits to using this innovative and very modular aluminum trade show booth design
  • Easy and Fast 'Connector' based assembly
  • Potential for easy reconfiguration for other show formats
  • Substantially lighter to handle and ship
The booth did not, for example, need floor joists. These would normally have been required at every 16" interval across the exhibit's 50' span. The special 4" thick modular flooring design made this possible. The flooring was actually constructed in modular pieces, using plywood with foam in the middle. This was done in such a way that they locked together, just like a jigsaw puzzle. This modular flooring also locked to the aluminum framework superstructure. This made for a superior and structurally sound product. Given the size of the stand, it had to be able to support a loading up to 200lb per square foot.
With steel structures, there are typically four or five times as many pieces that need to be put together. This can create a very time consuming assembly process. The flooring on these more traditionally designed steel exhibits typically use a drywall style self-tapping screw. This screw then has to be tapped through plywood and corrugated metal and then anchored into the steel superstructure.
When you attempt to set these kinds of booths up more than once, quite often they just do not go back together the same way they did originally. This can be quite a challenge as they often require a lot of additional holes to be drilled to 'force fit' the booth together again.
With the modular aluminum structure we used for the floor panel design, we were able to use special rotor lock connectors that quickly locked the panels together with a simple tool in one easy step. As a result the floor panels consistently went together in exactly the same way every time. This substantially improved reusability and shortened the assembly time. As Boss used the stand for multiple shows, over time this made for a significant cost saving. As you can imagine, this cleverly engineered design saved not only in construction costs but made the assembly and shipping process much easier.
The booth has, of course, to meet current seismic codes and be approved by a structural engineer prior to assembly at the show each year that it is in use. GreveCo typically handles the submission process to the convention center and the local fire marshal, taking care of any adjustments needed.
Another feature that aids the assembly process is the specially designed and built in leveling feet. These help to ensure the mezzanine floor is completely level. One of the challenges to assembling of structures like this is that everything has to level out perfectly otherwise the walls (between the columns) will be out of square and not fit properly.
Apart from being a structural problem, lack of exact alignment would be very noticeable to the eyes of show attendees on such a large exhibit. This problem would be apparent on all the walls at both levels and around the back of the stand.

Trade Show Exhibit Signage Designed to Stand Out!

The side walls have 'designed-in,' large backlit, Boss signage. These very prominent signs are suspended on the second floor. This was yet another practical challenge to actually building to our 'inspired' designer's drawings! The side walls therefore also had to have integrated leveling feet so that when they sat on the mezzanine floor, we could easily and repeatedly line everything up. The big red strip at the booths mid-level border had the double function of creating a dramatic look and also hiding all the structural components.
The front of the structure had six columns that reach top to bottom of the exhibit. These dramatic columns have a very modern brushed aluminum finish. In reality though, they are partly facades. The structural components, the only steel part to the structure, are the struts which reach half way up the columns and support the mezzanine floor.
The columns in the front, as well as looking dramatic, act as product display areas with metal bars that follow the shape of the column. These arms support a functional display of speakers on both sides of the column to the front and back.

Under the booth, the back walls serve three main purposes:

  • 1. Lateral stability
    • To keep the booth from swaying from left to right, particularly when 20 or more people are moving around on the top floor.
  • 2. They served to screen off the two back stair cases that allowed people to access the mezzanine floor.
  • 3. They also served as dense product display walls.

This trade show stand, as well allowing a lot of people to be on it at once, also housed a lot of products. In this case Boss had active displays of all types of products, including a drop down video screen for SUV's, complete stereo systems and components such as amplifiers and speakers.

We kept the overall square footage to about 900 sq. ft. This helped to keep the cost down as booths over a certain square footage, usually 1,000 sq. ft., have a number of additional requirements such as fire sprinklers that have to be added to the stand. We were, however, required to put in two means of ingress, two staircases for example.

Modular Trade Show Exhibit Booth – At the Las Vegas CES

Boss Audio Systems were particularly happy because they were able to show off all their products and all the variations within their product lines. Boss, rather than just selecting certain products to present at the show were able to show everything within the one exhibit. On previous occasions Boss had to say to a visitor for example, "this radio comes with Bluetooth but we don't have it here, it looks just like this one though!"
In order to accomplish a booth like this, as an exhibit builder, you have to gain a solid appreciation of all your client's products. You have to immerse yourself into your client's product lines. You have to do this in order to do a great job of creating a stand that really shows off their products to their full potential. For example, from the get go we had all of Boss's products in front of us as part of the display design process. Only then could we really do a great job of creating a product that met Boss's needs.

In our experience this is where a lot of exhibition booth builders fail to impress, in that they like to build a stand where one size fits all. Using simple methodologies they provide some shelving that the client can try to fit their products onto. With the best will in the world that methodology will never do a great job of featuring a manufacturer's product range.

style="margin-top: 20px;"You'll notice, for example, how the pods to the front of the six columns push the products right out in front of people walking by at the show. Bottom line, if you want a show engagement to be a storming success you have to really stand out.

In total the initial design process for this stand took about a week. The following review process took about another three weeks. This is where we make simple refinements to fit all the products, minor color changes and the like. In this case the forward display areas were an enhancement we made after the core stand was built.

An elaborate two story custom booth like this, on this sort of scale, took us about six months, from start to finish, in order to be ready for the show. The Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, the event that this exhibit stand was primarily targeted for, is a pretty big event. For example, the 2012 show had over 153,000 attendees and spanned multiple concurrent venues including the Sands and the Las Vegas convention centers. At the event Boss were competing with all the big names such as Motorola and Sony for visibility. Boss's exhibit booth was actually one of the largest and most visible at the show!

In total there were three reverse cut illuminated signs, one in the front and one at each end. Reverse cut means the letters themselves were illuminated. These made for very distinctive and highly visible Boss branded signage. There were also a large number of additional back lit informational product related signs, all of which built into the booth's walls.

The show assembly process, with us supervising a crew of ten, takes us about two days from start to finish. This includes the finishing touches and inclusion of all the Boss products. Typically, GreveCo will be hands on during the assembly process of this kind of stand.

Planning to Attend a Trade Show Event?

Work with GreveCo Displays & Exhibits and stand out from the crowd. To kick things off, simply call us at our Orange County California office +1 (714) 633 5728 and we will create a trade show exhibit that will impress.

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