Showscape lays down the groundwork for the exhibitors at Fieldays
With more than 1000 exhibitors at Fieldays, there is a lot of ground keeping and maintenance to be done. This means work for Scott Gordon’s business, Showscape Hire.
Scott Gordon steps out of his sign painted business station wagon wearing a fluorescent yellow cap branded with ‘Showscape’.
As he begins to answer questions about his involvement with the New Zealand National Agricultural Fieldays 2011, he is bombarded with phone call after phone call.
With more than 1000 exhibitors at Fieldays, there is a lot of ground keeping and maintenance to be done. This means work for Scott Gordon’s business, Showscape Hire.
Showscape organises everything from the site design and set-up, catering and accommodation to displaying the final products and the cleanup afterwards. Clients only need to show up on the day and sell their products.
Each year, 350 banner poles, 600-800m2 of cobblestones, 3500m3 of ground cover and 1500 to 2000 hire plants are transferred to and around the Fieldays sites.
Showscape buys its plants each year from Keripark Nursery, and bark and other ground cover from Daltons in Matamata. Otherwise, it owns all the banner poles and other bits and pieces needed to pull off this feat. It leases land by the Waikato River, off the neighbouring Lochiel Golf Club and stores all its ground cover and tools onsite.
Showscape organises everything for 400 sites, including the flooring, the marquees and setting up the products on display.
Its staff of four swells to 25 in the three months surrounding Fieldays. Most staff in the week leading up to the Fieldays work 18 hour days.
Gordon says the organisation is getting smoother each year.
“When you’re setting up, there is so much equipment and tight confined areas to work in. We run quite a bit of machinery out there to get our jobs done. And normally one of the workers will back into some new vehicle or hit a marquee and rip it or something. Two years ago we sent in five insurance claims, last year it was three, so it’s getting better.”
As part of the service, Showscape does all the cleanup of the sites. This can take up to a month.
“It’s a bigger job, cleaning up than setting up. The Fieldays is really strict about cleaning sites up, with the other events they have got there throughout the year.”
After the cleanup is usually the time some of the larger clients start the planning process.
However, there are always latecomers. Gordon seems to manage well.
“You get a lot of people that leave it to the last minute. About February, March, they ring up and have forgotten about the Fieldays, and are in a bit of a panic.”
For more information, contact. 0800 746 972 or visit www.showscape.co.nz
