Stand walls and panels for Harrogate Convention Centre

The venue and what it demands

Harrogate's calendar is dominated by the gift, home and retail trade shows — the buying fairs where independent retailers place orders for the season ahead. For our trade that produces a very specific technical profile.

The stands are compact and numerous: a great many 6 to 20 m² plots, in long rows, with the same exhibitors returning twice a year, year after year. And on nearly every one of them, the wall is not a backdrop — it is display. Product hangs on it, shelves go into it, and the layout is changed during the show as stock moves.

That is exactly what the slatwall panel is made for: a machined carrier grid that takes brackets and shelves without drilling, and releases them again when the display changes. Where product is screwed rather than hung, the reinforced version is the answer — and the load is worth taking seriously, because a filled metre of shelving is heavier than it looks and the weight sits at the bracket points, not spread across the face.

The second consequence is economic, and it is the one that matters most here. Twice a year, every year, on the same footprint: hire is paid in full every single time for a scheme you never own. A bought set pays for itself in two or three editions — which at Harrogate frequency is a single year — provided the joints are made to be taken apart, with connectors and alignment rails rather than screws into the neighbouring panel.

The main shows

What we are asked for most at this venue:

• Harrogate Christmas & Gift and the gift buying fairs — hundreds of compact stands, shelving loads, slatwall.
• Home and interiors shows — product displayed on the wall, high finish, returning exhibitors.
• Trade buying fairs generally, where the same footprint recurs twice a year.
• Conferences at the centre, with short build-up slots and dry assembly.

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 100 km from Rotterdam Europoort: ferry to Hull, then roughly 110 km to Harrogate Convention Centre — instead of 1,700 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. Harrogate is roughly 1,700 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 Harrogate Convention 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.