Start of the series / What should an "exhibition designer" be like?

Starting in November 2025, I began a series in the exhibition industry trade paper "Mihon-ichi Tenjikai Tsushin" (Trade Fair and Exhibition News). The theme is "Exhibition Designer."
In terms of content, I think it applies to many different types of designers, so it might be fine to rephrase the theme as "Designers" in general.
This series is also being published online separately by "Ibesuru," so here I would like to introduce the content while touching upon the series and adding some related information.
Now then. This time, I will introduce the first installment of the series. This was published in November 2025.

Series / What should an exhibition designer be like?

The first installment touches a little bit on my own background before you read the series that is about to begin. Our company is a small design firm with fewer than 10 employees, but because our theme is "exhibition design," and through talking with peers at venues and holding exchange meetings for the exhibition industry with colleagues three times a year, I have interacted with various people in the industry. Although we are not a large organization, there are things I can say from the perspective of a business owner precisely because we are small. Also, I believe there are things I can convey precisely because I have the experience of leaving a large organization, starting my own company, and building it up to its current state. In this first installment, I am sharing such "preliminary stories" that will serve as a starting point for the content of future installments.

Part 1 / Preliminary Story

In the series starting this time, I would like to convey my thoughts on the "nature of organizations" in the exhibition industry. That said, our company is quite small, even within the industry, with fewer than 10 employees. In an industry where there are many large companies with hundreds of employees, and with many seniors in the field, what a representative of a small company can convey may only be a small part of the picture. However, by setting the theme as "designers" this time, I would like to write about what I can convey in my own way regarding "organizations" in the exhibition industry.
I hope that this will provide some hints for action for the many designers active in the exhibition industry, and for those who work alongside designers.

For this first installment of the series, please forgive me for talking a little bit about my own company and myself.

〇 Independence/Starting a business ~ Until specializing in the exhibition industry

I resigned from the general contractor I was working for and started my own business in 2005 to do architectural design. At the time, I registered one room in my home as the office and started from scratch with no track record. When I worked at the general contractor, the sales staff would bring in work. However, once independent, I had to acquire work myself. So, I went to various networking events, met many people, and tried to build connections.

On the other hand, I also tried cold calling, placing ads in magazines, and asking sales agencies for help. However,there were almost no companies that would entrust work to a small design office that was neither a large company nor a famous one, let alone one without a track record,and as a result, I ended up in such dire straits that I had to borrow money from consumer finance companies. At the time, I had almost no knowledge of management, and it was a pathetic state of affairs. That changed when, due to a certain trigger, I decided to specialize in "exhibition booth design."

"Specialize in exhibition booth design."
Once I decided that, I rewrote my website to focus only on exhibitions and sent out about 10,000 direct mail pieces a month. Since I am not good at cold calling or telephone sales, I first thought about "what would make exhibitors contact us?" As a result, I included know-how that exhibitors would want to know on the website, and for the direct mail, I used transparent envelopes containing photos of our track record and customer attraction know-how in a format that would make them "want to open it," and I kept sending them as mail-bin services to the addresses of exhibitors I had researched myself. If you send 10,000 pieces, you can usually get 2-3 inquiries, and even just two was enough to make a living at the time.
I built up a small track record, introduced it through direct mail and the website, and used that as a trigger to get new work, repeating this process to gradually build up my track record. Through these efforts, I was finally able to make a living.
Generally, this is the flow of the first seven years after starting the business.

〇 Facing the client's sad face

When I first started working in exhibition booth design, there is one exhibitor that still remains strongly in my heart.
A local interior materials company requested that I help them exhibit their technology at an exhibition. They said the reason was that they had seen the small track record I had posted on my website and that I had done interior design.
I was eager to build my own track record, so I thought about the design seriously and created a booth design that could be featured in a magazine.
However, on the final day of the exhibition, the exhibitor left the venue with a slightly sad face, saying, "Many people told me the booth design was good."
Do you understand the meaning of these words?
In other words, it meant that while the design was praised, the exhibition did not produce results.
Of course, since then, I have never been asked for work by this company again.

〇 Characteristics of exhibition design

It was at this moment that I keenly realized thatexhibition design only creates customer satisfaction and leads to the next request when it produces "results."I thought I was doing it for the customer, but in reality, it was just self-satisfaction, and I was only creating my own work. I felt very ashamed of this, and I was left with nothing but deep regret for the exhibitor for having provided such work.
Since then, I have made it a point to thoroughly think about what the exhibitor wants, how to gather visitors, and how to make the exhibitor happy on the final day of the exhibition.

It is not easy for a company to survive. It is even more difficult to make it grow. There are various obstacles, sometimes the social environment, but in many cases, the cause lies within the company itself or within oneself.

In exhibition work, and of course this is not limited to that,the fact that the client is "satisfied" that they made the request leads to the next request, and the accumulation of that eventually brings profit and growth to the company..

In this series, I would like to convey what it means to be "satisfied," where one should look to achieve that, and how one should be, focusing on the profession of a designer, while drawing on my own experience.

More than 20 years have passed since I decided to become independent, and I could say that it has been a series of failures. However, I have decided that this expression of "a series of failures" is not something I should say myself. There is a famous quote by Kazuo Inamori: "There is no failure when you are challenging. Failure is when you give up," and I think that is exactly right. While building my own company, there were various walls and various points of reflection. However, they all turned into "lessons," and they have accumulated to bring me to where I am today.

I didn't fail; I learned a lesson. I feel that thinking this way might be a condition for success.
Now then. Next time, I would like to think about what "success" means in an exhibition. The profession of an exhibition is quite close to the word "success." I feel that facing that meaning is important as an exhibition designer.