Retractable Banner Stands in Chicago
At a McCormick Place show, anything that arrives on a pallet gets handled by the venue and billed accordingly. A retractable banner stand avoids that entirely: it travels as a case you carry in yourself, sets up in under a minute, and packs down at the end of the show without a crew. Configure and price yours below.
Retractable Banner Stands in Chicago — configure and buy
Standard Retractable Banner Stand — from $145. Compact retractable banner stand with a replaceable printed graphic.
Deluxe Retractable Banner Stand — from $225. Premium retractable banner stand with chrome-style end caps and an adjustable pole.
X-Stand Banner — from $65. Lightweight X-frame banner stand — an economical, portable display.
About Retractable Banner Stands
A retractable banner stand does the job of a small exhibit without any of the logistics. The printed graphic rolls into a weighted base, stands up in under a minute with no tools, and packs back into a shoulder case at the end of the day. For exhibitions and corporate events that means a display you carry in yourself rather than consign to freight — the difference between setting up when you arrive and waiting on a delivery window. It works as aisle presence in a McCormick Place hall, a speaker backdrop at a conference, or a wayfinding marker at a reception near the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, which is why most teams own several and retire only the graphic.
Comparing models? The Banner Stands category page puts every option we print side by side.
The display that skips the loading dock
Drayage — the charge for moving your freight from the dock to your booth and back — is a real line item at large Chicago shows, and it is priced by weight and handling rather than by how useful the item is. A retractable stand in a shoulder case is hand-carriable, which means it usually bypasses that process altogether. For a small booth, two roll-ups you carry in can cost less to get onto the floor than one crated display.
Sized for a big hall
McCormick Place halls are long, and sightlines are correspondingly long. A 33 inch stand works beside a table in a 10x10; at the end of a wide aisle a 47 inch reads considerably better. If the booth is deep, put the wider stand at the aisle line and the narrower one back by the meeting area rather than buying two of the same.
Winter is hard on graphics in transit
A banner that travels through a Chicago January goes from freezing outside to a heated hall in minutes, and condensation forms on a cold graphic every time. Let a stand acclimatise in its case for an hour before you pull it up, and never roll a damp graphic away at the end of a show — that is what leaves marks along the wind line.
Getting banner stands to a Chicago show
Parcel, not freight, means a stand can be sent to your hotel or your own address and never touch the dock. At a large Chicago show that is the point: the marshalling process is built around pallets, and putting a single carry case through it costs more in time than the stand does. Check the production schedule on the product page and add transit on top when you are working backwards from your install date.
Frequently asked questions
Can I hand-carry a retractable banner into McCormick Place?
A retractable stand packs into a shoulder case that one person carries, which is the usual reason exhibitors choose it over a crated display. Confirm the current hand-carry rules with the show organiser, since they are set per event rather than by us.
Which stand suits a 10x10 booth at a Chicago show?
One standard 33 inch retractable beside the table is the common setup, and it leaves the aisle clear. Add a second at the opposite corner rather than moving up a size if you want presence from both directions.
How quickly can a roll-up be set up on site?
Under a minute, with no tools. Stand the base, pull the graphic up to the top of the pole, and drop the support leg into the back of the base.
Does retractable banner printing include the stand and the bag?
Yes — roll up banner printing covers the graphic, the base it winds into, the pole and the shoulder bag it travels in. The material is a blockout film so the mechanism does not show through the print. Retractable banners are designed around the graphic being replaced later, which is why a second campaign costs a reprint and not a new stand.
Do you ship retractable banner stands to Chicago?
Yes, to any Chicago address. Because a stand ships as a parcel it can go to your hotel and be carried in, which keeps it out of the freight process at the larger halls entirely. Plan for the production time on the product page plus transit.
Can I upload artwork myself, or do you design it?
You upload your own. A PDF or JPEG at the ordered size, CMYK, 150dpi, fonts outlined and no crop marks. Apex prints what you supply and sends a free proof first - there is no design service inside the order flow, so the file you send is the file that prints.