A year ago, Livonia, Mich.-based Exhibit Works joined a growing parade of exhibit builders that have opened offices in Orange County to take advantage of a burgeoning demand for trade show booths, showrooms and other public displays.
Today, the Foothill Ranch office of Exhibit Works has grown from 20 to 75 employees in its 110,000-square-foot facility, generated $7 million in its first year of operation and snagged local players like Fountain Valley-based Kingston Technology Co. and Vans, Santa Fe Springs, for its growing roster of clients.
Exhibit Works, which has 300 employees company-wide and 1999 gross revenue of $99.2 million, chose Foothill Ranch for its Southern California office to be close to Lincoln Mercury,an account it has held since the mid-’80s,and to Mazda, an account acquired since the move.
The company has long specialized in work for the auto industry, but it has found Orange County to be a more diverse market.
“The business environment has been great,” said Mike Lockard, vice president. “In Michigan, it’s almost all automotive. Here there’s other industries,apparel, high-tech, sporting goods,it was a pleasant surprise for us.”
Another surprise was the permitting process and building codes, which Lockard said are stricter here than in Michigan.
Lockard attributes the company’s rapid growth in this market to what he says is a focus on the client’s entire marketing program rather than just on the trade show or exhibit element.
“We think of ourselves as a three-dimensional advertising agency,” Lockard said.
Besides its work designing and building exhibits, the company has two other divisions: Museum Services, a division established in 1992; and Presentation Works, a division offering multi-media products that became part of Exhibit Works in 1996.
Lockard said the company approaches clients with the ability to create a complete marketing program, including conventions and trade shows as well as other creative elements.
“Typically, a trade show company would rely on an (advertising) agency to do some of the creative,” he said. Instead, Exhibit Works can create 3-D images, animation and other modeling that helps the client integrate trade shows into their marketing program as a whole.
With Vans for instance, Lockard said, Exhibit Works created a two-story environment that incorporated videos and music from Vans events to convey the company’s brand image to show attendees. The expanded display gave them a bigger presence at the Western Shoe Show in Las Vegas last summer and at the recent Action Sports Retailer Trade Expo in San Diego.
Vans won best of show for the booth at both conventions.
For Kingston Technology, the issue was how to showcase circuit boards in a distinctive manner. The end result was a display that looked like a fine jewelry store, with memory products filling in for precious stones.
“It became a marketing tool for them,” Lockard said.
But though the company is pleased with its first year’s progress in Orange County, there’s plenty of competition to keep it on its toes.
“We’ve lured some clients,” Lockard said, referring to Kingston, for one, “but there’s only so many, and everybody’s fighting for the same ones.”
There are about a dozen exhibit builders in Orange County, some of which started in the ’70s and others that have moved in more recently to take advantage of an increased convention market spurred by the expansion of the Anaheim Convention Center.
And though Exhibit Works believes it has found a niche with cutting-edge presentation software and marketing services, other local companies also provide such services.
In 1998, Irvine-based Displayworks, founded in Costa Mesa in 1980, created a sister company called Com Works to handle strategic marketing for its clients. Last year, Displayworks went after the corporate market, focusing on retail and commercial fixture installations and lobbies for such clients as Traditional Jewelers in Fashion Island.
And Exhibitgroup/Giltspur, a $2.5 billion subsidiary of Viad Corp., Phoenix, that relocated its Southern California headquarters to Cypress in 1998, also does custom graphic design.
GES Exposition Services, Garden Grove, also consolidated its Southland operations here last year and provides services for the Western Shoe Show and giant computer show Comdex in Las Vegas.
But Lockard said Exhibit Works’ longstanding expertise in the auto and museum businesses help give it a leg up.
Among the company’s museum clients are the Santa Monica Mountains Conservatory and the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, the St. Louis Science Center, the Arizona Science Center and the Motown Museum in Michigan.
Even in that niche, however, Exhibit Works has some local competition: Exhibitgroup/Giltspur has done work on the Getty Center, while Anaheim-based Skyline Displays and Taylor Exhibit & Exposition Services, also of Anaheim, counts Ferrari and the Long Beach Grand Prix among its clientele.
But Lockard said that, despite sometimes intense local competition, he’s optimistic for the company’s future, expecting yearly revenue to double or triple in the firm’s second year in OC.
“I’ve been in this industry since 1980,” Lockard said. “Today’s clients pretty well know what they need when they come to us. And we have the whole process under one roof. The process is the fun part of the business.” n
