For us it seems Christmas comes around faster each year. Vivid is now in its eleventh year and in that time the company has changed quite a bit. Back in 2008 when we opened our first Christmas Party venue at Athena in Leicester, we were able to take the first half of the year off! We spent January to July with our feet up drinking pints of tea while we waited for Christmas party bookings to kick off again.

Fast forward to 2018 and the Christmas party season has spread to a year-round operation. Vivid is now the UK’s leading Christmas party operator hosting 100,000 guests last year alone. Where we used to send out one van’s worth of theme-set, we now send out 35 artic trailers worth to five of the UK’s largest events venues.

Part of this is our own doing. Not only have our parties grown in popularity over the years but I have insisted in keeping as much of the product in-house as possible, increasing our own workload. We still manufacture our own theme sets for the new themes here in our workshops, as well as designing all of the marking material and running a busy sales office. Not to mention production, entertainment and catering operations!

The clear-down from the previous year’s parties – the unpacking of lorries and subsequent cleaning and maintenance of theme sets and equipment – now dovetails with the launch of our new parties each year – which seem to get earlier and earlier. For us, Christmas sales now start in March and at the time of writing – 1st May – we already have several sold out nights, largely driven by guests who missed out on their chosen night last year.

I hope you have an enjoyable summer and are looking forward to Christmas… in December!

Richard Longhill
Managing Director