The case for timber — and what we don't build

Every BOOTH SMITH stand is custom carpentry. No modular kits, no aluminium frame systems, no rented shell-scheme upgrades. Clients occasionally ask whether that is philosophy or stubbornness, and the honest answer is that it is arithmetic — but the arithmetic only makes sense in our region, and it is worth showing rather than asserting.

What we left, and why

We ran a modular line alongside custom carpentry from 2016 to 2019: European-made frame systems, fabric graphics, reconfigurable walls. The pitch is real — faster raise, reusable inventory. What killed it here was the supply chain. Every damaged extrusion, every missing connector, every non-standard corner was a six-week import against a two-week show cycle. We were warehousing a growing museum of almost-complete kits in Abidjan while telling clients their wall couldn't make a Tuesday deadline because a bracket was in a container off Rotterdam. Meanwhile the fix for a damaged timber panel is a tree that grows four hundred kilometres from the workshop.

The case for timber, in four lines

• Supply is local. Framing timber, ply and MDF are stocked in every one of our eight markets; paint systems are matched per country at drawing time. Nothing structural waits on a port.
• Repair is trivial. Any competent bench can remake any part from the cutting list in hours. Kit systems repair at the speed of freight.
• Design is free. A milling machine does not care whether your counter is straight or curved. Modular systems price every deviation from the catalogue; carpentry prices material and time.
• Finish reads richer. Painted, grained, slatted or veneered timber photographs and touches like architecture. Extrusion-and-fabric reads like every third stand in the hall — because it is.

What we don't build — drawn plainly

Saying yes to carpentry means saying no clearly, and we would rather say it on this page than in a quote. We do not rent shell-scheme kits or supply frame systems, so if your need is a same-day pop-up or a fabric backwall, a rental house will serve you better and cheaper — we will happily name two. We do not build double-deck stands above 4.5 metres; that is structural steel territory, and we partner rather than pretend. And we sub-contract LED walls and screen hardware at cost +10 % rather than owning inventory — screens age like fish, and we would rather our capital sit in benches and training than in depreciating panels.

Sustainability, without the brochure voice

Timber's environmental story is good but not automatic, so here is ours without varnish. Roughly 60 % of the structural timber from a strike is recovered — re-milled into workshop fittings, jigs and the internal frames of future stands, where the material is invisible anyway. Painted MDF faces are the honest weak point; they recycle poorly everywhere, and our mitigation is design-side: standard face dimensions mean more faces survive to a second life. And local production means the heaviest thing that flies for a build is a PDF — on a cross-border project, cutting the freight leg is worth more, in carbon terms, than any material substitution we could make.

What does the budget arithmetic look like against a kit quote? Usually within 15 % either way at first cost — and ahead the moment anything needs changing, repairing or reprinting on site. Run your own numbers with the 10-second estimate, or see the full anatomy of an invoice in what a 12 m² stand really costs.