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The National Event Supply Trade Show Team is gearing up for our only local show of the season, the CRFA Show at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto. The CRFA Show is a great opportunity for restaurants, caterers, and others within the foodservice industry to take a look at our porcelain dinnerware, our stainless steel cutlery, our crystal and glass stemware, and our many great service pieces. It's also a great time to do a little comparison shopping and understand why our customers are thrilled with our pricing on our fantastic line-up of products. While the team will be spending the majority of their time helping visitors to our booth (1911), they've put together a list of three things that they're excited to see while at the show. Here they are in no particular order!

The first thing that the team is excited to see is the competition at the Flair Festival Stage. If you've ever seen the movie Cocktail with Tom Cruise, then you have an idea what flair bartending is. If not, check out the video below to see one of the competitors in the World Flair Bartending Championships. In addition to the World Flair Bartending Championships, there's flair tandem shows and the TFL Pro Championship which features the best Flair bartenders in Canada. For more information, check out this schedule!

The second thing that the trade show team is excited to see is a booth for a company from Georgia called High Road Craft Ice Cream and Sorbet. We're all big fans of ice cream at National Event Supply, and we're interested in seeing what they have to offer. From the looks of their website, they've got some interesting flavours going on. Personally, I'm hoping they have Red Berries and Prosecco Sorbet to try, but when it comes to ice cream, anything is good. High Road Craft Ice Cream and Sorbet will be exhibiting in booth 817.

The third booth that we're interested in checking out is a little cheesy—but who doesn't love cheese?!? The Springbank Cheese Company has retail locations in Alberta and Ontario and also sell their high-quality cheeses over the internet. Through these channels they sell over 700 different kinds of cheese in sizes ranging from 20 grams to 35 kilograms. While I'm more of a Havarti and Mild Cheddar man, they've got all the cheeses that the cool kids crave like gorgonzola and roquefort. The Springbank Cheese Company will be exhibiting in booth 905.

Spring continues to roll on here at National Event Supply. We received containers at both our Vancouver and Toronto warehouses and in each case they brought us products that we didn't have in stock. At our Toronto Warehouse, we received a shipment of wood cruiser tables, and at our Vancouver location we received three new wood tables: NES Wood Serpentine Folding Tables, 5-ft NES Wood Half-Moon Folding Tables, and 8-ft NES Wood Folding Harvest Tables.

We've had NES Wood Cruiser Tables in our Toronto for almost two years now. Available in three sizes (24 inch, 30 inch, and 36 inch), two shapes (square and round), and two heights (29 inch and 42.5 inch), you can mix and match the qualities you want to get the tables that you need. Each table set comes with the desired table top size and shape, the pole that you need for the table height you want, a steel connector which gets screwed to the underside of the table top and a base with adjustable feet and a polished top. All of the piece can be bought seperately, and if you want both tall poles and short poles, we can do that to. We'll be filling backorders as the week goes on, so if you interested in getting some of these tables for your summer weddings, you should act now.

In Vancouver, we will be receiving three new wood tables which we have never stocked in any of our warehouses. The first of these is a 60 inch half-moon table. This is basically a 60 inch diameter table that is cut in half. These are commercial quality tables, that feature super-strong steel legs, and Canadian plywood tops. The legs on the table are narrower than on a standard 60 inch diameter and are located along the straight edge of the half-circle. Like our other wood tables, the NES 60 Inch Wood Half-Moon Folding Tables feature legs and support beams that are bolted through the table top. We'll be getting some of these tables in our Toronto warehouse in the next couple of weeks, and as soon as I have some pictures I'll be posting them to Twitter and Facebook!

The second table we'll be receiving in Vancouver is our new NES Wood Serpentine Folding Tables. These tables have an out diameter of 10 feet and an inner diameter of five feet. Again, these tables are commercial grade with grey steel legs and Canadian plywood tops. The legs and support beams are bolted through the top for extra strength and the table top is clear-coated to keep it looking great. We'll also be getting some NES Wood Serpentine Tables in our Toronto Warehouse in the next couple of weeks and I'll be posting pictures of this fantastic table as soon as I have them.

The final table is going to be a Vancouver exclusive for the next month or two. We've been asked by customers for a wider "harvest" table, and we've managed to get our factory to produce one that we're happy with. With a wider table, you need to make sure that the supports and legs can handle the extra weight. The NES Wood Harvest Folding Table can handle the extra weight with no problems. It features enhanced supports to keep the table stable even under the heaviest loads. The table itself is 96 inches long and 42 inches wide, allowing for additional table room during family-style meals.

I've finally had a chance to sit down and summarize our amazing week at The Rental Show 2013 which took place last week at the Sands Convention Center in gorgeous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Paris Hotel and Casino	Bellagio Hotel and Casino

Our trip began the day after a massive snow storm hit eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Our home base in Toronto had more than 18 inches of snow while the Newark and New York City regions had 6 to 8 inches of the white stuff. While it wasn't snowing on Saturday, our departure was not exactly uneventful. Due to the massive storm, all of Friday's travellers were still in the airport waiting to depart. And planes that were normally in the air flying, were stuck on the ground under several inches of snow. After about five hours, which seemed like an eternity, our plane was finally brought to the gate and we departed snowy Toronto for sunny Las Vegas.

This year was our 8th year of exhibiting at the ARA Rental Show and we had our biggest booth ever. At 20ft x 30ft it was one of the larger booths in the Party and Special Event section of the show floor and we were right in the thick of the action. We were right beside Ben Shipper and his company EES (also known as Event Equipment Sales) from Chicago. Just a couple of booths away was another leader in our field, Palmer Snyder. Both of these companies are first class organizations that we are strive to emulate, both in the quality of our products and the level of our service that we offer. We spent all day Sunday setting up our booth so we could display all our products in the best light possible.

Ben Shipper visiting the NES Booth	Bill and Dennis Talking to Booth Visitors

During the 3 days of the Rental Show we saw many of our current customers and had the pleasure of meeting with many new people. Laura and Bruce from Allied Equipment Rental in Michigan were very pleased to see us again after missing last year’s Rental Show, and were interested in adding to their inventory of Tall Folding Cocktail Tables and Folding Counter Height Bar Chairs. We first met Bruce and Laura more than 2 years ago and they are seeing lots of customer interest in the NES Reliable Plastic Folding Tables and Chairs that they have in their inventory.

Early in this year’s show, a lot of customers told us about how impressed they were with the quality and durability of the products we have to offer. We have talked extensively about the weight capacity of our Resin Chiavari Chairs and regularly tell our Customers they will easily support 500lbs of weight. In December, we decided to put this claim to the ultimate test and placed more than 1,000lbs on one of our Silver Resin Chiavari chairs. The chair came through with flying colours. So we were very happy to have Brian from Handy Special Events in Saskatoon bring Shelby from Over the Top Tents & Events of Eagle River, Alaska to our booth to show him our Resin Chiavari chairs. Brian purchased our Gold Resin Chiavari chairs in the summer of 2011 and was so pleased with how they have performed for Handy Special Events, that he was selling our Resin Chiavari chairs to Shelby without any help from any of Bill, Diana, Jonathan or myself. What a great customer and product testimonial!

We also saw quite a few customers from California who were impressed with the quality of our new plywood folding tables. As many party rental customers know, California is a highly competitive market with many party rental suppliers in a race to provide the best and lowest possible price for their products. As they have aggressively reduced the sales prices for their products they have also been reducing the quality and durability of the products they sell such that many of them are no longer rental tough products.

With our bigger expanded booth we had a larger selection of our product lineup including all our newest table top items such as our Serenity Crystal Stemware, our Eclisse Wine Glasses, our new Polar White dinnerware line, our 3 different sized Wing Bowls and Sloped Bowls along with our tried and tested Quadrato and Ovali dinnerware lines. Having all of these products available gave our rental customers an excellent opportunity to check out what we have available and make decisions about adding these highly durable porcelain products to their inventory in the spring.

At times we were so busy in our booth, we had 2 or 3 customers waiting to speak with one of our 4 staff. It looks like we may need to seriously consider bringing another staff member for the 2014 Rental Show. If you weren't able to get to the show and you'd like to get a copy of our new catalogue, please fill out this form and we would be happy to send one out to you asap.

Late February, right after The Rental Show is when things start hopping here at National Event Supply. We've been so busy that even with the Family Day long weekend, we haven't done a write-up about our time at the show. We had a great time meeting new people from all over the United States and Canada. From Alaska to Texas and from California to New Brunswick, we talked to a lot of great folks who were interested in our fantastic products. But I'll let Dennis tell you all about it later this week or early next.

It's that time of year again. That's right, it's time for The Rental Show in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. The National Event Supply Trade Show Team managed to fly out of snow-bound Toronto on Saturday, only 5 and half hours later than they'd planned and got to The Sands Expo and Convention Centre to set up our booth. This year, we have the biggest booth we've ever had and it's filled with our fantastic NES Reliable Plastic Folding Chairs, our durable NES Wood Tables, and several new product lines like our Eclisse and Copa Glassware and our Polar White dinnerware. Our NES Trade Show Team will be on hand to help answer any questions that you may have and to show you all the great features of our many products. So, if you're in Las Vegas for the show, head on down to booth 4072 and talk to Dennis, Diana, Bill, or Jonathan and find out why you always win with National Event Supply!

We've been working on our website revamp for the past 3 months, and have finally managed to get things tested and up on our live site. We've gotten rid of the bright green sidebars from the previous version, and have updated the base to make the website more friendly for touchscreen based devices like the Apple iPhone and iPad, the Blackberry Playbook, the Microsoft Surface, and Android based phones and tables. With the new website framework, you'll be able to see larger pictures of our products by clicking on links or the picture itself. We think we've gotten most of the bugs out, but if you do run into any, please do let us know!

While we achieved our goal of making the website for touchscreen/mobile device, we're still in the process of making our website bilingual. We're currently working on putting together a French version of our website, complete with all the bells and whistles. Stephanie has put together translations of all of our website pages, and we hope to be able to launch the French version of the website by the end of February. We'll be updating our blog, our twitter feed, and our facebook friends when the French version of the site goes live.

As always if you're interested in a quote for any of our products, or you simply have a question, please feel free to drop us a line. Just as a reminder, February 18th is Family Day in Ontario, and as such we will be closed that day. Our Ontario-based shipping partners will also be closed that day, so if you are looking for products that week you may want to get your order in early.