raising the stakes

Two event giants team up to transform Houston's party rental market

Houston Tents and Events just got bigger.

Photo courtesy of Houston Tents & Events.

Looks like everything is coming up tents in Space City! Houston Tents & Events recently acquired A Finer Event, vastly increasing its share of the tent market in the city.

“We’re excited about bringing A Finer Event into the Houston Tents & Events family,” HTE COO Darren Randle said in.a statement. “They have been our go-to vendor for tabletop rental products for years, and I’m humbled and appreciative that we are the company they trust to carry on their family’s legacy. As we continue toward our long-term vision of expansion, our teams combined have some of the most knowledgeable and experienced event specialists and installers in the industry. We are ready to showcase what we can do for Houston and beyond.”

The move adds 30,000-square-feet of inventory at the 14820 North Freeway location. HTE will continue employing Finer Event’s management staff.

The acquisition comes on the heels of the death of Finer Event founder Mike Little. He started in the tent and party rental business in 1977, building it into a small but successful empire. Little passed away after a long battle with cancer in 2023, leaving the business to his son Jeremy. After the loss of his father, Jeremy saw a partnership with HTE as the next logical step for the company.

“In the wake of my dad’s passing, there was a season of transition to find the right fit for A Finer Event’s next chapter,” Little said. “Having worked closely with Darren over the years as a partner on events, we felt his company held similar values to how we’ve done business for the last 20 years. I respect Darren as a business leader, and I’m confident he’s the right person to continue serving our customers with the same standard of service.”

HTE will need the extra size because Houston is in the midst of a good old-fashioned tent-off! Last month, Town & Country Party Rentals made the surprise move to reacquire Aztec Events & Tents. Todd Johnson, co-owner of Town & Country Party Rentals, had sold the business in 2015 to a group of buyers led by A. Kelly Williams and Michael Hanks, only to buy it back this year. The acquisition consolidated major parts of the Houston party rental infrastructure market.

Now, HTE and Town & Country will be two titans vying for dominance of the outdoor wedding, party, and/or social gathering industry. The fact that HTE has hired Fito Reyes, a 28-year-industry juggernaut who was previously senior operations manager for Aztec, shows that the two companies know what the (tent) stakes are.

a finer event business houston tents events

Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

It's easier to find a job in Texas than in nearly any other state.

If you’re hunting for a job in Texas amid a tough employment market, you stand a better chance of landing it here than you might in other states.

A new ranking by personal finance website WalletHub of the best states for jobs puts Texas at No. 7. The Lone Star State lands at No. 2 in the economic environment category and No. 18 in the job market category.

Massachusetts tops the list, and West Virginia appears at the bottom.

To determine the most attractive states for employment, WalletHub compared the 50 states across 34 key indicators of economic health and job market strength. Ranking factors included employment growth, median annual income, and average commute time.

“Living in one of the best states for jobs can provide stable conditions for the long term, helping you ride out the fluctuations that the economy will experience in the future,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

In September, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas led the U.S. in job creation with the addition of 195,600 jobs over the past 12 months.

While Abbott proclaimed Texas is “America’s jobs leader,” the state’s level of job creation has recently slowed. In June, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted that the state’s year-to-date job growth rate had dipped to 1.8 percent, and that even slower job growth was expected in the second half of this year.

The August unemployment rate in Texas stood at 4.1 percent, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. Throughout 2025, the monthly rate in Texas has been either four percent or 4.1 percent.

By comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate in August was 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2025, the monthly rate for the U.S. has ranged from 4 percent to 4.3 percent.

Here’s a rundown of the August unemployment rates in Texas’ four biggest metro areas:

Austin — 3.9 percent
Dallas-Fort Worth — 4.4 percent
San Antonio — 4.4 percent
Houston — 5 percent

Unemployment rates have remained steady this year despite layoffs and hiring freezes driven by economic uncertainty. However, the number of U.S. workers who’ve been without a job for at least 27 weeks has risen by 385,000 this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in August. That month, long-term unemployed workers accounted for about one-fourth of all unemployed workers.

An August survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed a record-low 44.9 percent of Americans were confident about finding a job if they lost their current one.

This story originally was published on our sister site, InnovationMap.

job market texas wallethub jobs

raising the stakes

Two event giants team up to transform Houston's party rental market

Jobs report

Texas clocks in as No. 7 best state to find a job, new report says

2 Houston suburbs named top-10 best Texas cities to move to

Houston chef's hip new Italian restaurant now open in Heights hotel

Airbnb pledges over $1 million to improve Houston before World Cup