Blog posts from March, 2013

Revamped website adds smartphone capabilities, French translations and easier access for event and party rental planners on the go.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Mississauga, ON) March 26 -National Event Supply, one of Canada’s leading suppliers to the party and event rental industry, today announced the re-launch of their website, with improved usability for mobile users, and complete French translations for their Francophone customers. The revamped site offers visitors from the hospitality, food service, party rental, and event rental sectors a fresh look that is more focused on users’ needs.

The redesigned website has a new user-friendly layout for touch-screen based devices like smartphones and tablets, enhanced product information and regularly updated content in the blog, and improved product pictures, in addition to a complete translation to French allowing for better service for their Francophone customers.

"Our goal is to keep our customers as up-to-date as possible, as well as to provide more efficient service to our clients,” said Dennis Heathcote, President of National Event Supply. “Our latest website improvements are significant because we have made the website fully accessible to Francophones across Canada, allowing those who are more comfortable dealing with commercial activities in French to more effectively utilize our online offerings."

Also added to National Event Supply’s technological snapshot are capabilities for smartphone apps allowing for enhanced website compatibility through easy-to-maneuver smart devices. This comes as great news for planners and event rental professionals who are always on the go.

“In this day and age, it’s important to place technology at the forefront of your strategic planning, and with the inclusion of a smartphone app and enhanced website, I think we’ve set a benchmark within our industry,” added Heathcote.

For more information and to view the new website, please visit: www.nationaleventsupply.com

About National Event Supply:

National Event Supply began as a home business retailing porcelain figurines in 1992. After expanding to provide commercial-quality products to the hospitality and food service sector, National Event Supply quickly became a one-stop shop for the party and event rental industry.

Today, National Event Supply is a leading factory-direct wholesaler to the party and event rental, food service, and hospitality industry, focused on growth through delivering quality products at great value with excellent customer service, technology, and beneficial relationships with our customers.

Canadian locations for National Event Supply include their main showroom and warehouse in Mississauga, as well as their warehouse facility in Vancouver. National Event Supply has also tapped into the American market with a location in Indianapolis.

Contact:

Chris Dabrowski, High Impact PR
Toll Free: (888) 864-7912

Although this isn’t the 100th blog post (it’s the 102nd), we wanted to mark the occasion of our 100th blog post. It’s been a little over 2 years since we revised the website and introduced our blog. During that time, we’ve introduced dozens of new products, travelled North America visiting trade shows from Vancouver to New Orleans and from Toronto to Las Vegas. All of which is incredible blogging material!

NEW PRODUCTS

Just recently, we’ve introduced our Mahogany Resin Folding Chair and our Polar White Dinnerware. Last fall, we added Wing Bowls and Wood Harvest Tables at the request of customers who had a need for these products. Last summer we began offering our new Crystal Stemware and Glass Stemware to great demand. The common denominator for all these products is that we introduced them in our blog before we managed to get individual product pages up. The blog is the perfect place get your first glance at our new Chiavari Chair Cart and our new amuse bouche fork and spoon.

In the future, we’ll continue introducing our new products on our blog. In addition, we’ll be providing information about our existing products, like our beautiful selection of Champagne Fountains, Chocolate Fountains, and Cupcake Stands. We’ll also be doing more videos showing how strong our products are by show just what it takes to destroy them.

NEW LANGUAGE

We teased a French version of our website about a month ago. Now we ready to launch it! We’re initially launching the product pages first, and we hope to add translated versions of blog articles within a day of the English language blog article being posted. The translation of the website is all due to the hard work of our French sales rep Stephanie Loiselle. She has put long hours into first translating the website and then fixing any errors I may have introduced pulling the pages together. Merci Beaucoup, Stephanie!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of exhibiting at the 2013 CRA Prairie Regional Trade Show in Saskatoon. Because we are still pretty much in the thick of winter for many parts of Canada, I flew into Saskatoon on Thursday just to make sure I wouldn’t have any weather related issues getting to the Prairieland Exhibition Centre and getting set up in time for the show.

I made it with no issues although I will admit it was pretty darn cold and there was lots of snow everywhere. I met up for dinner with our National Event Supply Western Canada sales team at our usual haunt, Chianti’s Café on Idylwild and 22st St East, which is just a few short blocks from our Radisson Hotel Saskatoon. Here I thought it was the only location that Chianti’s Café had—it turns out they have 7 restaurants in Calgary, Edmonton, and Saskatoon. And from how busy it was on Thursday, we can definitely say the food is always great.

Friday morning we woke up to a light snowfall and only -12C and headed over to the Prairieland Exhibition Hall so we could beat the rush of other exhibitors who would all be trying to get in through the single truck door that entered the Hall. For the 1st time ever Will decided to have all his equipment trucked in and our show skids were delivered by a 53ft trailer rather than try to trailer it all from Red Deer. This was a great decision as everything went quite smoothly (at least on the move in) and we were all set up by early in the afternoon.

On Saturday morning we all headed back to the Exhibition Hall in time for the 96th Highlanders Bag Pipe and Drum band to open the show. While it took some time for the rental stores to make it to the back of the hall where we were exhibiting, within the first hour we started to have attendees stop by. Keith Andrews, the President of CRA Saskatchewan and Prairieland Rental Centre in Regina stopped by and was pleased to hear we were giving away a Black Folding Bar Height Chair to all attendees that met with us at the show. At last year`s show we gave out one of our very popular Tall Folding Cocktail Tables so this was a great way for the customers to get exposed to some of our more popular plastic folding tables and chairs. As we went through the day I could tell those that did get a free Tall Folding Cocktail Table last year, definitely remembered us.

As in prior years, Brian from Handy Special Events stopped by to check out our product display. He was particularly impressed with the look and feel of our new Serenity line of Crystal Wine Glasses and our always popular Resin Chiavari Chairs which feature a steel core for enhanced durability and strength. He also spent a fair bit of time examining our new improved plywood folding tables. Our new wood folding tables feature 13 layers of plywood, Canadian hardwood for the underside rails, bolts through table top construction and 1.2mm thick steel tubing for leg frame structure all providing a durable and strong wood folding table. I could see Brian was giving our wood folding tables a serious look over.

This was our 3rd year of exhibiting at the Prairie show and each time we meet with more new Customers from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. I find it amazing how far our Prairie friends are willing to drive to support the event and attend the evening dinner and festivities. The show finished at 4pm which gave us a very short amount of time to get packed up and ready for the evening dinner and entertainment. It's always great to get together with our old and new friends and relax with a nice glass of wine and a hearty roast beef supper!

Jeff Campbell the CRA National President (and President of St. Thomas Rent-All) was on hand to take part in the festivities as well as update everyone on what the CRA National organization is working on for the benefit of members and associate members. One of the programs that Jeff announced was the ability for Members and Associate Members to have a professional PR firm (High Impact Public Relations) help publish a newsworthy subject to the marketplace. High Impact PR was instrumental in getting the message out to the community of St. Thomas, Ontario for Jeff`s step up to become the President of Canadian Rental Association. Jeff is now a celebrity in the community and he has seen a rise in the number of visits to his store which is definitely a plus for his winter business.

Welcome to our 100th Blog Entry! To honour this momentous occasion, we've put together a stress test video for our 8-ft Rectangular Plastic Folding Table. It's been about two months since we posted our last stress test video blog on our Tall NES Reliable Round Plastic Folding Cocktail Table. Plastic folding rectangular tables are a staple of the rental industry, and the 8-ft is far and away the most popular size for our rental customers and our banquet hall customers. NES Reliable Rectangular Plastic Folding Tables are commercial grade tables, and, as you can see from the video, are capable of holding an incredible amount of weight!

Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The snow is quickly receding here in Toronto, as sunny days, rain, and temperatures in the high single digits are all doing their part to eliminate snow piles. Any day now, I expect the trees out front of our building will start budding, and the heaters will be turned off. Sure, we haven't even had Easter yet, but the evidence is out there—winter is ending!

Tradeshows

Winter is not the only thing ending, the NES trade show season is coming to a close, with the Prairie Regional Trade Show and Quebexpo the only shows remaining. We've been to BC for a couple of trade shows, Las Vegas for The Rental Show, and exhibited at The CRFA Show in Toronto again this year. The trade show team had a great time seeing everyone at all of the shows. The trade shows that we do are always an opportunity to go out and see people that we wouldn't be able to see in our offices, and to let them examine and touch our myriad of products. Plus, the trade show team often takes sample products out on the road to get feedback from our customers. If we saw you at any of the shows we exhibited at, we'd just like to thank you for stopping by and if you didn't manage to see us, we hope we'll see you next year!

It's almost Patio Time

Today has been a grey day, and with the time change, things have been a little subdued. But that hasn't stopped me from closing my eyes and imaging that I'm sitting on a patio, drinking a beer, and catching some sun. And as it just so happens, we have three things that can make patio time great.

National Event Supply has stocked our NES Reliable Bistro Chairs in black and white for over 5 years now. These chairs are similar to the Grosfillex Miami Bistro Chair, but feature a more elegant back and different colour choices. It's a comfortable chair, suitable for lazy afternoons on a patio, or around a table at an outdoor wedding. The NES Reliable Bistro Chair is incredibly strong and features legs that won't do the splits regardless of the surface the chair is on. They're easy to keep clean and a favourite for outdoor weddings and on patios from Victoria to St John's. We've currently got a large supply of the chairs in both black and white in our Toronto Warehouse, and they are ready to ship from coast to coast.

Now that you've got seating for your customers, it's time to look at glassware. National Event Supply has our inexpensive Eclisse glass stemware that would perfect for any patio parties. Our Eclisse line includes everything from 5oz Champagne Flutes to 14oz Beer Glasses. If your customers are more interested in wine, there's three sizes of wine glass to meet your needs. So whether you're serving a nice Chablis or a fine microbrew, National Event Supply has the glassware that you need to slake your customers' thirst.

Finally, National Event Supply has a new product that we're proud to announce for 2013, Sol. Sol is a G2V spectral class star, with a diameter of 1,392,684 km. It's an almost perfect sphere of hot plasma and magnetic fields, and is the perfect companion to a cold beer on the patio. Due to the cloud cover and drizzle, Sol is not available in the lower mainland of Vancouver.