A 28 m² stand for THAI AWESOME at Zoomark International, BolognaFiere, 15–17 May 2023. It was delivered by the team that now designs and fabricates under the Echo Expo name.
The project
Zoomark is one of the two dominant international trade fairs for the pet industry, held at BolognaFiere. Its visitors are buyers for retail chains, distributors and importers, and they arrive with a defined shopping list and limited time.
An exporter’s stand has a different job from a brand’s stand
A domestic brand at a pet fair is talking to consumers and to retailers who already know it. A manufacturer coming from Asia to a European show is doing something harder: establishing, in a three-day window, that it is a credible supplier to a buyer who has never heard of it and who will place an order measured in containers.
That reorders the priorities on a 28 m² footprint:
- Origin has to read at a distance. Where the product is made is frequently the first qualifying question, and it belongs at fascia height rather than in a leaflet
- Product range matters more than any single product. A buyer is assessing whether the supplier can fill a category, so the display has to show breadth clearly, not one hero item beautifully
- Seated meeting capacity is essential. Volume discussions, specifications, private-label questions and shipping terms are not conversations held standing in an aisle
- Samples must be handleable. Pet food and accessories are judged by picking them up — packaging quality, weight, print quality on the pack
How the stand actually did those jobs
- Food safety and audit certifications sit at fascia height, beside the company name — they are the first thing a European buyer checks in a supplier they have never met, so they are headline information rather than something filed in a brochure
- An entire wall is given to private label — a dedicated your brand here panel. For a contract manufacturer that is not decoration, it is the offer, and it turns a passer-by into a conversation about their own range
- The house brand is segmented the way a buyer shops: cat products on one side, dog products on the other, sub-ranges shelved separately
- Product sits on open shelving at hand height throughout rather than sealed in cases — pouch print, pack weight and packaging quality are all part of the assessment
- An enclosed room keeps the volume and pricing conversation off the aisle
Why it matters
This adds the pet industry to our record — a large European sector we had no presence in. It is also our third BolognaFiere project, alongside Cosmoprof and TABEXPO, across three completely unrelated industries in one venue.
It also continues a pattern that runs through much of our work: manufacturers from outside Europe using a European trade fair to open European distribution. That is the same brief we have built for Thai, Indian, Korean, Turkish, Egyptian and Ethiopian exhibitors.
Services delivered
- Stand design and 3D visualisation
- Fabrication of structure, counters and product display
- Printed graphics
- Lighting
- Furniture, flooring and dressing
- Installation and dismantling
Frequently asked questions
Do you build at BolognaFiere?
Yes — Zoomark, Cosmoprof and TABEXPO to date. Our Italian workshop is a straightforward road route to Bologna, so stands are driven to the hall rather than shipped.
We are exhibiting in Europe for the first time. What should we prioritise?
Origin and range, visible from the aisle, and somewhere to sit down. First-time exporters routinely over-invest in a hero display and under-invest in meeting space, and it is the meetings that produce the orders.
Looking for a Zoomark stand builder?
The organiser publishes official event information at zoomark.it. Tell us the venue, the dates and the stand size, and we will come back with a design and a build plan. Talk to us about your stand, or see our team’s experience.