Will Trade Shows Bring Value in 2024?

Attendees will be going to trade shows in 2024 to learn about various industries and services and be at the head of new trends. Exhibitors want to create awareness around their services or products and see how their peers are positioning themselves as well.

The hot sauce is that buyers prefer interactive, visual, and multisensory experiences at trade shows. The cherry on top goes to connection. There is huge value in in-person meetings at trade shows, and we believe that trade shows are not going anywhere, but it is important to observe what is happening.

Growth has been the outcome of these win-win events! Trade shows have played a significant role in B2B since this digital-centric century started. Year after year, there had been sustained growth in the business generated, until Covid-19 and the year 2020 arrived.

The Big Trend

The following graph, which covers not only trade shows but also trade magazines and other advertising venues, tells the story of the impact that COVID-19 might have for years to come. In 2023 we might see levels of exchange similar to what we saw in 2013.

chart

Should Your Organization Return to In-Person Trade Shows?

Our clear answer is YES! The US trade show industry will be back faster than what the forecast indicates.

New Insight: 57% of Attendees to shows indicate that they learned and gained new skills.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Be Attending Tradeshows in 2024

Person-to-person contact: When people meet face to face they tend to feel more involved and obligated to interact and come up with positive solutions to problems.
Social networks do not replace in-person meetings: Social networks are a great tool, but nowhere as efficient as traditional meetings. Non-verbal language can build strong bridges between individuals that could be completely missed in a phone call or Zoom meeting.
VR (Virtual Reality) is becoming amazing! But it still can’t match the excitement generated in meetings, touching goods, and building possibilities.
A trade show tells a story: Just a few hours after you’ve arrived at a trade show, you get a sense of what’s new, what’s trendy, and what’s out. There’s no other way to experience such input and have a good time meeting people, products, and learning without real human interaction.
A dedicated audience: Putting up a booth for a trade show in 2024 will ensure you have a captive audience. It will provide you with far more opportunities to “close the deal” than any email blast could.

How to Make the Most Out of Your Trade Show in 2024

For Attendees

As an attendee, be sure to gather business cards. This “old-fashioned” method is a sure-fire way to remember who you want to reach out to after the trade show has ended.
As an attendee, take notes, and pictures, and record speeches from industry leaders.
Fill your swag bag with brochures and promotional items from the floor of the show. Asking a vendor to “send me an email” is usually very ineffective, as that email will likely end up in your junk or spam folder, never to be opened.
Assess the quality of the vendor’s trade show booth. If it looks professional, clean, and orderly, it is likely that the company also reflects that.

For Exhibitors

Authoritative Power: Just for being there, you are seen as an authority in the matter. That represents a huge advantage in the marketplace.
Firepower! As an exhibitor, make sure that your most experienced team members, including sales and management, are available at the event.
Provide a comfortable setting: Make visitors feel at home. Nice graphics, decor, and a coffee bar can make magic happen.
Create “A Look”: Make a theme of your tradeshow booths in 2024. Consistent branding is key. Use your logo’s color scheme to make a color profile that reflects your business.
Pass out the swag: Make sure you order branded promo items that will keep you in the minds of attendees after it is all said and done. Travel Mugs and custom label water bottles are always a hit, and sure to get people coming to your booth.
Create a database with data analysis: Get cards or scan badges from your visitors and create a database with notes about each person. More information about potential customers leads to more closings. You can then measure your ROI.
Follow-Up: Yes…. this is the key to round-up all of your hard work.

Let Color Copies USA be Your 2024 Tradeshow Guide

At Color Copies USA, we understand the importance of making a lasting impression. Our online printing services are tailored to cover all your tradeshow needs. From retractable banners and table throws to comprehensive color printing solutions for booklets and catalogs, postcards and flyers, and presentation folders, we are equipped to support your marketing efforts with top-notch quality and efficiency.

Conclusion

The future of tradeshows in 2024 is bright, with expectations of renewed vigor and enhanced engagement. As businesses and industries rally to make the most of these opportunities, the role of high-quality, impactful tradeshow materials cannot be overstated.

With Color Copies USA by your side, you’re well-equipped to make a standout impression at any trade show, leveraging the best in color printing and online printing solutions to showcase your brand and offerings to the world.

To get your order started, click here or give us a call at 877-421-066

How to Start a Stationery Business

A lot more goes into launching a stationery line than just designing it. From market research to ensuring the quality of each product to figuring out shipping costs and methods, many things can go wrong. But don’t be disheartened!

Our step-by-step guide can help ensure success for your stationery business.

Let’s take a look at the steps in detail:

Stationery Items Organized on a Table — Items that might be part of your stationery business. Image by Savannah Wakefield

Conduct Market Research

While you may know the names of all big and small stationery businesses available in the market, this knowledge is not a market search. Even if you want to launch a stationery business for the sheer passion of cute stationery, you need to put aside your love for cute things and look at it solely as a business. Thorough market research will also help you move away from personal bias. Personal bias is natural, and anyone can fall into its trap. However, thorough market research will help you get away from it and identify the following for you:

Your customers
Your customers’ buying habits
The amount your customers are willing to spend
Your competition
Strengths and weaknesses of your competition

Once you have identified the above factors, you can move on to the next step.

Define Your Role

As a small business owner, it’s a given that you’ll have to do everything by yourself in the beginning. However, the sooner you narrow down your role or at least your primary role for the future, the easier it will become for you to sustain your stationery business.

Let’s say you are a designer and want to launch a stationery line with your original designs. In this scenario, once your business grows, you can outsource customer handling or finances to someone else. While you may be tempted to do everything by yourself to maximize your profit, handling everything by yourself can end up distracting you from your primary role.

Start Small

Instead of multiple products, start with one product in the highest demand in the market. For example, if postcards are the most in-demand item per your market research, launch your stationery business with postcards only. Decide on a theme, pick a color palette, and create five to fifteen designs for postcards.

Once you are happy with the response on your first product, you can add to it in various ways. For example, you can use the designs you created for postcards as notebook covers or greeting cards. On the other hand, you can also create more postcard designs in the same theme and add them to the existing collections.

Sticking to themes and a smaller variety of products helps create collections. Collections enhance the exclusivity of your products and make them stand out. Always ensure that products in a collection fit each other and look good when placed together.

Don’t Compromise on Quality

Maintaining quality is essential to running a business. Find a reliable printer to print high-quality stationery items if you cannot invest in a commercial-scale printer. If you are based in South Florida, check out Color Copies USA . You are welcome to come in and meet the team.

Color Copies USA not only provides high-quality printing services but also provides the option of uploading artworks digitally so you can have your designs printed quickly and easily. Moreover, Color Copies USA also provides free designing software on their website that is perfect for aspiring stationery business owners that aren’t professional designers.

Prioritizing quality would help your products speak for themselves. One-time buyers can easily become permanent customers if impressed by product quality.

Sell Through Multiple Channels

For small businesses, the number of sales depends on the number of people aware of their existence. You can increase awareness about your stationery business’s existence in the market by selling your products through as many channels as you can.

Create a website and market your products through social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. You can also put up your products on websites such as Redbubble or Society6 to gain a wider audience or test the demand for your products before launching your website.

You can also sell your products in person by participating in local fairs or pop-ups in malls. Selling your products in person can allow you to introduce yourself and your products to people and establish relationships with your customers. Consumers also love seeing small business owners following their passion and hustling for it.

Finally, remember that consistency is key! Create products in small batches but keep launching new products and collections every few months. You can stick to launching products on special occasions such as Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s, etc., for the first year of business for slow but consistent business growth and building a brand image.

More about uses and benefits of stationery

Business Yard Signs: They are all over the place!

– Did you just say “Yard Signs”?

Yes I did! I fact I’ve been looking and talking about yard signs a lot lately. You know, it’s the election cycle that brings lots of those in front of your face…. everywhere….. but they are there all the time!

Why are business yard signs used all year round?
For just one simple reason. Yard signs drive people into taking action. Like it or not, all of us look at them when they are out there.
Don’t get me wrong; when there are 10 of those at a corner promoting 10 different candidates… forget it. That’s too much clutter.
But when used wisely, yard sign can make your business feel it.

When I say “your business will feel the effect of yard signs” I mean that even when you put out a yard sign to promote a garage sale or something like that, what’s behind that, is in reality some sort of business transaction that you expect to happen…..

What is a Yard Sign?

Yard signs are also known as lawn signs, bandit signs, placards or road signs. These are small advertising signs that, are placed on the lawn so that people or vehicles circulating will see the advertising pieces.

picture showing dozens of yard signs and lawn signs — Dozens of yard signs and lawn signs saturating the message. Credit to the Tennessee Beacon Center

This year we’ve seen a tooonnnn of yard signs that express support for one or another of the political candidates running for office, judges running for benches and local representatives such as city councils.

picture of yard signs with creative messages and graphics — Business Yard Signs can be creative and unique.

What are Yard Signs made of?

Yard signs are made out a plastic material called coroplast,which is a plastic sheet that is hollow. Because of the constructive method, it is very strong. The plastic walls that links both faces of the board give to it an incredible mechanical resistance and strength.

The small pipes that are created in the sheet are usually called “flutes”. Since the yard signs are usually kept in place by inserting a metal H stake in the flutes, it is always important to understand if the sign that you need requires vertical or horizontal flutes

H metal stake to hold a coroplast yard sign — The metal stakes fit in the flutes on one end, and are pushed into the ground (usually by pushing with the foot) on the other end

picture showing a coroplast sheet explaining how it is made and why it is so strong — Whether a 4mm or a 10mm board, the structure remains the same and you can see how its built

How do yard signs get printed?

There are three methods that are the most popular or maybe four if you will consider hand writing.

Vinyl letters cut and adhered
Printing on vinyl film in a poster-size-large- format printer and laminating it to the coroplast
Directly printing on the coroplast on what’s called a “flat bed” printer.

Which are the Typical Sizes of Yard Signs?

The most popular sizes are 18″x24″ and 12″x18″

During the political periods, you can see larger signs made out of coroplast. In those examples, the sign company will build a custom wood structure and the coroplast will get stapled or screwed to it.

“Shapes or business yard signs”

These are usually rectangular, although they can be made in any custom shape, thanks to the use of sophisticated router cutters.

We look forward to hearing your comments!
Till next time!

Halloween Spirit with Creative Labels

Tic Tac, Tic Tac…..

The clock is ticking and we are just a few days away of Halloween, which probably means that most of you are putting together the best ideas and best decorations for Halloween.

Halloween celebration and the marketing related to the day are big here!

I don’t know how Halloween is celebrated within your community (In fact I would like to hear from you!), but my experience in this area, South Florida, is that children and their families have a ton of fun when planning for this day. Even those adults with adult children get ready.

Going to the candy store, buying candy containers and putting together a nice decoration of the homes and the yard are a part of a tradition here that cannot be skipped.

Even HOAs will “rule” on how to celebrate and create the safest conditions for the comunities as a whole.

If we were to talk about how businesses celebrate, that’s a whole category in itself. We’ve seen greeting cards, scary flyers, postcards and even surprise gifts as part of the celebration.

But what caught our attention were the labels! It used to be that printed labels would have regular shapes, such as either square or round. The fact that we can now provide them in any shape or size or color creates a wave of creativity that we had not seen!

Examples of creative labels for Halloween.

This is a great example of a creative label. In this case the creation is by Mark Chipkin and the size of the label is 2.25″x4″, which makes it ideal to be stuck on a chocolate bar, on the front of the plastic bag that you might be using to put the pack of candies together.

Here is another great example on how to make the Halloween night even more fan, and take an extra pleasure when getting the stuff together.

2″x2″ Halloween label

This other example Brianna wants to make her community so much more open and friendly, came up with this idea where she created so many Halloween related cliparts which were placed as part of the giveaways.
This is a great example of how to build community and have fun!

friendly halloween label — Make your community friendlier by getting to know each other

Share with us what is special about Halloween for you

Till next post!