After the extremely sad events of the Kiss nightclub fire in Brazil, in which 233 people have lost their lives, event planners are reminded of the dangers involved in hosting some events. For those of us from the US, this case sounds tragically similar to the Station nightclub fire of 2003.

Every municipality, state, and federal government have regulations that dictate what safety measures must be observed for events. This includes whether fire, pyrotechnics, or cooking equipment are used, or even if chairs in rows must be attached to each other. Because of these regulations, event providers often have to carry multiple licenses to prove compliance. Event providers also must provide certification that their equipment has been treated for fire safety, whether this is fire proofed or treated with fire retardants. (We can assure our customers that our equipment have these certificates)

When choosing to do your own events, please keep safety in mind, and if you begin to question the safety of your event, call a professional.

Due to expansion of both products and services, we at Roland L. Appleton, Inc. are in search of a new location. While we have had several years of profitable business at our 145 Commercial St. address, including a brisk trade in walk-in business, we are now looking for a facility that can meet our increased warehousing needs. Roland L. Appleton, Inc. has been located within the city of Lynn for over 85 years, and we are looking to continue that long tradition of excellence in service to our community by favoring locations within the city of Lynn. However, we are not ruling out potential neighboring communities as our new base of operations.

After receiving and tabulating votes for candidates, James Appleton, president of Roland L. Appleton, Inc. is now a member of the board of directors for the Massachusetts ARA. He will be serving in this capacity for 3 years, and will be serving alongside Charles Driggs, Gene LaPierre, Andrew Taylor, and Mike Tonry. The board will be appointing officers to their roster for the 2013 year in a meeting to be held January 31st.

We have 70 inch flat-screen TVs. Imagine: you’re having your yearly Superbowl party with a bunch of your buddies. They walk into your living room and their jaws drop at seeing the big game on a TV screen that’s almost 6 feet from corner to corner. Most people are’t even 6 feet tall! You get to be that guy with that awesome Superbowl party everybody remembers. 

Tent sizes needed for your event depend on two things- are your guests dining, and how many of them are there?

1. If your guests are dining, you will be able to seat 10 people per 10 foot by 10 foot section. This is the same if guests are waited on or if they are dining buffet style. This does assume that the food is under it’s own tent. If guests are not dining and instead are seated auditorium style, you can seat roughly 16 people per 10 foot by 10 foot section, not including aisles, stage, or podium.

2. With these pieces of information, you can start to determine the tent size needed for your event. If you have 100 guests dining under your tent, you would need at least a 20 foot by 60 foot tent. However, the same amount of guests can be seated auditorium style in a 20 foot by 40 foot tent.

When in doubt of your tent needs, please don’t hesitate to call us.

On February 10 through 13, Roland L. Appleton employees will be attending the ARA Rental Show. For customers who don’t know, the Rental Show is an exhibition of party and construction equipment that showcases the latest trends in the industry. You can find a link here. To better serve our customers, we will be sacrificing several frigid New England days for attendance at the Las Vegas Sands Expo and Convention Center. We will be in the middle of the Vegas strip, dutifully attending seminars on event production and examining new types of tents, stages, linens, dishes, and room dividers, among other things. Of course, we won’t be gambling or seeing shows or anything really fun like that. No. Of course not. We’re going so we can do better in our industry. Yeah.