Passing Pleasures

Here today, gone tomorrow. Why would companies spend money on temporary installations in a recession? And more importantly when they do - what do they want? Anna Mitchell reports.

As the recession hits, audiovisual integrators have been plagued with specification reductions, project hold ups and cancellations. But how is the rental industry faring? Temporary installations are transitory by nature and if a company is cutting its budget for purchasing fixed equipment, essentially an investment, why would it plough cash into a short-lived event?

“There’s definitely been a reduction in budget spend, but whether that’s resulted in a reduction of technology spend is questionable,” argues Oliver Richardson, sales director of UK based DB Systems. DB offer audiovisual rental, specialising in exhibition, event and conference industries and Richardson says while some of his customers (design agencies and production companies) are squeezing their overall budgets the technology part has actually increased in some cases.

He does say, however, that work and confirmations are coming in later. “We’re quoting busily away and there’s a lot of pitching going on but ultimately the person paying the bill - the end client - is leaving it later and later,” he notes. “If you talk to exhibition organisers people aren’t necessarily booking their space later but they are delaying the design of what they are going to do. This is actually not a very good way to do it all. If you don’t do a lot of pre-production on your exhibition stand, you’ll end up with a lovely looking stand that isn’t very dynamic.”

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