What does a Case Showroom cost per year?

Answer: About 230,000 in year one, then 60,000 to run, or 105,000 a year over five years.

Below what volume does a Case Showroom stop paying?

Answer: Around 800 units. Cost per unit moves from 42 to 156, above 5% of price, unless rework passes 50,000.

Can renders replace a Case Showroom entirely?

Answer: Only the shape half. Screens drift to ΔE 4 and no image reports latch force, so colour and feel need a real case.

How big does a Case Showroom have to be?

Answer: Sample count times 0.35 m² for display, aisles at double, plus 10 m² demo, 12 m² meeting, 8 m² spares: 90 to 120 m² is typical.

How often should samples be replaced?

Answer: A third a year, a full cycle in five. Tooling revisions and colour drift make old samples lie.

We only meet buyers at trade shows. Do we still need one?

Answer: Not below 800 units if orders spread thin. Fund a booth and two sample sets instead.

Case Showroom Cost: When a Permanent Room Stops Paying

Quick answer: A Case Showroom is not compulsory. Below about 800 units a year, with two or three dominant accounts and a standard catalogue, a 120 m² room pushes cost per unit past 150 and renders plus loans cost less. The test: does the rework it prevents exceed its annual amortisation?

Spreading Case Showroom Cost Across Three Denominators
Renders, Sample Loans and Trade Shows Side by Side
What One Wrong Judgement Costs in Rework
Projects That Should Skip the Case Showroom
Projects That Need One, and How Big It Should Be
Five-Year Depreciation and Unbooked Costs
FAQ

1. Spreading Case Showroom Cost Across Three Denominators

A total figure says nothing until divided. A 120 m² room costs about CNY 230,000 in year one: 216,000 for walls and flooring, 11,000 for 42 samples, 3,000 for lighting. Running cost is about 60,000 a year.

Three denominators decide whether that is cheap or ruinous.

Denominator	Typical value	Cost carried
Units shipped per year	3,000	42 per unit
Units shipped per year	800	156 per unit
New accounts per year	40	3,125 per account

Over five years the annual figure settles near 105,000. At 3,000 units that is 1.4% of a unit price. At 800 it climbs past 5%, and the first question is why the same case costs thirty more than a rival's.

2. Renders, Sample Loans and Trade Shows Side by Side

The four channels divide labour. Renders settle shape and colour, a loan settles feel, a show settles side-by-side comparison, and a Case Showroom settles size progression. Picked wrongly, money is wasted.

Case Showroom: green case on its side, handle left, two latches and hinge blocks along the right edge, rib lines at the corners

Channel	First outlay	Order band	Main failure
Permanent room	230,000	Above 2,000 units	Dead if buyers never visit
Renders	12,000 up	Any	Screen drift to ΔE 4
Loaned sample	800 per send	Below 500 units	6% return damage
Trade show	45,000 per show	New markets	90-second average stop

Renders cannot report whether a latch needs 55 N or 38 N, and a loan proves one case, never a range. A show looks cheap until divided by buyers: 90 seconds converts under 4%.

The room sits between them: nine series in one walk, and a lid held at 105 degrees to feel the rim.

3. What One Wrong Judgement Costs in Rework

Rework is priced by the batch. A 500-unit order reads uniform under warm light; in the customer's warehouse it is half a step off and returns. Respray runs 35 per unit, 17,500, and the line stops two days at 12,000 a day, another 24,000. That is 41,500, a third of a room, before penalties.

Late delivery adds 0.3% of value a day, so ten days is 3%. Trust costs more: the next batch goes from 10% to 50% inspection.

Two other calls hurt differently. A latch stroke short by 8 mm needs an 18,000 insert change and a 9,000 trial. Cavity height out by 12 mm stays invisible until the lid will not compress and the gasket stops sealing, by which point three thousand units exist. Worst is mirror-image tooling: 260,000 and 45 days.

4. Projects That Should Skip the Case Showroom

Five situations where the arithmetic fails:

Case Showroom: blue case on its side, handle left, clean side wall, two latch ridges and hinge pins along the right edge

Under 800 units a year, where cost per unit reaches 156 and quotes stop competing.
Eighty percent of orders from two accounts that already visit yearly, or a standard catalogue with no insert work.
A decision by two people who read spec sheets, not latches.
Samples above 30 kg, which need a forklift and turn a layout into a warehouse aisle.
A lease under two years, where a move writes off the fit-out.

Where the first two hold, stop calculating and fund renders and loans.

5. Projects That Need One, and How Big It Should Be

Three profiles justify a room: above 2,000 units a year, insert work over 30% of orders, or customers across five industries. The first two win on sample density, the third on seeing all of it once.

Size is arithmetic. Forty-two samples at 0.35 m² of display face give 14.7 m²; aisles at double add 29.4; demo bay 10, meeting corner 12, spares 8. The total lands near 74 m²; 90 to 120 m² leaves room. Below 60 m² only 24 fit and the Case Showroom becomes one sample room.

6. Five-Year Depreciation and Unbooked Costs

Fit-out amortises at 43,200 a year, a line that never hurts. What hurts comes later.

Sixty track lamps at 45 each, rated 3,000 hours, are replaced every eighteen months for 2,700. Flooring at 80 per m² is renewed at year five for 9,600. Colour cards turn over every two years, since a ΔE 1.2 drift shows. Samples refresh at 30% a year, 3,120.

Five years cost 620,000, over twice the opening outlay; lent samples add 1,300 a year. Quoting only the first-year figure is the commonest mistake.

Conclusion

Half the Case Showroom bill is amortisation, half the rework it prevents. At 3,000 units a year, 42 per unit buys a decision made right once; at 800, 156 per unit does not. Settle both denominators before the contract.

This article discusses only the container (case body) side of specifications and design intent, and does not cover any handling, loading or use of the contents.