OnFulfillment Blog | Event Marketing Materials

This year, OnFulfillment celebrates its Silver Anniversary—25 years of meeting the various printing, storage, shipping, training, and marketing fulfillment needs of customers worldwide.

To mark this occasion, we’re using this blog space to revisit our history and recall how we have evolved over the past two and half decades. We started off with a high-level overview of our first 25 years, followed by several more focused entries offering a closer look into the into specific services such as printing and branded promotional merchandise. printing. With today’s entry, we’re exploring OnFulfillment’s foray into the event fulfillment and management space.

Event managers have a tough job. They are responsible for every trade show, seminar and conference in which your company will participate. That’s a lot to handle.

It’s even more impressive when you consider that each of the events these managers oversee are composed of multiple components and moving parts. There are promotional items, signage, displays, demos, printed collateral, and much more. Add staffing to the equation, including arranging accommodations and both short- and long-distance travel to and from the events for potentially dozens of people, and it’s easy to see just how overwhelming and stressful it can all become. Simply put, event managers must be exceptionally skilled at juggling multiple tasks simultaneously in order to pull it all off successfully.

You’ve heard us say it before, and we’ll continue to say it: events are making a huge comeback.

Pent-up demand following the COVID-inspired shutdowns has driven companies back into events, primarily in-person gatherings. In fact, most of our new customers over the past year originated as a request for assistance with their event management responsibilities.

To capitalize on this trend, many of our competitors have started advertising themselves as event fulfillment and management providers. Never mind that, up to this point, these gifting platforms have focused almost exclusively on producing and mailing branded merchandise. When they see a business opportunity, they jump on it.

We’ve said it many times over the past several months: trade shows and events are making a huge comeback. Most of the new customers we’ve welcomed in 2023 actually came to us looking for help with their event management requirements.

One thing we’ve discovered in our initial meetings with these new customers is they are often confused about the differences between exhibit houses or providers and event support and management services. Many assumed they were synonymous, leading to lots of frustration as they searched in vain for vendors who could provide the help they were looking for. Turns out a simple change in their search strategy could have led them right to their ideal partner, saving considerable time and effort.

Many businesses with an international presence are called upon to support events not only in the U.S. but also throughout Europe.

Are their differences between the two? On the surface, the basic process appears to be the same for both locations: identify and gather the necessary materials, ship them to the venue, and return them after the event so they can be placed back into inventory. But dive a little deeper and you’ll find there are significant differences that must be considered when planning an international event. 

This blog will explore the various issues and challenges—some subtle, some more obvious—that confront you when planning organizing an event outside the U.S. While we’ll be focusing on Europe here, understand that these same issues apply to other locations and continents as well and will require a bit of research to adequately address them.