The temporary theatre had a capacity of 6,200 (larger than the Royal Albert Hall) and was installed over five days by an experienced team led by senior project manager Martin Clark. The Fashion Theatre featured 130 models wearing £5million of the latest high fashion, presented in a high energy one hour spectacular that ran up to seven times per day.
Group operations director Bernard Cottrell who has been at Haymarket Exhibitions for 15 years, said, "I have used a range of suppliers and Arena Seating have shown themselves to be head and shoulders above their competition.
Health & Safety is of paramount importance to us and the Arena Seating teams are very safe workers, they are very quick but always safe and I've never seen them cut corners. Service levels are great; they're fantastic people who respond very quickly and positively."
The 2009 Clothes Show Live attracted over 130,000 people who spent in excess of £20million over the six day show.
Arena's Martin Clark commented: "In addition to creating a temporary fashion theatre that gives clear views and creates a vibrant atmosphere for the audience, one of our prime considerations when designing this layout was to ensure speedy ingress and egress. With as many seven one-hour shows per day scheduled it's vital for the organisers that they can achieve a rapid turnaround. Haymarket created a pedestrian one-way system which we accommodated with sufficient stairwells and adequate space to safely move people in and out; which I'm delighted to say worked very well."
(Jim Evans)
