While many a company has fallen into the “price war trap” where we feel that we must beat our competition by beating their pricing this all too often results in an overall lowering of prices in what was a strong market. Early in my rental business we purchased a bunch of chiavari chairs. When we price shopped our competition, we noted that the major players were charging between $10 and $12 per chair. We decided that we could easily charge $6.50/chair and still have a good ROI. While this worked for a few months (we sold out of every chair we had, every weekend) eventually our competition lowered their prices to $6.50/chair. The sad part of this story is nearly 10-years latter chiavari chairs still rent for $6.50/chair. What I learned from this experience is that competing solely on price was a lazy way to do business and we shifted our business practice from one centered around price to one centered around quality. We defined quality (as far a product is concerned) as always delivering a clean, reasonably near new condition chair or table to every customer and let our pricing be competitive but certainly not the cheapest. From a customer standpoint there is nothing more frustrating than getting a shipment of chairs or tables that have a layer of warehouse dust on them and all beat up from the constant transportation.
While it is important to frequently clean tables and chairs it is more important that they be stored with some sort of protective cover so that they do not get dusty or damaged during transportation. Chair and table covers are an investment that every company who is serious about providing a quality product to their customer should invest in. While I have seen several companies use plastic shrink wrap to protect their furniture it is expensive (it’s a petroleum based product) and is bad for the environment. Reusable chair and table covers are the best method for protecting your equipment and will help to ensure that your customers receive the best product available in the market.
After being in the party rental business for over 10-years covers became a frustration as well as a savior. First issue was getting the covers: the only company that sold the covers was extremely difficult to deal with (could not speak to anyone, took long time for shipment and poor follow up). Once we received the covers, because many of them were black, they often got lost on the job sites where they were mistaken for black trash bags and thrown away with the event’s rubbish which in turn left us short and made us start all over with the painful process of ordering more covers. In general, something that should have taken little thought and planning took entirely too much time, created to much frustration and because of loss to much money.
We have taken the frustration out of this process. Our customers can order and pay on-line and will have same day shipping if ordered before 1:00 pm CST and next day shipping if after. We offer an option of bright orange bags that make it impossible to get mixed up with the trash and make them very easy to find at the event site. Visit our catalog and browse our offerings or give us a call if its’ only to say Howdy!