Event planning all about the details

Scott Charpentier remembers the strain of staging corporate events.

He won’t soon forget the late-night planning crunch, the morass of city permit applications, the grueling search for the perfect caterer and the tedious balancing act that comes with an assembly of a dozen vendors.

Charpentier, owner of Fort Collins Mortgage, did it all when he threw up stakes on a 500-person street gala five years ago. But he will never do it again.

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“Planning something like that is a big headache,” he said.

That refrain is a common one among business owners who are lured by the appeal of event marketing but terrified by the process that is tethered to it. That’s where Cori Schrader, Debbie West and All About Events Inc. come in to shoulder the load. The energetic, two-woman tag team is the area’s only full-time, full-service event-planning agency.

Based in Loveland and Fort Collins the 2-year-old business works with local companies to churn creative ideas into streamlined events from corporate seminars to community fairs.

“There are a lot less headaches with (All About Events),” Charpentier said, talking about the company that has handled his annual “Street Jam” for two years. “They’ve already got the connections and they know how to put it all together.”

More and more businesses are starting to agree with Charpentier, sparking a boom in the event-planning market that has proliferated Denver with more than 30 service providers. Still, All About Events co-owners Schrader and West hit the Northern Colorado scene at the right time, filling a niche characterized by furious demand and little competition.

The fortuitous click into the local market blossomed out of an equally advantageous fit between the company’s two founders. Both women came to the Front Range carrying a wealth of public-relations knowledge and an ambitious outlook. And when a friend introduced the two, a business quickly began to take shape.

“We balance each other out perfectly,” Schrader said. “We have different skill sets that seem to complement each other.”

Schrader supplied her creativity while West threw in her event-planning experience and a meticulous attention to detail, resulting in an almost immediate success story.

But while there was an existing demand for the company’s services, local businesses remained somewhat skeptical, lacking a full understanding for what it is that All About Events does, West said.

“People thought we were just going to spend their money and have a party,” she said. “Most businesses don’t realize how much planning goes into these events.”

That planning can take more than six months and 800 hours. A lack of local venues and a daunting vendor-coordination process, which can involve more than 20 contractors, creates a virtual obstacle course on the way to a polished event.

“A lot of large companies think they can plan by themselves,” West said. “But they get into it and realize that there is so much to do, so they bring us in with expertise.”

Many local companies began to realize the potential rewards looming in event marketing, West said. Offering a personal way to interact with customers, employees and the community, the strategy was an intriguing idea. But companies need All About Events to morph that idea into an affair.

“When we talk about out business we like to use the analogy that it’s like building a house,” West said. “You could build a house by yourself if you really wanted to, but by hiring a contractor you get the job done right.”

As businesses began to buy into the analogy, Schrader and West began to plan corporate events, parties, meetings, seminars and community events. With each one the two remained innovative, aiming to change how people think about business functions.

The women created an Oktoberfest in Loveland, threw a black party in Fort Collins and presented a New Years Eve soiree for Ideal Fencing at the historic Stanley Hotel.

Word traveled and All About Events’ reputation grew among business leaders. Soon the company was in the “back pocket” of several of its clients, which use its services more than five times a year.

Today, West and Schrader are comfortable in their niche. But they are not complacent. On the contrary, they continue to look forward. With two contractors already on staff, the women are looking to expand, using the Internet to market to a broader client base. In the coming decade the two women hope to move into a downtown Fort Collins office.

While the local market’s thirst has been a launch pad for West and Schrader, they remain cautious in their approach to growth.

“We’re very careful not to take on more than we can handle,” Schrader said. “We don’t want to grow too fast so everything we do maintains a high level of integrity.”

For now the women are immersed in a quagmire of holiday happenings, planning more intimate functions with an All About Events twist. So don’t be surprised if this year’s holiday party is missing the punch bowl and the cramped living-room conversation.

“We try to take ordinary events and add something creative, something different, something unique so it’s not what anyone expects,” Schrader said.