By the Exhibition Stall Design editorial team · Updated 1 October 2026 · 9 min read
Short answer
Event management company is quoted from the constraints, so a brief that states them gets an accurate figure: venue and room, surface or screen dimensions, show times and repeats, available power and rigging points, the outcome with a number on it, the audience, the content plan and format, what must carry a spare, a budget range, and who signs off by when. Anything omitted is priced defensively rather than cheaply.
Key takeaways
- Send the identical brief to every supplier. Quotes are only comparable if they answer the same question.
- State one primary goal with a number attached. "Build brand awareness" and "book 40 distributor meetings" produce two completely different results at the same cost.
- Every blank field becomes an assumption, and every assumption is priced for the worst case. That is the whole argument for filling it in.
- Surface or screen size and the number of runs do more to the price than any creative decision. The crew bill often exceeds the hardware bill.
- Write "advise us" rather than deleting a field. A supplier cannot tell a deliberate no from an oversight, and prices the safer reading.
- Name the approver and the decision date. The real timeline is usually your sign-off chain, not the workshop.
The quote is a statement about your brief
Most exhibitors believe a quote is a statement about a supplier. It is mostly a statement about a brief. Given the dimensions, the dates, the specification and the outcome, any competent supplier arrives at a similar number; given "we need something impressive for the event next month", three will return three unrelated figures, and the gap between them is not skill — it is the different assumptions each one made to fill your gaps.
That matters commercially. Large exhibitors, government bodies, export councils and multinationals who want a single accountable partner for the whole participation, and the complaint that follows a bad procurement round is almost always the same: the quotes were not comparable. They were not comparable because the brief did not fix the variables. For event management company the variables that move the price most are total area and number of co-exhibitors, scope (design, build, AV, furniture, logistics, manpower, hospitality) and number of cities or shows in the programme — and all of them are things only you can state.
Then there is the schedule. Every missing field is a round trip, and round trips happen at the front of the project, where the content still has to be produced and the rehearsal still has to be found. An hour spent gathering answers before you send anything is the highest-return hour in the whole production.
A supplier cannot leave a gap unpriced. Every blank field becomes an assumption, and the safe assumption is the expensive one.
The fields, their reasons, and worked answers
Read this as the template itself rather than as advice about one. Each row names a field, explains what decision it feeds, and shows a usable answer. The example column belongs to one organisation — automotive component manufacturer, hosting a channel partner meet — and the same brief is written out in full further down.
The middle column is the part worth arguing with. If you can see which decision a field feeds, you can tell whether your own answer is specific enough to be useful — and a field answered uselessly costs the same round trip as one left blank.
| Field | Why it is asked | Example answer |
|---|---|---|
| Company, brand and what you sell | Decides tone: the same budget produces very different work for a technical audience and a consumer one | Automotive component manufacturer, hosting a channel partner meet |
| Load-in, rehearsal and show dates | Every other date in the project is calculated backwards from this one | Load-in and rehearsal the day before; show as per the run order |
| One primary goal, with a number | This is the sentence the design is a solution to. Without it the work optimises for looking finished | Open the evening with a facade moment that 250 partners watch together, twice a night |
| Who you want to reach | Sets how open or how focused the whole thing has to be, and from how far away it must read | Channel partners, workshop owners and regional service managers |
| What is being shown or revealed | Fixes the hero position and everything that has to support it — loading, power, cues, sightlines | A brand story mapped onto the venue facade, plus a product wall inside |
| Brand assets and references | Artwork you own the rights to, at final size — plus three images that replace a page of adjectives | Logo in vector, brand guidelines, product photography; three reference images with a line on each |
| Budget range | Without it the first concept lands above or below your band and a revision round is wasted | ₹6–7 lakh, excluding venue charges and GST |
| Surface, screen or room dimensions | The single biggest driver of hardware cost — projector count, panel count and processing all follow from it | a main stage with a 7 × 4 m LED wall and two delegate screens |
| Show times and repeats per day | Decides crew days, operator shifts and whether equipment has to run continuously or can be reset between runs | Three conference days, one rehearsal evening |
| Available power and rigging points | Determines what can physically be hung and powered at that position, and whether a generator or distribution board is needed | To be confirmed on a site visit; venue curfew applies |
| Content: who makes it, and in what format | Content is the longest-lead item on most AV scopes, and the wrong aspect ratio cannot be fixed on the night | We produce it; confirm format, resolution and the last acceptable delivery date |
Keep every heading even where the answer is "none" or "advise us". A deleted line reads as an oversight, and an oversight gets priced defensively.
The blank version, ready to paste
Copy this into whatever you write in. Leave the headings alone — they are what makes two replies comparable — and send the same text to everyone on your list. Improving the brief between suppliers is the quickest way to end up unable to choose between them.
Send brand files and references as attachments, with a sentence on each image saying what you liked. "This layout but not this palette" tells a designer more than three paragraphs of description, and it takes ten seconds to write.
- Company / brand, and what you sell:
- Who buys from you, and who you want to reach at this event:
- Event name, city and venue:
- Secondary goal, if any:
- Elements you do not want:
- Brand assets attached (logo, guidelines, product photography):
- Reference images attached, with a line on what you liked about each:
- Budget range, and what it excludes:
- Who approves, and by when:
- How many suppliers you are briefing:
- Whether you need the quote itemised, and in what format:
- Room, stage or surface dimensions:
- Load-in date and available hours:
- Rehearsal slot, and who will attend it:
- Show dates, running times and repeats per day:
- Available power at the position, and rigging points:
- Content: who is producing it, in what format, by when:
- Who calls the cues on the day:
- What must carry a spare (projector, server, radio channel):
The same brief, written out properly
A filled form is not automatically a good brief; the answers have to be usable. Here is the same information written out properly, in six short paragraphs, by the organisation in the example column above.
Almost nothing here is a design instruction, and that is deliberate. Describe the problem precisely and you will get a better answer than you would have specified.
01
Context: the business and the buyer
We manufacture automotive components and sell through workshops and distributors. Our annual partner meet runs over two evenings at a hotel, and we want to open each evening outdoors with something on the building itself before guests come inside for dinner and the awards. We have not done projection before and do not know what is realistic.
02
Venue, power and show times
A main stage with a 7 × 4 m LED wall and two delegate screens, three conference days, one rehearsal evening. Available power, rigging points and the venue's curfew all need confirming on a recce, which we can arrange in the next week. Load-in and rehearsal are the day before.
03
What the show has to achieve
Primary goal: a facade moment that 250 partners watch together at the start of each evening, running twice a night so late arrivals see it. Secondary: footage we can use in the partner newsletter. What we care about is that it reads clearly from the viewing position guests will actually stand in, which we think is about 40 m back across the forecourt.
04
What has to happen, and what cannot fail
A brand story mapped onto the venue facade, plus a product wall inside. Non-negotiables: facade projection aligned to the building, a clear viewing position, audio that carries outdoors, and a backup projector. We are producing the content ourselves, so please specify the format, resolution and aspect ratio you need, and the deadline after which a late file stops being rehearsable.
05
What we intend to spend, and on what
Budget ₹6–7 lakh for the production itself; venue charges and tax are separate. If the figure comes back high we would sooner reduce the scale than reduce the crew or the rehearsal time. Please quote line by line.
06
The decision
Our marketing head decides with sign-off from the regional director, and the hotel has to approve anything mounted outdoors, so please tell us what permissions you need from the venue and when. Two suppliers are quoting. We would like the content and the hardware costed separately so we can see the trade-off.
The same brief, costed line by line
This is the output of the brief above, costed. A main stage with a 7 × 4 m LED wall and two delegate screens, three conference days, one rehearsal evening, itemised element by element, landing inside the ₹6–7 lakh range the brief stated. Quoted per event after a brief; we share a line-item budget before you commit. Treat the shape of the breakdown as the transferable part.
Look at the proportions rather than the figures. The LED wall and screens line is 31% of the total; the remaining 69% is content, rigging, power, crew, rehearsal and freight. Crew and rehearsal are the lines exhibitors most often try to cut and most often regret cutting, because they are what make a show run rather than merely exist.
| LED wall, delegate screens and processing | ₹2,10,000 |
|---|---|
| Stage lighting, fixtures and control | ₹96,000 |
| Audio — PA, radio microphones and crew comms | ₹85,000 |
| Truss, rigging and power distribution | ₹72,000 |
| Content preparation, graphics and programming | ₹68,000 |
| Crew across rehearsal and three show days | ₹94,000 |
| Freight to the venue and back | ₹45,000 |
| Indicative total, before GST | ₹6,70,000 |
Illustrative, and included to show proportions rather than prices. The real figure follows screen specification, the number of event days and how many operators the run order needs. Venue charges and GST are separate.
Exhibiting soon? Let's build your stall.
What happens to your quote when a field is blank
If you only read one part of this page, read this. Nothing in a quote can be left unpriced, so a blank field forces a decision: guess low and risk the job, or guess high and carry it in the price. Commercially, suppliers guess high. The blank field is therefore not neutral — it is a surcharge you chose without knowing it.
The invisibility is what makes it expensive. Assumptions are never itemised, so two quotes built on opposite guesses look like a straightforward price difference — and the one that guessed your way is indistinguishable from the one that is genuinely cheaper.
| Field left blank | What the supplier has to assume | What it does to the quote |
|---|---|---|
| Primary goal | A general-purpose approach | Budget spent on looking impressive rather than on the one thing you came to do |
| Who you want to reach | A broad, mixed audience | A broadcast solution when you needed an intimate one, or the reverse |
| Dates and times | A comfortable schedule | Night-shift and rush charges surface after the order rather than inside the price |
| Budget range | Mid-band, or the top of it | Either a concept you cannot afford — a lost week — or one that under-delivers |
| Show times and repeats | A single run | The hardware is right and the crew bill is wrong |
| Available power and rigging | The conservative case | Either an unnecessary power line, or a rig the venue will refuse |
| Content format and delivery date | Content arrives in good time | The first full run happens in front of your audience |
| Redundancy requirements | No spares | One projector, one server, and no answer if either fails |
| Venue noise limit and curfew | Standard hours | Rework on site, or a show that has to end earlier than announced |
| Who calls the cues | The supplier will | Cues that work in the prep bay and not on the night |
None of these assumptions is a supplier behaving badly. Each is the only rational response to a gap. The fix is on your side of the table and takes twenty minutes.
You will never see "we assumed the worst case" on a quote. You will only see a number that looks expensive.
The event management company-specific lines worth adding
An event management company scope has its own variables, and leaving them out is what turns a reasonable quote into a vague one. The lines below are the ones that matter. None of them requires technical knowledge to answer — only a decision, or an admission that there is not one yet.
"Advise us" is a legitimate answer to any of these and will get you a recommendation with a number attached. Leaving the line out gets you an assumption instead.
- Which elements are in scope — design, build, AV, furniture, flooring, logistics, manpower, hospitality
- Whether a single consolidated invoice is required, and in whose name
- What post-show reporting you need, and who it goes to
- Which elements you would rather contract directly, and who owns that interface
- What your procurement process needs to see before a purchase order can be raised
How briefs go wrong
Long briefs are not better briefs. The ones that work are short, numeric and specific about outcomes; the ones that fail are long, adjectival and specific about appearance. Below are the failures worth avoiding, in rough order of how much time each one costs.
Top of the list is describing the look rather than the job. Adjectives do not constrain anything, which is why every supplier can agree to them and still produce something you did not want. Name the behaviour instead: what should someone do, and where should they be standing when they do it?
Close behind is the brief that evolves between suppliers. Learning from the first conversation and improving the second brief feels like diligence; it destroys the only thing that made the exercise worthwhile, which was comparability. Update everyone or nobody.
- Logos supplied as a low-resolution image lifted from a website
- Deleting fields that do not apply, so the supplier cannot tell "no" from "forgotten"
- Dates missing, so the schedule and any rush cost are both unknown
- Three goals of equal weight, which means the result has to compromise all three
- No budget range, which produces either an unaffordable concept or an under-designed one
- No named approver, so revision rounds expand until production is squeezed
- Describing a look instead of a job — adjectives in place of audience actions
- No surface, screen or room dimensions, which makes the quote arithmetic impossible
- Asking for a "best price" instead of an itemised quote against a fixed scope
- Five pages of company background and no single sentence about the outcome
Send the brief and get a quote
Email it or paste it into the enquiry form, attachments included. What comes back is a concept and an itemised quote, normally inside 48 hours, plus an honest view on whether your dates are workable — which is worth more than the price if the event is close.
Quoted per event after a brief; we share a line-item budget before you commit. We design free with every confirmed fabrication order, build in our own workshops, prepare and file the organiser drawings, and put one named project manager on the job from brief to dismantle. If your dates are tighter than the brief suggests is comfortable, say so in the brief and we will tell you honestly what is achievable.
- On-ground crew and show-calling
- Concept, budget and run-of-show planning
- Stage, AV, lighting and decor in-house
- Venue scouting and permissions
Frequently asked questions
What should an event management company brief include?+
The venue and the surface, the dates and show times, the goal and the money — then the audience, what is being shown, who is producing the content and in what format, what has to carry a spare, your brand files, and the name of whoever signs it off. One page covers all of it.
Should I send the same brief to every supplier?+
Yes, and resist improving it as you go. It feels efficient to add detail you learn from the first conversation, but it guarantees that the figures you receive answer different questions. If you learn something worth adding, send it to everyone the same day.
Why do show times and repeats matter so much?+
Because crew is often the largest line on a short show. Hardware is hired for a period, but technicians and operators are paid by the day, and a setup that runs four times a night for two nights needs a different crew plan from one that runs once. It also decides whether equipment can be reset between runs or has to hold its state.
What does a scope like this cost?+
₹6,70,000 before GST, for the illustrative scope on this page. That figure is there to show where the money sits — LED wall and screens is 31% of it — rather than to price your event, because event management company is quoted per show against the specification in your brief. Quoted per event after a brief; we share a line-item budget before you commit.
How quickly will I get a concept back?+
A complete brief usually returns a concept and an itemised quote within 48 hours. An incomplete one returns a clarification email instead, and that exchange typically adds two days at the front of a schedule that is rarely generous.
Do I need to specify equipment in the brief?+
No. Specify the constraints and the outcome — surface or screen size, ambient light, audience size, show times, what must not fail — and let the supplier propose projector counts, pixel pitch and fixture lists in an equipment schedule. Over-specified kit is the commonest line of waste on an AV quote.
What is the single most important field?+
One sentence describing what has to be true afterwards, with a figure attached. Everything else is a constraint; this is the brief. Without it a supplier can produce something buildable, compliant, on budget and completely beside the point.
Should I brief before or after confirming the venue?+
Ideally once the room is known, since the design is constrained by what can be hung and powered there. Where the venue is still open, say so and brief against the shortlist — a supplier can usually tell you which option costs least to achieve the same effect.
Who should write the brief internally?+
One person, with input from everyone who will later have an opinion. The brief is also the document that resolves internal disagreement before it reaches a supplier — which is cheaper than resolving it across two revision rounds and a redesign.
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