A day in the life of the Service Alliance at Messe Düsseldorf

The calm before the storm: morning hellos, the sound of coffee brewing and keyboards clicking are the only thing you can hear at our Service Alliance before 8.30 am. Our 4-member team “warms up” with their first cup of coffee. The office is the hub for all services that our exhibitors can book for their stands from Messe Düsseldorf.

“Come with a good mood and your exhibits – we will see to the rest!” This is the answer exhibitors get when they commission our team to prepare a trade fair appearance.

After all, the stand is like a calling card for exhibitors. It has to be professionally designed, attractively staged and managed in a structured manner to ensure companies can make the most successful trade fair appearance possible. This is why we have offered our Service Alliance since 2019 as a central point of contact to pool all of these services and offer one single contact person for the entire organisation of each individual stand. To introduce you to the work of the Service Alliance and the people behind it we have followed the team in their preparation of this year’s EuroCIS, the Retail Technology Trade Fair in Europe.

The Service Alliance offers “one-stop shopping”. It acts as an intermediary between exhibitors and service partners from 72 subcontractors and various Messe Düsseldorf divisions. Be it stand construction, rigging, catering, WIFI, digital lead tracking, cross-media advertising or outdoor advertising – the Service Alliance offers everything you need for your trade fair participation looking after consulting and conception plus smooth processes from stand construction to dismantling.

All of these services can be booked individually or in any desired combination; and since the Service Alliance is a division of Messe Düsseldorf it is also always ready for flexible solutions.

Liviu R. Stoica, head of the Alliance, has been with Messe Düsseldorf for 22 years and working in the Sales and Service department for 13 years. Bianca Bott can also look back on a long history with us: she has been serving Messe Düsseldorf for eleven years and has formed part of Stoica’s team since 2018. Clarissa Falkenberg joined the team two and a half years ago and has been involved in stand construction at Messe Düsseldorf since that time. Prior to joining the Alliance one month ago, Alexa Klein worked in stand construction for the international trade fairs of Messe Düsseldorf.

They all enable exhibitors to enjoy a perfect trade fair participation. The first step towards this goal is the definition of a clear objective and a budget.

The more information the team has about the exhibitor’s needs the better the recommendations they can make for an optimal trade fair stand with matching add-on services like Wi-Fi, catering, outdoor advertising, etc. Their large network of reliable partners also makes it possible to enjoy this support abroad. Anything is possible – from off-the-shelf shell stands to two-storey custom-built booths – worldwide.

Once the services exhibitors wish to book have been established, they can fully rely on the expertise of the team of the Service Alliance since it always also leverages themes trending in the exhibition world and its own experience. For many years sustainability has therefore been centrestage. For instance, many of the components used for stand construction care of the Service Alliance are reusable. Amongst other things, we deploy reusable frames and just exchange the tensioned fabric for each new exhibitors’ graphics. Needless to say, exhibitors can keep these graphics after the trade fair. For these and other printed products we always ensure sustainable fabrics and inks are used that are not detrimental to health and will not emit any pollutants during the trade fair. Incidentally, most items of furniture at the fairgrounds are rented anyway and are reused rather than being disposed of.

A special example of sustainability is carpet upcycling at the trade fair. In cooperation with specialist floor covering retailer Fachhandel für Bodenbeläge SE-BO Köln residual carpeting from the exhibition halls is used to produce new (promotional) products such as bags or dog leashes. SE-BO Köln cooperates with a workshop for the disabled, thereby making a contribution to integration on top of sustainability.

Alongside sustainability aspects the Service Alliance also has other special services in store. So-called special areas, for example, are designed and planned by the relevant team in-house from scratch, showing clearly what is feasible in terms of stand construction by the Service Alliance. And even for open spaces the Service Alliance always comes up with a function such as spaces for resting or conference rooms for exhibitors.

Due to the wide spectrum of tasks it performs the Service Alliance is always busy and, in particular, the last construction day is very exciting because the team never knows in the morning what the day will bring. It’s always impressive to see that the next day all the stands are up, cleaned to the last corner and both exhibitors and visitors are eagerly waiting for us to open the gates.