SPECIAL EVENTS MAGAZINE: When we interviewed Fred in 2002, we talked about how the party rental business was perceived by the investment community as a fragmented moneymaker with no clear-cut leaders. How would you describe it now...
TOO costly, too cumbersome — that's the opinion most event rental operators hold of bar-coding, the inventory management system that uses scanners to read an item's identifying labels printed with “bars,” or lines. This data is fed into various...
ELEGANT crystal, fine china, lavish linen — event rental is a high-touch business. But managing rental inventory has traditionally been a low-tech affair, due to the challenges of managing a vast array of products that move in different quantities...
PARTY rental operators brought the questions and a distinguished panel of experts from the ARA's Rental Executive Advisor Program (REAP) supplied the answers at a discussion during the Rental Show, Feb. 6-9 in Orlando, Fla...
THOUGH his tenure with Classic Party Rentals has been relatively short, John Campanelli's outlook is firmly footed in the long term. With 17 months under his belt at the helm of the nation's largest event rental company, the former president of RR...
A better business climate? Yes. Tougher competition? Yes again. When we polled the event rental industry for our annual New Year's forecast, we heard plenty of optimism tempered with a healthy respect for the challenges of the marketplace...
WHEN an item takes up space but doesn't make a profit, what do you do? This simple question draws a range of responses from party rental pros — from selling it in cyberspace to depositing it in the dumpster...
L .A.'s Classic Party Rentals proved again that the big get bigger when it acquired the tent rental operations of Torrance, Calif.-based Aztec Tents & Events in November. Here, longtime Aztec president Chuck Miller looks at the future of...