Services / Trade Shows

Large-scale trade shows can easily become coordination headaches when multiple vendors are involved—separate contracts, mismatched schedules, and fragmented plans. The real risk isn’t technical failure; it’s the breakdowns between vendors: an entrance built by one group, lit by another, and wired by a third who’s never seen the final design. With Premier Creative Group’s OneSource model, a single, accountable team manages audio, video, lighting, scenic, and creative. The plan you approve is exactly what you see at load-in—no surprises, no confusion.

Key takeaways

• Our trade show AV production covers every attendee space outside the ballroom, and at Huntington Place, we also provide expert AV support for the expo hall—all planned as one cohesive program.
• From custom entrances with lightboxes to branded registration areas and charging stations, we bring your trade show’s brand to life—anywhere your event takes place.
• On the expo floor at Huntington Place, we provide AV support for the hall itself, and exhibitors can conveniently order AV rentals through our streamlined exhibitor portal.
• Please note: Premier Creative Group does not design or build individual exhibitor booths.

Our work extends far beyond the ballroom doors. The attendee experience begins the moment guests arrive, and we make sure every entrance, registration area, and branded charging station makes an impact. These first impressions set the tone for your entire event—long before the general session begins.

Our ancillary offerings include branded high-tops, charging tables, registration counters, digital signage, light boxes, column entrances, and totems, plus large-format frames for registration and agenda displays. Most of these items can be branded and customized. Scenic Design builds the entrances and structures, and our in-house fabrication team finishes them. Lighting Design carries through to the foyer and entrance spaces, and Creative Services produces the branded content that plays on digital signage. Because one team plans these spaces with the rest of your production, they can match the look of the rest of the event and follow the same load-in schedule.

Successful trade shows are built on meticulous planning—long before anyone arrives on site. At Premier Creative Group, we design every program to fit the venue perfectly, analyzing rigging points, power requirements, and even the building’s RF spectrum. Scaled CAD drawings are created and shared in advance, and every schedule—from load-in to showtime—is carefully coordinated so every team knows exactly when and where to move.

Solving problems on paper is far more cost-effective than on show day. That’s why we use advanced 3D pre-visualization to model your room layout, entrances, and scenic elements before any equipment arrives. This process allows us to identify and resolve potential conflicts early, saving time, money, and stress. 3D pre-visualization is your budget’s best insurance policy for a flawless event.

Busy expo venues are packed with wireless devices—and interference can derail even the best-planned shows. We pre-coordinate all wireless microphones, in-ear monitors, and communication systems to ensure your event runs interference-free, no matter how crowded the RF environment.

Every venue comes with its own unique set of labor rules, dictating who can handle equipment and when. At Premier Creative Group, we build your load-in schedule around the specific requirements of your venue—aligning crew calls, truck arrivals, and ready-by times with what the hall allows. Because every team works from the same coordinated schedule, any labor delay can be addressed immediately as a scheduling issue, preventing it from snowballing into bigger technical problems down the line.

Freight and drayage are critical considerations for any trade show. Drayage—the fee for moving materials from the loading dock to their final destination—applies to both production gear and exhibits. Whether you ship gear in advance or rent locally can significantly affect your costs, so it’s essential to make these decisions early in the planning process, not at load-in. Understanding these hidden costs helps you avoid last-minute surprises and manage your budget effectively.

Key takeaway: Detailed CAD drawings, 3D pre-visualization, frequency coordination, and a unified load-in schedule allow us to catch conflicts on paper—saving you valuable time and money on the show floor.

Premier Creative Group has proudly served as the preferred AV partner at Huntington Place in Detroit since 2014. This ongoing partnership has given us invaluable experience executing flawless events under the most demanding conditions—coordinating multiple spaces on tight schedules and ensuring every show runs without a hitch.

Our expertise extends throughout the expo hall at Huntington Place, where we provide comprehensive AV support for events of every size. Exhibitors can easily order AV rentals through our dedicated exhibitor portal, while event clients and exhibitors alike can submit rigging requests, load-in and load-out schedules, and CAD documents through our rigging portal—ensuring everyone operates from a unified schedule and detailed floor plan. While we focus exclusively on AV (not booth design or construction), our track record includes high-profile events like the Detroit Auto Show, which draws hundreds of thousands of attendees each year.

At Premier Creative Group, we call this approach OneSource: a single, accountable team handling every discipline—planned as a cohesive whole, not pieced together at the last minute. One Team. One Vision. One Point of Accountability. Our audio and video production experts collaborate seamlessly with scenic, lighting, and creative teams, all guided by unified production management. From technical direction and CAD layouts to labor planning, venue coordination, and precise show calling, we ensure every detail is aligned for flawless execution.

Many shows also include general sessions and breakouts. For that work at a convention, see our convention production page. For corporate meetings, see general session production and breakout production.

Trade shows are always on the move, and your event needs to keep pace. At Premier Creative Group, our solutions are designed to travel—ensuring entrances, registration areas, charging stations, and digital signage deliver a consistent, branded experience in every city. Our crews are made up of in-house technicians and stage managers, supported by carefully vetted freelancers—not anonymous subcontractors. Discover where we operate and what sets us apart as a true multi-city conference partner.