Catalogues For Trade Fairs
Exhibition catalogues are used at commercial exhibitions and trade fairs to profile all the exhibitors at the event. They serve not only as a guide for visitors on the day, but also as an industry directory used afterwards by visitors (and others) to find suppliers and business partners.
Many exhibition catalogues are used by market researchers because they contain good quality information about companies that are active in a particular market place.
A typical exhibition catalogue contains the following:
- Introduction and welcome message from the event organiser
- Floor plan showing the location of each exhibition stand
- Summary alphabetical list of exhibitors
- Exhibitor profiles (normally a textual description of each exhibitor plus their contact details)
- A ‘buyer’s guide’ where exhibitors are listed under relevant product or service categories
- Details of seminars or conference sessions running alongside the exhibition
- Advertisements promoting the exhibitors
The format of exhibition catalogues for trade fairs can range from A5-sized ‘saddle-stitched’ publications with descriptions of as few as 30-40 exhibitors, to much larger perfect-bound ‘stretched A5’ or A4-sized directories containing profiles on thousands of companies exhibiting at major international trade events such as The London Book Fair, SIAL (the Paris-based food exhibition), and Nuremberg International Toy Fair (Spielwarenmesse).
The exhibition organiser is ultimately responsible for publishing the catalogue for their own event. However, many organisers outsource the design, production and advertising sales for these publications to specialist exhibition catalogue contract publishers operating within the exhibitions industry.
Other common terms to describe the exhibition catalogue at a trade fair include 'event guide', 'show guide', 'show catalogue', 'exhibition directory', 'fair guide' or 'exhibition guide'. Often exhibition organisers will add the word 'official' to the front of the name of the publication (e.g. 'Official exhibition catalogue') to distinguish their publication from unofficial exhibition catalogues for their event produced by trade magazine publishers.
Read more about this topic: Exhibition Catalogue
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