Article SummaryThis podcast explores the strategic decision between renting, buying, or hybrid trade show exhibits, drawing on 60+ years of industry experience to highlight the real costs, flexibility, and long-term implications of each approach. It ultimately reframes rental as a strategic advantage and positions hybrid models as the most effective solution for balancing customization, scalability, and budget efficiency.
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If you’ve ever stood on a trade show floor wondering whether you made the right call on your exhibit (owned, rented, or somewhere in between), you’re not alone. It’s one of the most strategically loaded decisions a trade show marketer can make, and it’s rarely as simple as running the numbers.
In the second episode of “Beyond the Booth”, Skyline’s podcast for trade show professionals, host and Senior Managing Director, Brian Lanning, sits down with two seasoned industry veterans: Erin Clute, Managing Director, and Roger Johnsen, Business Development Director. Together they bring more than 60 years of combined exhibit industry experience to the table, and they use every bit of it.
The conversation kicks off with a surprisingly rich history lesson: rental exhibits didn’t start with Airbnb or the gig economy. They trace back to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, where 10,000 exhibitors set up across eight miles of tables for a six-month run. Simple backdrops. Extended rental fees. Sound familiar?
From there, the trio dives into something that rarely gets an honest, multi-sided treatment: the real trade-offs between renting and buying a trade show exhibit, and why the answer for most companies is more nuanced than either camp admits.
One of the most candid parts of this episode tackles the baggage that the word “rental” carries in the exhibit world. Wrinkled graphics. Blurry images. The generic kit look that lets every experienced show-goer spot a rental from across the aisle. The panel doesn’t shy away from it; they call it out directly.
But they also challenge it. The rental landscape has changed dramatically, and the old assumptions (boring, inflexible, budget-settling) no longer tell the whole story. What used to be a “pick one from ten options” exercise has evolved into something far more sophisticated, particularly when you’re working with a partner who rents the same components they sell.
This is where the conversation gets genuinely valuable for anyone managing a trade show program. Erin introduces the concept of invisible costs: the ones that don’t show up on the show floor but quietly impact your budget year after year. Storage fees, crating, wear and tear, refurbishment, freight across the country when your shows migrate to different regions.
Roger raises the bean-counter reality: buying an exhibit is a capital expense with a depreciation schedule. It’s CapEx. It has to be justified, approved, and amortized, which creates its own internal friction that has nothing to do with whether the booth actually works.
Brian puts it plainly: if you’re going to own something, you better love how it looks today, because you may still be rolling it out years from now.
The panel offers a practical framework here rather than a one-size-fits-all answer. Three to four shows per year, in the same size booth space, with consistent brand messaging and audience: that’s historically where the math has started to favor purchase. But that calculation shifts the moment your show schedule moves geographically, your booth size changes, or your buyer persona evolves.
They also discuss something that comes up constantly for exhibitors: the Frankenstein problem. When you own a custom exhibit and try to add to it over time, especially with components from a different system, you end up with a booth that looks like different eras of a house stitched together. It doesn’t hold up.
Perhaps the most actionable part of this episode is the extended discussion around hybrid exhibits, the combination of owned custom elements and rental modular structure. This is where Skyline’s model (and frankly, where smart exhibit strategy in general) tends to land.
The rough framework they describe: 70–75% rental structure, 25–30% custom-owned elements. Your branded demo stations, backlit logos, and proprietary display pieces are owned. The surrounding structure, conference room buildout, and fill elements are rented. The result is a booth that looks completely custom but gives you the flexibility to reconfigure for different footprints, scale up for a big product launch, or deploy branded assets across multiple shows simultaneously without shipping the same crate cross-country.
The ECI Software story and the Walgreens case study shared in this episode illustrate exactly how this plays out in practice, and how dramatically the conversation can shift when a client comes in expecting to buy and leaves with a smarter program.
By the time this episode wraps, it’s clear that the panel’s goal isn’t to sell rental over purchase. It’s to reframe how trade show professionals think about the decision entirely. Rental isn’t settling. For the right program, it’s a competitive advantage: the ability to pivot when a campaign doesn’t land, to enter a new market without a massive capital commitment, to show up at two simultaneous shows on opposite coasts with a consistent brand presence, and to put your budget dollars where attendees can actually see and interact with them.
Over 85% of trade show attendees go to shows to see something new. That statistic, which Brian references from Exhibitor Magazine, reframes everything. If you’re rolling out the same exhibit for the fifth year in a row, what exactly are you inviting them to see?
This conversation goes deep, deeper than any summary can capture. The panel shares real client stories, specific program-planning frameworks, and the kind of nuanced thinking that only comes from decades on the floor.
Beyond the Booth is available on the Skyline website, YouTube, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Beyond the Booth is produced by Skyline Exhibits. New episodes feature conversations with industry professionals on strategy, design, technology, and the evolving world of trade show marketing.
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