Blog posts from June, 2011

It's been a busy day here at the National Event Supply warehouse. We took delivery of our first container early this morning and we're just starting to empty our second container this afternoon. It's great to finally have the products that everyone is looking for.

Our first container was a mixture of Plastic Folding Tables and Plastic Folding Chairs. We've managed to replenish our supply of Burgundy on Grey Plastic Folding Chairs as well as increase our stock of Black on Black Plastic Folding Chairs to help us get through the summer. In addition, we brought in some 5-ft NES Reliable Rectangular Plastic Folding Tables, allowing us to add it to our regular price list of available items.

Our second container arrived earlier this afternoon. It was filled with 5-ft round, 6-ft rectangular, and 8-ft rectangular plastic folding tables. Unfortunately, we only brought in 120, 5-ft round tables on this container. This means that after filling our back-orders we will have 1 or 2 tables left. We are getting more 5-ft round tables in early August, so if you are interested in the tables and can wait, please drop us a line and we will put your request into our backorder file.

That's it for today. The warehouse team is resting up for one last container this month. Tomorrow we'll be adding more Plastic Folding Chairs to add to our inventory. This last container will be the ninth container of products that we have received this month. We should have another two or three containers in the coming weeks filled with resin Chiavari chairs, porcelain, and cutlery.

At National Event Supply we are always looking for products and product lines that we think our customers want/need. Sometimes this process requires spending a couple of years searching for a manufacturer who can produce high-quality items at attractive prices. Other times, our current manufacturers create something new and exciting that we know that our customers will love. And sometimes a customer comes to us and tells us exactly what they want and what they are willing to pay for it and we go to work sourcing it out.

Over the past few months we've brought in a number of samples that we thought were interesting or that our customers requested. From melamine bowls to durable stacking chairs, we have a little bit of everything. What we'd like is your thoughts on these potential products. This time, we have a couple of Melamine Dishes that we are thinking about adding to our Melamine Line.

First up is a Square Melamine Bowl. This melamine bowl is 16" x 16" x 5 3/8" with a capacity of well over 12 litres. The price of the bowl would be $32.00/ea. So the question is:

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Our second potential product is an Oval Melamine Platter. This platter is 20" x 16" x 2 1/8" and on the inside is 1" deep. The price of the platter would be $30.00/ea

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Feel free to let us know what you think about these two products or let us know if there's something that you think that we should be carrying!

Happy Belated Father's Day to all you dads out there. I don't know about you, but I spent Father's day in a restaurant in the company of friends as my family is scattered all over the country. The restaurant we were at was following a trend which we've noticed at National Event Supply: Rectangular Dinner Plates. A 7"x14" Platter makes the perfect plate for a burger or sandwich and fries. This is a trend that we can see continuing for quite a while.

Our Rectangular 7"x14" platters are just one of the items that are back in stock as of this morning when our shipping team unloaded our container of porcelain. This is one of the more difficult containers for our shipping team as there are hundreds of heavy boxes filled with breakable items packed into the container in no discernable order. By the time they get all the boxes onto the proper pallets, and then put the pallets away in the warehouse, they're ready for a break.

Our sales team has started calling customers that have porcelain back orders to let them know that we can fill their orders starting today. If you've been waiting for porcelain platters, bowls, or dinnerware now is the time to let us know. Our sales team would be happy to put together a quote for any items that you are interested in. In addition, if you're interested in seeing a sample of our commercial grade porcelain, we'd be happy to send you a free sample of our Hotelier Dinnerware.

We've got two more containers coming in this week for sure. One will add some chairs to our inventory to help us make it through the summer, while the other contains Plastic Folding Tables. It's going to be a busy week here at National Event Supply!

Customer service is something we pride ourselves on at National Event Supply. It is at the core of our success and we always strive to go the extra mile to help our customers. Today, we went 532 miles to help a customer who desperately needed dishes for an event this weekend. We don't typically do deliveries to Ottawa but a series of events led us on a 9 hour trip to the National Capital Region to make sure the our customer had the dishes they needed.

We received the initial order Thursday morning for the 2100lbs of Ovali Dinnerware and our shipper had it picked, packed and wrapped before 11:00am. He called one of our LTL shipping partners and confirmed that we had an order to go out, and that we needed it picked up today. Our shipping partner called just before 5:00pm and said that they were going to be a little late getting to our location, but that a truck would pick up the skid "shortly". "Shortly" came and went and then our shipping partner went quiet. Unable to contact the customer service desk to find out when they were going to arrive, we decided that they weren't coming that evening. This was a problem as we had a customer who needed these dishes and we had said that they would be arriving the next day.

Dennis, one of the owners of the company, quickly decided we needed a trailer so that we could deliver these dishes. He got into his SUV and headed on up to U-Haul to pick up a trailer. Fate was on our side. U-Haul was supposed to close at 7:00, but luckily there was still someone there who was willing to rent Dennis a trailer. Because of Pauline at the U-Haul on Rexdale in Toronto, Dennis and Jonathan were able to get a trailer. The quickly loaded the dishes into the back of the U-Haul and headed for home.

At 4am on Friday morning, Jonathan and Dennis headed out for Ottawa to get our customer their dishes. They arrived at a little after 8:30am at our customers busy warehouse/showroom. By 3pm, the boys were back in Mississauga, the trailer was back at U-Haul being rented out to someone else, and 2100lbs of Ovali Dinnerware was at it's new home in the National Capital Region.

What can we say? We aim to please.

When you talk to our sales reps they can tell you how many people can sit around a 60-inch round table (8-10), the size of our square dinner plates (10.25"), and how much weight our plastic folding chairs can hold (225lbs). What they can't fully describe to you is how great the wedding style resin folding chairs look when set up for an event, or how elegant our resin Chiavari chairs look set-up around a well-dressed table. To see our products in action, we've turned to several of our customers and asked for pictures they've taken at recent events. Over the next few months, we'll be spotlighting some of these companies and our products at their events.

This week we've got a couple of pictures from a 10,000sq ft tent installation from Dion Malden at Big Red Chair Events in Vancouver, BC. As you can see from the first picture, the tent was rather large. In the second picture, you can see our White NES Resin Chiavari Chairs set up in front of a stage. The Silver Chiavari Chairs are topped by our White Fabric Chiavari Chair Cushions. In the back, you can see our NES Reliable Wedding-Style Resin Folding Chairs.

If you'd like to be featured on our blog, please send us an email including photographs utilizing our products!