After 5 EventsStart with the date, then the headcount
The CEO says November or January. Ask which week, because venue availability drops by half once you name one. You need a number for the venue: all staff, or store managers only, or head office plus regional leads. Retail headcount is deceptive—it looks like a number until you remember the Tartu store cannot close and the Pärnu team finishes shift at six. A venue for eighty where thirty arrive is worse than a venue for fifty that is full.
If the event includes staff from multiple towns, the end time is set by the last bus, not by the programme. Check return transport before you confirm the start time.
The venue decides whether the programme works
Most retail events have a presentation: last year's results, this year's targets, the three stores that hit budget. That means a screen visible from the back and a microphone that covers the width of the room. Long thin halls—the kind that fit many people cheaply—throw sound to the side walls and leave the back row guessing.
If the executive is speaking, you need a lectern or a table for notes, a confidence monitor showing the current slide, and a remote that advances without looking down. The technical run-through happens during setup, not five minutes before guests arrive, because the first time the clicker does not work cannot be in front of the board.
Projector or LED screen is not a preference question. Projectors need a dark room, so a November event starting at four in the afternoon in a glass-walled hall has already failed. LED walls work in daylight but cost more and need rigging time. Decide based on the room and the start time, not on what sounds better.
Two kinds of event company
One kind takes your brief, adds margin, and forwards it to a lighting supplier they found that morning, a catering company they have never worked alongside, and an AV contractor who will meet you for the first time during setup. The line items look detailed but nobody on the call has seen the venue or run a cable in it.
The other kind quotes with the people who will build the rig, because they are on staff. The same crew who answers the technical questions is the one in the venue at seven in the morning finding the distribution board. When something needs to change on the day—the screen moves because the seating plan changed, the microphone count goes up because two regional managers are now speaking—the person you ask is the person who knows where the spare cable is.
You will not know which kind you are speaking to until you ask who is in the venue on the day. If the answer is vague, you have the first kind.
What store staff need from the event
Retail teams spend most of the year in separate buildings. The event is the only time head office and店 staff are in one room, so it carries communication weight beyond the programme. That affects two things: the award moment and the meal.
If you are recognising the best store or the top salesperson, the presentation of the award happens on stage with a microphone and a photograph, not whispered at a table. The screen shows their numbers or a photo of the team. The crew needs to know this is happening so the microphone is live and the slide is cued. It is the moment people film on their phones, so the light level cannot drop to cocktail darkness.
The meal Either sits everyone or feeds them standing, but the hybrid version—food on tables, no assigned seats, some people eating on the move—leaves half the room holding a plate with nowhere to put it. Retail staff in formal clothes they wear once a year do not want to juggle a wine glass and a fork while standing in heels. If the venue cannot seat everyone, serve food that does not require a knife.
The run-sheet the executive can glance at
The detailed timeline is for you and the venue. The executive needs one page: arrival time, when to be near the stage, how long the presentation slot is, when the award happens, when it ends. Include the name of one person on site who can answer a question if you are managing something else.
The risk moment is always the speech. The microphone works or it does not, in front of everyone who reports to the person holding it. The rest of the evening can flex; that part cannot. A technical rehearsal is not optional, and it is not the same as a soundcheck. The rehearsal is the executive advancing through the slides with the clicker while standing where they will stand, seeing what the audience sees on the screen, hearing their voice in the room. It happens during setup, and it takes twelve minutes.
What to settle before calling anyone
The date within a two-week window, the headcount with a margin, whether there is a presentation and how long it runs, whether the event includes staff from other towns and therefore whether transport is part of the brief. The venue shortlist can wait, but those four cannot, because every answer changes the cost and the rig.
If the brief is still two sentences and approvals come late, say that. The crew would rather know the CEO has not decided than build to a brief that will reverse the week before. After 5 Events is the team writing this guide—the production and staffing side of the company, not the performance side. The people who quote are the people in the room.
The decision now is whether you need someone in the venue on the day or whether the venue's in-house tech and a catering company are enough. If there is a presentation, a microphone, a screen and an executive whose reputation is attached to it working, you need the first.