How vital is the right supplier?

Unlike most of my blogs I'll answer the question posed straight away...extremely vital.  Get the right supplier(s) on board and an event will be a walk in the park, however select inapprorpriate or poor suppliers and the opposite is true.

As an organiser / event logistics specialist we pride ourselves on only working with the best (note not the biggest) companies.  Areas such as stand building, electrics, AV are too important to risk dodgy suppliers.  Where possible we encourage clients to use our suppliers on events we are involved in...sadly we do not always succeed.  Being truthful 90% of the time suppliers we have (rather than want) to use are decent enough...unfortunately there is that 10% exception and our experiences with this type of company emphasises the importance of the supplier to an events success.

Reliance is never good but you should be able to run an event with complete faith that the experts in their area (be it AV, stands, accommodation booking) know what they are doing.  As I say you still need to keep an eye on all apsects but only an eye, not all your time - that is why we bring suppliers on board.  It would be easy for Connect to offer an array of services that we are not remotely skilled in, just to attract a larger client base but if someone approaches us for AV or stand building we pass it onto one of our regular suppliers.  We could probably make a bodge job of it but a) we take too much pride in our work and b) it is not fair on a genuine paying client to do that.

Not all 'suppliers' are like that

A recent event experience has made me appreciate our suppliers importance even more...I won't go into too many details but it ended up with our team (Connect and our AV supplier) covering the client's supposed 'expert.'  Frustrating but it happens - once on site and faced with that issue the only option is to help out.

Hunter Events, Roadstar, Event Express, SO Group, DMS Graphics, Masters and EFI Logistics - all key suppliers to Connect and to be honest without their knowledge in their key areas the Connect service would not be what it is. 

So how vital is the right supplier...almost beyond words