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Sustainable Exhibition Stands
2026 – a year of reflection and looking ahead.
As we entered 2026, while everyone else was mulling over their New Year’s resolutions, wondering what they were going to be and whether they would stick to them, we had something else on our minds… the big 50.
According to the statistics, the odds are stacked against many businesses surviving beyond the ten-year mark, so to be able to look back on five decades is something we’re overwhelmingly proud of.
From humble beginnings in a garden shed to the two-acre site we call home today, GH Display has grown to become one of the UK’s longest-established exhibition stand building companies.
But we’ve never been ones to stand still. We’re continually growing, evolving and finding new ways to improve what we do. With exciting projects from both new and returning customers regularly landing on our desks and taking us to exhibitions across the UK and further afield, it’s safe to say there’s rarely a dull day here at GH.
To celebrate turning 50, and to mark the end of our ‘50 Years, 50 Posts’ initiative, which we ran across our social media channels from April to July, we sat down with our Managing Director, John, to talk all things GH.
From his early days helping his Dad with projects to building a career of his own, taking over the company and later joining forces with our Director, Jenny, John has seen GH Display evolve considerably over the years. We took the opportunity to look back at where it all began, hear some of the stories behind the business, reflect on memorable moments and talk about what five decades of GH Display means today.
Interview Highlights
1. The early beginnings of the business and how John came to take it over.
2. Pivotal moments for GH Display – What’s made the business it is today.
3. John’s advice to someone joining the exhibition and displays business.
The Beginnings
Our Community and Reminiscing On The Past
I know you sponsor the rugby clubs in Stamford and Peterborough. Where did those connections come from?
The Stamford Rugby Club connection came through my son, who plays for the club. I really appreciated what they did for him and, although running a business meant I couldn’t necessarily give my time by volunteering, I could support them through sponsorship. It was a way for me to give something back and feel a little more involved in supporting the club and the team he was part of.
Peterborough was more connected to my father. The club approached me about sponsorship while my father was in ill health, shortly before he passed away. There was already a history and a connection there through him, so I suppose there was an emotional element to the decision as well. It felt right to continue that relationship and support something that had meant so much to my father.
We’ve noticed that our community engagement posts often perform particularly well on social media. Why do you think people connect with them?
I think it comes down to being part of the local community. We started with Stamford Rugby Club and then extended our sports sponsorship to Peterborough United Football Club, followed later by Peterborough Rugby Club. It gives us an opportunity to engage with local people, supporters and other businesses in the area.
A lot of the people who follow us have children who play at the clubs, support the teams themselves or have some kind of connection to them. Ultimately, people are often more interested in seeing a sports result or something happening in their local community than they are in reading about how a business is doing.
For us, it’s a nice way to give something back, support the communities around us and share things that people genuinely have an interest in.
Do you remember the first time you worked on a GH project?
It’s difficult to remember exactly. I worked for the business as a teenager as an exhibition stand ‘builder’, although I wasn’t actually able to build the stands at that point, so I was mainly sent out on dismantling jobs, de-rigs and shutdowns. I think my first proper one would have been Buralls Plastec at Wembley Stadium in 1996.
But technically, my first experience of a GH project was years before that. As a kid, I was taken along to the showground to help set up a Fenmark stand, which was displaying plants.
I remember my father driving a Mercedes 308D. It was a lovely van. My sister and I were in the back on patio seats that had been bungee corded to the sides, and the rest of the van was absolutely full of marigolds.
My dad, my sister and I all went along in the van to set up the stand, so I suppose, technically, that was my first GH project.
Did your dad normally take you and your sister out on jobs?
Absolutely not, no. He was very much against us kids being involved in any of the work. I’m guessing that, on that particular occasion, my mum, who was a nurse, was working and he simply had no other choice but to bring us along!
The Progress of GH Display
Pivotal Moments
Across the years you’ve been in charge, what would you say was the most important or pivotal moment for the business?
Can I have two?
In order of importance, the first would have to be the pandemic. It was probably the most pivotal point in the history of the business.
We lost £1.7 million worth of work in seven days. We’d very rarely lost a contract before that, so to suddenly lose our entire order book in the space of a week was huge. At the time, we genuinely didn’t know what we were going to do.
Very few industries were effectively told, ‘What you do as a business can’t happen anymore.’ Even football eventually continued without the crowds, but exhibitions simply couldn’t take place.
We were also hit incredibly early. By the first week of March, before most people were even talking seriously about lockdown, our work had already disappeared. We were speaking to insurers and accountants and trying to work out how we were going to get through it.
We spoke to the team about taking two months unpaid in the hope that everything would blow over, because at that point we couldn’t see another way through. We were actually due to hold redundancy meetings on the Friday that furlough was announced. Furlough gave us some breathing space and helped us retain our staff. Then, on 23 March, we closed the doors and went home.
The problem was that the costs didn’t disappear when the work did. Suppliers still needed paying and we still had a business to support.
I was chasing payment from one of our customers, who was also in the exhibition industry, and during the conversation he said, ‘You’ve got all the equipment and the workshop. You could build coffins, couldn’t you?’
I told him I didn’t know the first thing about building coffins, but he suggested I speak to a manufacturer. So, the next morning, I started trying to get hold of Bradnam’s Joinery in Haverhill. It took me until about two or three o’clock that afternoon to finally get through. A guy called Bob answered the phone and I said, ‘I’m guessing you’re incredibly busy, so I’ll cut to the chase. I’ve got a 20,000 square foot workshop and a team sitting at home with nothing to do. Is there any chance we could do something together?’ His response was, ‘If you can build me a thousand coffins, we can sell them.’ The next morning, I drove down to see him. He showed me how the coffins went together, gave me some components to take away and I brought a couple of the team in so we could work out how to manufacture them ourselves.
Six weeks later, we had built, sprayed and delivered more than 700 coffins on behalf of Bradnam’s. It wasn’t the biggest job we’d ever had financially, but at that point it gave us something incredibly important. It gave Jenny and me hope that the business might be able to survive, while providing GH Display with an income, albeit a modest and temporary one.
From there, we started looking at what else we could do. We got back into the office and began designing COVID products, including Perspex screens, hand sanitiser stations, testing pods and vaccination pods.
In some ways, we were perfectly equipped to adapt because designing and making things is what we do. Give us a problem and we can design a solution, work out how to manufacture it and then build it.
At one point, we found a manufacturer in Amsterdam that had Perspex available and bought around 200 sheets from them. It pretty much took everything we had in the account. I remember saying to Jenny, ‘If nobody wants it and we can’t make anything from it, we’ll just have to sell it on.’
That period became our fight back. It was incredibly hard, but we found ways to keep working, we generated income and, ultimately, we made it through to the other side.
That’s why the pandemic was so pivotal for us. We had to adapt incredibly quickly and work extremely hard to survive. Sadly, the pandemic took a huge toll on our industry and many exhibition stand businesses didn’t make it through. When exhibitions eventually returned, the industry looked very different. We came out of the pandemic as a stronger and more resilient business, with opportunities to work with customers that perhaps wouldn’t have found us before.
So, although going into the pandemic was one of the hardest periods we’ve ever experienced, what came out of it had a huge impact on the business we are today.
And what would the second pivotal moment be?
The other pivotal moment would have been the acquisition of Hytner Exhibitions in 2018.
At the time, we were working from our workshops in Werrington, where the business had been based since 1990. We were growing, but we’d reached the point where the space was limiting us. We simply couldn’t build the volume of work we were selling, so we had started looking for new premises. I happened to mention this to our insurance broker at a business networking event and he asked whether we’d ever consider an acquisition. I said I’d certainly be open to a conversation, and he mentioned Hytner Exhibitions. I already knew Hytner because they were a local competitor and, strangely enough, I’d actually subcontracted for them when I was younger. So I knew the site and understood the size and scale of what was there.
It turned out to be a great fit. We had too much work and not enough space, while they had more space than they needed and not enough work to fill it. Bringing the two businesses together gave us the opportunity to solve both problems.
For GH Display, the acquisition gave us the space and capacity we desperately needed and, importantly, the ability to continue growing. It gave us room to expand the site, increase what we could build and keep pace with the growth of the business.
Reflections, Advice and Looking Ahead