Our Story

Where it started

Expo Hire began in 2014, supplying furniture and equipment into events across the UK. The hire industry is unforgiving. Products get loaded, unloaded, stacked, dragged and used hundreds of times a year. Anything that is not built for that kind of punishment fails fast.

Over the years, we found products that looked right in a catalogue but fell apart in the field. So we stopped looking at catalogues and started designing our own.

Why we launched Expo Direct

By 2021, we had a range of products we were proud of — chairs, tables, beer benches and accessories developed to our own specification and tested against the hardest possible conditions. Customers kept asking to buy rather than hire. Expo Direct was the answer.

The premise was simple: if we would trust a product in our own hire fleet, it is good enough to sell. If we would not, it does not go in the range.

How we design and source

We visit China regularly and work directly with manufacturers to develop products to our own designs and tolerances. We specify the materials, the construction methods and the finish. When a supplier cannot meet the standard, we find one who can or we redesign until they are able to.

Two products we are particularly proud of: we launched what became a widely-copied three-leg beer bench design — structurally more stable than the traditional two-leg version — and we rebuilt the specification on the standard folding chair to a point where it genuinely holds up to commercial use rather than just looking like it might.

Neither of those started with a supplier showing us something. Both started with us deciding what the product needed to do and working backward from there.

Who we supply

The same products and the same team have supplied equipment to the Commonwealth Games, the British Grand Prix, Wimbledon, Oxford University and Google's European headquarters in Ireland, among many others.

Those are not name-drops. They are evidence of what the products can handle. If they hold up at Wimbledon and the Grand Prix, they will hold up in your venue.

The people behind it

Expo Direct and Expo Hire are owned and run by the same team, from the same warehouse in Birmingham. There is no head office. No corporate structure. When you call or email, you speak to the people who manage the stock, know the products and handle the orders. That is how it has always worked and we have no intention of changing it.