News

Jun 25, 2018

Today is company President Charles Miller’s birthday so to celebrate we sat down with Charlie, to hear some of the crazy stories he has seen or heard in his 40+ year in the event industry. 

He is always saying he is going to write a book with everything that we have done but some of the events that came to mind:

96 Inches......
The monthly phone conversation of a customer asking “How long are your 8’ tables?”.  We understand this is question that people ask when they aren’t fully paying attention to the conversation, or are thinking about other information we gave them, but it is always fun to respond with ………”96 inches, our 8’ tables are 96 inches long” 

We were almost glowing……
It wasn’t fun at the moment but a interesting time was when The Bureau of Environmental Health and Radiation Protection (BEHRP) which is a part of the Ohio Department of Health gave us a call.  We had some tables and chairs at a facility that accidentally had some radiation spread throughout the building.  This was on the same day they had an employee luncheon using our tables and chairs.  So just like in the movies the Bureau showed up at my warehouse with some fancy Geiger counters and for two days scanned every piece of equipment, truck, machine, and employee that had possibly dealt with the equipment.  Thankfully no radiation was detected and it was nerve racking at the time, but we did enjoy ourselves when the investigators showed up and we were all wearing tin foil hats. 

The caterer that no showed…... 
Back in the early 80’s we were involved in a wedding that took place at the old Oneil’s building in downtown Akron.  For months we planned the event with the bride, venue, and caterer.  The final two weeks before the wedding, communication with the caterer started to get spotty.  This was a time before email and cellphones, so maybe they were just busy and barely getting to their answering machine.  Finally, the night before the wedding it was found out that the caterer who was supposed to be preparing for the wedding of 400 people had skipped town.  It was a horrible situation.  The bride handled it in stride and was able to get the guests fed, but I will never forget that wedding.  (As a side note we work with some of the finest caterers in town, and this would NEVER happen with them.  They are true professionals)    

 
Hot Pink it is or was supposed to be……
In the late 70’s whenever you needed a particular color of table cover you purchased them in white and sent them to be dyed to the color you needed.  Hot Pink was the "in color" that season and I had a bride who needed 45 covers, but I only had 36.  I informed her that I had enough time to order them and have them dyed and also that the shade WOULD be a little darker, stands to reason these will be new and the others had been washed a couple of times, which always lightened the shade.  Well as fate would have it the manufacturer out of New York had them back ordered.  The Dyer in New Jersey finally got them on Wednesday before the event.  They finished them late Thursday and I drove to New Jersey Friday to pick them up and returned very late.  Saturday morning, I washed and pressed all that was needed.  Saturday about 11am I went to the venue with my staff and we put all of the table covers on and helped finished setting the tables. 

We finished about Noon and as we were leaving the mother of the bride came up to me and mentioned the differences in the shade and said “Charlie, I don’t believe you went through all that just for us, tell me what really happened” I just shook my head and walked away.  By the way, when the event was going on that evening and the lights were low, you could't tell the difference in the shades, they were that close. 

Life is so much easier now.  You can get 80 different colors in 10 different sizes shipped overnight if needed………..and yes………even hot pink!