4 Ways To Dress Up This Year’s Winter Markets

While shipping containers still tick all the boxes for temporary storage, structures for workspaces and businesses, and a variety of customized industrial uses, they also satisfy the budgetary requirements and creative flexibility for many events. There are many “container parks” and markets popping up all over the world because they are a cost-effective long-term investment that can be outfitted to fit any purpose; whether you’re looking for a covered stage, branded activation, lounge seating area, retail booth, tiny gallery, or hot cider station, shipping containers of all sizes fit the bill.

Here are four ways to dress up this year’s winter markets with shipping containers:

Open Side Sipping Booths

Step right up for a hot apple cider! Open side units are commonly 20’ in length with cargo doors at one end, and wider cargo doors on the long side of the shipping container to allow for the storage of larger equipment and wider access. You can also add accessories like pipe racks or shelving to keep your booth organized. These units have been used for sipping booths, lounge seating, and vendor booths in many downtown markets. Open side containers provide a respite from the snowfall and keep your product offering protected from the elements, while also allowing enough extra space to move around and accommodate additional inventory for refilling at your bustling booth! At the end of the day, you can lock up all the doors and rest assured that your assets are secure and dry.

Vendor Kiosks

Talk about versatile and movable public space! Popular kiosk units are 10’ or 20’ and modified to accommodate hinged drop-down doors that can open up for shoppers during the day, and fold back down and lock up at night. Kiosks are more than just tourist information booths and can be used as ticket stands to welcome visitors into the winter market, retail pop-ups, coffee stops, vibrant taco stands, selfie booths, and more.

Branding & Decals

The best part about shipping containers is that they are blank slates waiting for your beautiful branding to come to life on them. You can outfit shipping containers of all sizes with vinyl wraps, cut-out decals, upgraded siding, custom paint jobs, and more. Using a shipping container as a billboard is three-fold; you can work large format advertising into your marketing strategy without the limitations of traditional billboards, while keeping promo items safe and sound during and after an event, and continue activating your brand by moving this on-the-go branded storage space from place to place.

Creative Applications

Luckily, shipping containers naturally lend themselves to taking on the form of a gift box, Lego, art canvases, and more. Whatever form you would like your shipping container to take, they can serve as a one-time element for a special event or appearance, a movable staple in your long-term advertising plan, a walk-through gallery, an immersive experience (check out the escape room unit we modified for Immersive Tech), or an object of beautification for an unrealized urban corner (check out our post on forward-thinking modular trends).

The world is changing the way it thinks about and uses shipping containers; they are no longer simply a commodity for traditional industrial use, they are being increasingly sought after for more outside-the-box applications because of their simplicity, movability, and customizability. If you have a creative idea that you’d like to bring to life on a Secure-Rite container, come talk to us and paint us a picture of your project vision!