Blog

Wow, I can’t believe it’s June already! We have been crazy busy since the start of 2012. We started off the year with the beginning of our Trade Show season, first with the BC CRA Regional show in Langley, BC in mid-January 2012, and finishing up in late March at the 2012 Quebec Expo in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec. Over the course of the winter trade show season, our team collectively travelled more than 46,000 km (almost 27,000 miles)--enough to travel around the world! In total, we did 7 trade shows over a 12 week period and met with hundreds of our customers and many more potential new customers.

Then in April, Diana and I were off to China to see some new suppliers as well as work on sourcing a range of new products. Over the next year I think you will see many exciting new additions from us including additions to existing product lines as well as entirely new product lines.

As a sample of things to come, in March we introduced our new Serenity line of lead-free Crystal. Prior to bringing in our first shipment, we wanted to test the quality of the Crystal so we brought some of the glasses home to see how they would perform. We have been using the glasses 3 to 4 times a week and washing them in our dishwasher. On a number of occasions we have also hand washed and hand dried them with a dish towel. More than 5 months into this routine, our Serenity Crystal Stemware has held up without any issues at all--no broken stems and no broken bowls.

Serenity Crystal Stemware is not only durable, but also has a classic look that will makes your customers smile. The 19 ounce and the 22 ounce glass are very similar in shape to two lines of Riedel glasses we have at home. And with our prices ranging from $2.65 to $2.95 they are a fraction of the price of several brand name Crystal wine glasses.

As a result of not just the quality but also the feedback we received early on from some of our customers on the attractive appearance of our Serenity crystal glassware, we decided to start stocking 6 different pieces to introduce the Serenity Crystal to our Customers. These 6 pieces are a 22oz, 19oz, 16oz, and 12oz wine glass as well as 7oz Martini Glass and 7oz Champagne Flute. The 22oz wine glass is great for use as a water glass or as a red wine glass. The 19oz wine glass on the other hand is great for use as a white wine glass. The Serenity Crystal is a great choice for anyone looking to offer the high end look that everyone is looking for while still keeping your costs reasonable and ultimately helping to improve your ROI. For measurements of our Serenity Crystal Stemware and other details, please visit our Serenity Crystal page.

Well we finally have a chance to come up for air after a very successful 2012 Rental Show in New Orleans, Louisiana.

We arrived in ‘The Big Easy’ on Saturday afternoon (February 4th) just in time to catch the first parade of the Mardi Gras season. While the parade started around 6:30pm we didn’t actually see it in the French Quarter until around 9:00pm which gives you an idea of how long the route and the parade was. The parades build through the month of February culminating in the biggest bash which takes place on February 21st. On this day there are 6 parades throughout the day and more than 1.5 million visitors flock to the city so they can enjoy the Mardi Gras fun.

National Event Supply was proud to be a Silver level sponsor for the 2012 Rental Show. We strongly believe that investing in a stronger rental community will pay dividends for all involved. It's also a great opportunity to talk with current and potential customers to get a feel for what products they are looking for and what opportunities exist for new products that they didn't know they had a need for.

On Sunday morning attended the breakfast at the Events & Tents session where we were thanked for being a co-sponsor for the Breakfast Seminar session. Breakfast was followed by a great presentation by the father and son team of Richard and Jordan Carbotti of Perfect Surroundings from Middletown, Rhode Island. They talked about where they find their inspiration for creating fabulous events as well as showed pictures of some of their more extravagant and unique events. The balance of the Events & Tents day was filled with lots of valuable informative seminars and great networking opportunities to help run your party and tent business.

For the National Event Supply trade show team, the remainder of Sunday was spent setting up our booth to display our wide range of product offerings in the best fashion possible. We had a great booth location across from Losberger Tents, one of the world’s leading tent manufacturers, beside All Seasons Tent another leading Mid-west based Tent supplier and right by the exhibition hall food court. With more than 50+ tent suppliers at this year’s Rental Show, having our 21ft National Event Supply Sky Flag was a must. It is a great way to stand out in the crowd.

With our greatly expanded booth, rental stores from across the US Midwest and Canada flocked to our booth on Monday and Tuesday. So many so that we couldn’t get to everyone that came by. Early on Monday we met with Leslie of Word of Mouth Catering out of Austin, Texas. Leslie was excited to see our new introduction of highly durable melamine platters and bowls that look so great you can`t tell they aren`t porcelain until you actually touch them. On Monday evening we attended the ARA Region 10 reception where we were thanked for being a co-sponsor of the evening reception.

On Tuesday we met with Mahala from Celebration Party Rental of Jacksonville, Florida who was interested in our lines of NES Reliable Plastic Folding Tables and plastic folding chairs. She was pleased to hear we offer a 2 year material and manufacturing defect warranty and that we have been selling our NES Reliable line of quality products for 5 years now. Our Rental Customers have been telling us how well they perform in their heavy use environment.

Over the 3 days of The Rental Show we met with customers from California to Sydney, NS and all points in between. We also had the pleasure of meeting a few customers from the Caribbean (Bahamas and Barbados) and Honduras. After having such a great show in New Orleans, we can’t help but be excited to get back to The Rental Show in Las Vegas in 2013!

After the two days of exhibiting, everyone headed to the Coast Hotel & Convention Centre/Cascades Casino for the Saturday evening Awards Banquet Dinner. As you can see, we had a full house in the banquet hall and we weren’t disappointed. After a fabulous dinner we were entertained by Michael Harrison, a Ventriloquist/Comedian and a finalist on the 2008 America’s Got Talent. Michael did a number of his trademark skits, including his first puppet, Mr. Tennis Ball and Dunlop and his Human Puppet routine that won him huge accolades from the judges on America’s Got Talent. Michael performed for almost an hour and had us laughing in the aisles.

After the dinner a number of awards were presented to various members of the CRA BC Local. Ted Cook, ARA President presented the CRA BC Local with an award for the greatest membership growth of all State and Provincial locals across the United States and Canada. Congratulations to the CRA BC Local for a great accomplishment as well as for hosting such a great 2 day event. We will definitely be recommending that all of our BC Rental Customers make plans to attend next year's show.

Our next tradeshow is also in Vancouver. We're going to be at the BC Foodservice Show which will be held at the Vancouver Convention Centre. I hope that if you're at the show, you'll stop by Booth 138 and say hello to Jonathan, Tony, or myself and take a look at everything that we have on display.

We`ve had a busy few weeks again at National Event Supply. After renaming our company back in the spring we finally got around to changing our building signage. The next time you drop by be sure to take good look at our new overhead sign. The sign looks fantastic, if we do say so ourselves. A big thanks to Bob at Whitehorse Signs for helping us make the changes in a cost effective manner. Bob was extremely professional and made sure we kept the proper balance with all the removals and additions that were made to the sign.

We also received a number of shipments in the last week which has helped our inventory position quite dramatically. Last year it was our NES Reliable 8ft rectangular Plastic folding tables that we couldn’t keep in stock, this year it’s been our NES Reliable 6ft rectangular Plastic folding tables. They have been flying off our warehouse shelves just as fast as we’ve been able to get them in. We have finally caught up with the increase in demand and should have lots of all sizes of Plastic folding tables available for the busy fall season.