From the backyard to the convention hall
Art Brown, founder and owner of All Occasions Party Rentals and Marbella, talks with son Jason Brown, chief operating officer, in the Marbella showroom in Eighty Four. The company will furnish both the Republican and Democratic national conventions later this summer.
Art Brown pauses before rows of rental chairs being readied for shipment to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
EIGHTY FOUR – When Art Brown started his party rental business a couple of decades ago, his customers picked out their plates, tablecloths, napkins and silverware and ordered their tents in a showroom that also featured gas augers and power washers.
Over the years, Brown steered the company’s focus to furnishing events – from backyard graduation parties to major corporate affairs.
The expanded coverage area today, which requires about $8 million in an inventory of thousands of tables, chairs, place settings and some very upscale furniture, sweeps from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., to Columbus and Cleveland and all points in between.
While it continues to handle graduation parties and weddings, it has also moved into some high-profile settings, such as the recent U.S. Open in Oakmont and the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia, respectively.
Today, through a second division, Brown is thriving in a business that can transform someone’s existing space, from the backyard to a convention hall or stadium, into just about any atmosphere they desire, with plush seating, chandeliers and customized bars and dance floors.
The division, called Marbella, specializes in upscale event furniture and decor rentals, and is taking Brown and his staff of 110 employees, which includes an in-house designer and a graphic artist, to major venues that include Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center in New York City.
The company recently furnished a number of private residences bordering Oakmont Country Club that were rented by various corporations attending the U.S. Open. It is now in the midst of preparing to furnish both political parties’ national conventions.
Between All Occasions Party Rental, which provides the tents and all of the necessities for any party or event, and Marbella, which can fulfill practically anyone’s dream event with upscale furnishings and custom designs that truly make each outing one of a kind, Brown has built an exclusivity among other area companies that provide only a portion of event services.
“No one has the capabilities we have in the entire region,” he said recently during a tour of his headquarters and warehouse on Wilson Road in Eighty Four.
“All Occasions is still the lion, but the growth factor is Marbella,” Brown said of the two divisions that often accompany each other on a project.
“All Occasions has been growing at 20 percent a year, but Marbella is the company we’re looking at as the next profit center.”
Making an event happen, which often requires a designer’s touch and the ability to offer custom features such as special lighting, emblems, initials or logos on bars or dance floors, also means carrying inventory at a scale that Brown said is unparalleled in the Pittsburgh region.
“We’ll have $8 million in inventory in 2017,” he said during a tour of his 85,000-square-foot warehouse in a portion of a former International Paper manufacturing campus on Wilson Road that he purchased in the last decade.
In one section of the warehouse, employees run a specially designed industrial dishwasher that uses less water and environmentally safer detergent to clean the thousands of place settings that move in and out of the business on any given day.
In another area, a one-of-a-kind tent-washing machine, which Brown describes as “a monster,” ensures that rented tents are clean and ready for the next event.
“We have no more room,” said Brown, who rents out the remainder of the space on Wilson Road to four other companies.
The size of inventory is necessary for the footprint Brown’s companies now encompasses, from the mid-Atlantic seaboard into the Midwest.
“Tables, we rent in the thousands,” Brown said. “Chairs, 20,000 to 30,000.”
Allison Miller, senior marketing director, noted that at this time of year, with graduation parties, weddings and corporate events at their peak, the company moves from its usual two shifts a day to three.
“We’re running all nine truck bays 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The Marbella division came about several years ago when Brown reached an agreement with Canadian-based Modern Event Furniture, which made him an exclusive distributor of its upscale rental furniture in the mid-Atlantic region.
The furniture is available in every style, from classic to contemporary, and comes with a wide range of finishes that allows designers to create event spaces that range from intimate and chic to formal and elegant.
A major appeal to Brown is that many of the Marbella furniture styles are modular, giving the company the flexibility to place seating around support poles in a building or build bars in a variety of shapes and sizes. Dance floors also can be designed to complement the colors and styles used in the accompanying pieces. A special printing and cutting machine is used to create patterns in a full palette of colors that are applied to the surfaces of bars, dance floors and walls.
Much of the furniture in Marbella’s line can be changed into a variety of styles on the site, enabling legs and tabletops to be changed out to reflect the taste of individual customers, Brown said.
“We supply the tools for the customers so they can truly customize their event,” said Cindy Scott, director of sales.
As Marbella’s furnishings have increased the company’s designing range, so have customers’ expectations.
For the most recent Pittsburgh Steelers fashion show, the company designed 8-foot-high chandeliers whose shades were covered with the Steelers logo.
And Brown expects the Marbella division to shine even more light as its reputation grows. Marbella has opened a second showroom in Cleveland and will soon christen a third in Washington, D.C.
The ability to take a space and transform it into something special has made Brown and his staff the purveyors of something magical.
The company now has the capability to place walls inside of tents, decorating the interior space to the point that people attending events in them often ask when the addition was added to a building.
“When you tell them it’s a tent, they look at you in disbelief,” Brown said.