Stand walls and panels for the Business Design Centre

The venue and what it demands

The Business Design Centre sits in central Islington, and that single fact shapes every job there. It is a converted Victorian agricultural hall in a dense inner-London borough: loading windows are narrow, the vehicle pays the congestion charge and has to meet the emission zone rules, and there is nowhere to stage material outside.

The consequence for a supplier is simple and absolute: one delivery, complete, on time, in the slot. A forgotten connector at the NEC costs twenty minutes; at the BDC it can cost a day, because there is no second run.

The stands themselves are mostly compact B2B — the venue's calendar is conference-led, with a great many 6 to 20 m² stands, frequently in shell scheme or built small and tall inside it. That makes two things matter more than they would on a large stand.

The edge, because the visitor is one metre away. On a 9 m² stand the wall is the entire visible surface; there is no distance to hide a poor chamfer or a joint that does not meet. The perimeter frame is what holds that line build after build.

Repeatability, because the exhibitors come back. A conference-led venue means the same companies, the same footprint, several times a year. That is exactly the case where buying a set of walls beats hiring one repeatedly — and for a British contractor, a stock held in the UK is cleared through customs once rather than every show.

The main shows

The shows we are asked about most at this venue:

• Aviation Festival and the conference-led B2B shows — compact stands, high finish, tight build-ups.
• Internet Retailing and the digital commerce calendar — built-in screens and cable runs in the panel thickness.
• The design and craft fairs the hall is known for, where the wall is a display surface: slatwall and shelving loads.
• Recurring trade shows whose exhibitors return several times a year on comparable footprints.

What we supply for a stand

What leaves Fontanelle for a build is almost always the same package:

• standard PSL panel for the stand walls, 40 or 50 mm, up to 6,000 mm tall;
• fire-rated version where the venue requires it — and in the UK the requirement needs reading twice, documentation included;
• stand doors, assembled and ironmongered, reversible, with vision panel or panic bar;
• levelling platforms, drilled for adjustable feet, for a raised floor;
• alignment rails, I·L·T·X connectors and cover strips for dry assembly, with no saw on the stand.

How and in what time we deliver

Standard sizes from our warehouse in the Netherlands. Our warehouse in Waalwijk holds thousands of raw honeycomb panels in standard sizes, ready to ship with no production lead time. It is about 95 km from Hook of Holland: overnight ferry to Harwich, then roughly 125 km to Business Design Centre, London — instead of 1,400 km by road from Italy, and cheaper. UK customs formalities still apply. More on the Waalwijk warehouse.

Made-to-measure and special versions are built in Fontanelle, province of Treviso, and that is where the lorries leave from. London is roughly 1,400 km away: delivery direct to the hall in your build-up slot, or to your store if you would rather prepare the stand first.

Great Britain is outside the EU, so every consignment carries an import declaration. Nothing about that is difficult, but it is sequential: we ask for sizes confirmed about three weeks out, and for the importer of record to be named at order stage rather than at dispatch — the whole picture is here.

Standard sizes are held in stock. We normally dispatch within 7 days of order confirmation, often sooner. No minimum order, single pieces included, and no surcharge for non-standard sizes: the price of the next standard size up applies.

Frequently asked questions

A stand to cost at Business Design Centre?

Send us the drawing, the sizes and the quantities: you get a written quote, normally within 24 working hours, in English, German, French or Italian.