Mindy Fielman, vice president for trade shows and special events for Boston-based Hearts On Fire, a high-quality diamond jewelry company, has spent 28 years planning events in the jewelry industry. She’s learned over the years that the success of an offsite event boils down to a couple of key factors.

“I am a believer in things that shape the event for the attendees—it’s really about energy and it’s about atmosphere,” she says. “So it’s very important to look very closely to make sure the venue you choose offers those two qualities.”

And there were reasons Fielman looked quite closely at the venue she ultimately chose for an 879-attendee customer appreciation and networking party for June 2016 in conjunction with the annual JCK Las Vegas trade show and a group of other jewelry shows that go on up and down the Las Vegas Strip during the same week as JCK.

Because the fourth quarter is the biggest retail sales period for the jewelry industry, the June Las Vegas show week is the time when buyers from around the world buy product that will stock the stores as the holiday season approaches.

“This truly is a show where people put pencil to paper and they ink the orders,” Fielman says. “Many trade shows these days are about publicizing product, networking and that sort of thing. But this show in Las Vegas is the single most important show of the year in terms of the actual booking of business, so it is very important for Hearts On Fire to have a strong presence there.”

And there was another reason Hearts On Fire wanted to put its best foot forward to the industry in 2016: The company had recently been purchased by Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook, the largest vertically integrated jewelry company in the world. Additionally, Hearts On Fire was celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2016, and another brand owned by Hearts On Fire, Memoir, was celebrating its 30th.

“So we decided to do something special in 2016 that we had never done before—open up our event to everyone in the industry who was at the Las Vegas Show (buyers, manufacturers, even our direct competitors),” Fielman says. “We wanted everyone to come join us for a really special event.”

That’s why a really special venue was required, she says, and that is why Fielman ultimately chose a venue that has become very popular with large corporate groups since it opened three years ago—Brooklyn Bowl. It rose to the top in her selection process because of the energy and the atmosphere.

In a nutshell, Brooklyn Bowl, which at 82,000 square feet is the largest freestanding event venue outside a hotel or convention center in the city, offers a lot of activities designed to produce attendee energy, according to Erin Ward, director of sales and events at Brooklyn Bowl. There is a 32-lane bowling alley that backs up to a large performance area with a stage where live music is performed nightly. There’s a restaurant that serves the venue’s original-recipe fried chicken and a variety of other comfort foods.

The dining, bowling, dancing and concert listening available on the ground floor is just part of the equation, Fielman says.

The upstairs area at the venue, which can handle private groups of up to 350 as a self-contained area, offers a balcony overlooking the downstairs performance area, a smaller meeting room that can handle groups of 75-100 and a big outdoor patio for cocktail events and networking sessions.

Even though Brooklyn Bowl can comfortably hold up to 3,000 for a complete buyout, it was also a very comfortable fit for Fielman’s 879-attendee event.

“It gave everyone room to spread out and enjoy themselves,” she says.

One of the high points of energy at the event was a concert by Andy Grammer and his band. Grammer, whose 2015 hit “Honey, I’m Good” ranked No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, is a certified multi-platinum seller who electrified a diverse audience that night. Attendees ranged in age from their 20s up into their 70s.

“We had 500 or 600 people dancing,” Fielman says. “I had 60-something-year-old people dancing who I had never seen dancing at a party before; these are people that I usually see at jewelry industry events sitting at a quiet little table having a glass of white wine, and they were out there dancing on the floor. People seemed to be having a really great time.”

In order to boost the energy even further, Fielman and her team worked with a Canadian company called PixMob that provided programmable LED bracelets that pulsate with colors in response to the music and body movements of those wearing them.

“It gave the dance floor a great atmosphere and people got excited about it,” she says.

Meanwhile, those who chose to bowl instead of dance also enjoyed themselves, wearing custom-branded bowling socks provided by Fielman’s team.

“Little touches like that can help make an event special,” she says.

Still others at the event enjoyed other parts of the venue, sipping drinks and chatting on the patio upstairs, for instance. Big screens all over the building offer a look at what is happening on the stage downstairs.

Fielman says that in addition to energy, Brooklyn Bowl offers a great location just off the Las Vegas Strip adjacent to several hotels and just one monorail stop from the Las Vegas Convention Center.

“When you are transporting people to your event—which we did—strategic location is important,” she says.

Planners of other corporate events at Brooklyn Bowl found the combination of high-energy activities and atmosphere, good in-house catering and an accommodating staff made the big venue a perfect fit for their events as well.

MINExpo 2016, the big annual trade show and conference of the National Mining Association, attracted about 40,000 attendees from 130 countries to the Las Vegas Convention Center, and Caterpillar Inc. wanted to make a make a big impression on attendees with a large offsite event, according to Angela Baer, CMP (MPI Chicago Area Chapter), corporate meeting planner for Caterpillar.

So Baer and her team did a complete buyout of Brooklyn Bowl for three consecutive nights during the trade show, hosting 1,500 attendees each night.

“Attendees spend long, intensive days on the trade show floor, dealing iron and learning more about the mining industry, so we wanted to give them a fun way to relax and network at our event,” she says. “It was a way for Caterpillar dealers and their customers to enjoy interactive fun.”

Baer says Caterpillar took advantage of some branding opportunities that Brooklyn Bowl offers, but otherwise found the venue already perfect for the group’s needs.

“We booked a musical group called All Requests Live, which takes song requests by text and email while the show is in progress. Our industry is a pretty macho group, but our attendees got up on the dance floor and really enjoyed themselves. It was a riot—quite rewarding to see them really having a good time at our event.”

The 2015 annual expo of the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), was the background for a Brooklyn Bowl event put together by a partnership between MillerCoors of the brewing industry and Mars-Wrigley of the candy and snack industry.

“We have been doing an event in partnership with each other for years at NACS,” says Maggie Miller, senior meeting and event manager for MillerCoors. “Brooklyn Bowl was a perfect event for us because both MillerCoors and Mars-Wrigley were able to bring in buyers from the convenience store industry, let them sample new product we were rolling out and have a good evening of networking and fun.”

Energizing activity was important to the event’s 1,500 attendees, she says.

‘The feedback that we got was that one of the reasons people liked Brooklyn Bowl was that there was something they can actively do like bowling instead of just sitting around and watching things happen,” Miller says. “After they had been walking around the big trade show all day long they really liked the bowling.”

A group called Garage Boys Band, chosen for its appeal to a broad demographic range of attendees, got the attendees on their feet on the dance floor, she says.

Brooklyn Bowl’s original location is in Brooklyn, New York, and there is another location in London.