In the rental world of exhibits, especially outside of the United States, exhibits are quite often built as turn and burn or build and burn. An exhibit is basically built for one-time use. Booth components are built specifically for a show and then destroyed afterwards — often by burning.

When exhibiting in South America or Asia, and in some cases Europe, many companies choose to exhibit with a build and burn booth because storage space in these regions is limited, expensive, and rarely climate controlled. If an exhibit component is stored in a humid environment without air conditioning for a year, it will begin to break down. Humidity causes wood to warp and laminate to separate from wood backing. Since labor is relatively inexpensive outside of the US, you can build new for the same price or less than what storage and refurbishment would cost.

Exhibitors at shows in the US either purchase or rent an exhibit property. We have discussed this many times; if you stay with the same size exhibit every year, have a place to store your exhibit that is cost free, and can make repairs at relatively inexpensive rates than purchasing may be a good idea. On the other hand if you travel to different sized shows and do not wish to repeat exhibit sizes or looks for a number of years then working with a rental company that can build and change your offering each time is probably the way to go. Here is the bottom line – the turn and burn concept just doesn’t work in the USA where it is too costly to build an exhibit and too environmentally unsound to destroy something after one use. When traveling outside the USA you will have many choices however in the USA a rental will not be a onetime use and therefore the costs are higher. Again the quality will be of a higher level as well and in the case of Absolute Exhibits you will be working with a forward thinking and environmentally responsible company.