Trade Show Firm Enjoying Larger Space

The trade show industry was supposed to hit the road due to the information superhighway, Bob Dobinski recalls.

Instead, 10 years later, Dobinski’s Corporate Communications event planning and trade show firm moved from a small Westborough location to larger warehouse and office space at 27 Otis St. a few months ago.

"We've had a good expansion of growth over the past four years. But through partially the economy, the first four months of this year, our company has doubled in comparison to last year in revenue,” President and founder Bob Dobinski said recently.

"The move is paying off."

Corporate Communications handles "all the aspects of a trade show: we design, we build, we actually make all the logistical arrangements to ship to the show, we are on site to make sure all the unions are coordinated properly. And at the end of the show, they're able to walk away from the exhibit, and we take care of all the logistics," Dobinski explained.

"The big value to trade shows, although you have the web, and it was predicted 10 years ago the web was going to take trade shows and put them out of business, we've seen exactly the opposite, where people want more and more of the face to face, one on one, personal contact," he said.

Corporate Communications moved from 15 Old Flanders Road in Westborough, its home for the previous eight years, Dobinski said.

"We started off with 5,000 square feet. We went to 8,000 square feet, went to 10,000, and co-habitated with Granite Marble Depot," he said.

"Most recently, their business expanded and our business expanded, so we decided to start a search for warehouse space and office space."

The new location includes 15,000 square feet of warehouse space, representing 5,000 square feet more than the Old Flanders Road site, Dobinski said. The new location also includes 4,000 square feet of office space "which we're growing into over the next couple of years," he said. The former location had 1,800 square feet of office space.

"Westborough is central to our locations, where we conduct business. We're in to Boston a couple of times a week supporting shows at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the Hynes Auditorium, the local hotels. But we also work down at the Rhode Island Convention Center, Hartford, Worcester and then up north a little bit: New Hampshire and Vermont," said Dobinski, a Hopkinton resident.

"The bigger space was really in response to our clients' needs. We're kind of a diversified event company, where we support sporting events specifically for the United States Tennis Association. We've always been involved in helping promote the Boston Marathon, especially in Hopkinton."

Corporate Communications has hired two additional project management and sales people since the move, and would like to add a sales person and additional production manager before Dec. 31, Dobinski said.

"We've been able to attract some pretty high talent, because their commute used to be to (Route) 128 or into Boston, and they live out here in the MetroWest," he said.

Dobinski started the company 27 years ago.

He said he had been working for a company in Cincinnati that designed and built exhibits. He was a designer and in sales.

"I could actually sit in front of a customer, do the design, and then bring it back to the shop. When I moved to New England, one of my big customers was Digital Equipment computer company. I was an event manager there for five years," Dobinski said.

"What I found is I was asked out for lunch more and more often from people that would say, 'I need help with my trade shows. How do you do this?'"