OnFulfillment Blog | Event Support

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.

Back in 2020 and 2021, when the world was in the throes of the COVID-19 lockdown, many companies scaled back their operations and revisited their business goals and objectives while adjusting to a new remote workforce.

Not OnFulfillment.

Rather than lose momentum, we viewed the slowdown as an opportunity to enhance our capabilities, expand our business, and introduce changes that were otherwise difficult if not impossible during busier times. While many of our competitors sat around waiting for the pandemic to end and business to return to normal, we took advantage of the downtime to implement improvements that allowed us to hit the ground running once the restrictions were lifted.

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.