Beautiful trip for events-promo firm

LIKE FINE WINE: Bella Consulting originally existed solely to promote the Renaissance Wine Festival. Above, company President Rick Simone speaks with Executive Assistant DeAnna Rolli at the firm’s Providence office. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
LIKE FINE WINE: Bella Consulting originally existed solely to promote the Renaissance Wine Festival. Above, company President Rick Simone speaks with Executive Assistant DeAnna Rolli at the firm’s Providence office. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

He might not be a native Rhode Islander, but Rick Simone is quite the Ocean State loyalist.
The 39-year-old president of Bella Consulting and Events has been a permanent resident since 1996, when he graduated Johnson & Wales University with a marketing degree in his hand. Afterward, he began a career that has taken him from restaurants to helping promote the state through its official tourism agencies and back to entrepreneurship before landing on running Bella beginning in 2004.
And he’s just kept going since.
“I think a lot of Rhode Islanders right now need a morale boost,” Simone said. “They don’t realize how much we have to offer.”
Simone was drawn to Johnson & Wales, with partial scholarship from Junior Achievement, by its Upside-Down curriculum that allows real-life training during underclassmen years in order to help them make a more informed decision before declaring a major.
He earned an associate degree in business administration and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree.
His first full-time position was as a marketing assistant at the Bugaboo Creek Corp., where he had interned during his senior year and which at the time owned Hemenways in Providence and various Capital Grille locations.
Having kept up a connection made during college with former Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci, he was introduced, he said, to a “full fledge” of hospitality and tourism professionals and a short time after leaving school became convention-services manager for the Providence-Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“That’s what really launched me into where I’m at today,” Simone said. “Mayor Cianci convinced me to stay in Rhode Island. Back then, it was a lot different. You were being offered jobs.”
He stayed with the CVB for a couple of years and then went to work as director of convention services for Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Mashantucket, Conn., but remained living in Providence and began to serve on various boards and commissions within the city.
About a year and a half later, he became the deputy director of tourism for the Providence Tourism Council.
“The tourism field is constantly evolving. You’re always dealing with new clientele,” Simone said. “Conventioneers are always trying to grow their attendance.” While at the tourism council he joined a few friends in investing in a restaurant and together they opened Renaissance Restaurant on Federal Hill in 2000. About a year later, he committed full-time to marketing the restaurant and a second restaurant, Il Primo, that opened in 2002 in Newport.
Around the same time, and while he was president of the Federal Hill Commerce Association, he got an idea to hold an annual wine festival in the city in order to bring more people out and about on Federal Hill.
The first Renaissance Wine Festival was held in 2004 across the street from the Renaissance Restaurant and Bella Events, which does business as Bella Consulting and Events, was born in order to promote the event.
A few hundred people attended. This year’s festival, held Sept. 9 at Kennedy Plaza, the eighth annual event, was expected to draw around 1,000 attendees.
Bella existed for its first couple of years almost exclusively to run the wine festival. But after the Renaissance Restaurant and Il Primo were sold in 2007, Simone launched the business as a complete marketing, public-relations and event-production firm.
“I started [with] the person who bought [our restaurants]. Within six months, I had four clients,” Simone said. “When I first started getting into it, I wanted to assist other small businesses. I knew what it was like for me. That [was] the original intent and still is.”
Seventy percent of his approximately 17 clients are small businesses.
Two years ago, he became the event production firm for Alex and Ani, the Cranston-based jewelry designer, which brought the firm a national reach.
Other clients include the Newport International Polo Series, Trattoria Roma in Providence, Blush Wine Bar in Providence, and Iron Works Tavern in Warwick near T.F. Green Airport.
Bella, chosen for the Italian word for beautiful during a trip to Florence, Italy, has grown every year since launching.
Simone attributes part of that to events and promotion making a comeback and, of course, the good work this company does. The rest, it appears, is just Ocean State sparkle.
“I think it’s because we’ve made ourselves available to work with small businesses that needed the help,” Simone said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Bella Consulting and Events
Type of Business: Marketing, public relations and event production
Owners: Rick Simone
Location: 220 West Exchange St.,
Providence
Employees: 12
Year Established: 2008
Annual Sales: $1.3 million

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