High Chairs & Booster Seats F is for Feeding Boosters & Hook On Seats See All High Chairs & Booster Seats ALL OPTIONS FOR BrandToys”R”Us, Babies”R”Us are registered trademarks of Toys”R”Us (Canada) Ltd. Use of this site signifies your acceptance of Toys"R"Us Website Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.Invest in items to create a cohesive collection When we started renting furniture for events, nobody in our industry was renting furniture. The established multigenerational guys who had been in party rental for 100 years would say, “This isn’t made to be moved. It is going to get damaged.” They were used to folding tables and linens. In some ways, they were right. Some problems can arise from renting furniture. Lounge furniture, for example, is not meant to be transported several times over, as it’s going to get damaged. It’s being moved through a hotel, with stairs and zig-zag corners, or through a kitchen or elevator to get to the event space.

Today, many rental companies are renting furniture. We started in the furniture end of the business and only recently invested in traditional party rental inventory, with linens and those items. We now have a 60,000-sq.-ft. inventory of sofas and another 70,000 sq. ft. of traditional party rental equipment. Some party rental companies try to fill this category by going to Ikea to buy white leather couches, which are definitely not meant to be moved a million times. Some are buying from local retail furniture stores and others are buying from importers that stock generic sofas made for restaurants or hotels. We took a different route and decided we couldn’t just buy this product. We had to develop it from scratch. We went through many versions of products and finally developed pieces that were modular, able to fit through a standard door, expandable from eight people to 800 people, light enough to carry and easy to repair. It was a learning process to adapt this look into rental and to do it right.

We make our couches lighter than a standard couch, so that we can have the look without making it impossible to move. Everything fits through a standard doorway or a standard elevator. We don’t do big 3-ft. sofas. Modular is important, not only to move it, but also for repairs. Would you rather recover an entire couch or a modular section? I was in the furniture business even longer than I have been in the rental business. The materials involved are not readily available everywhere. You need a supplier that will be able to provide you with the same quality product over time. For instance, if I’m making a white couch and I buy my vinyl from supplier X, and then a year from now, I need more vinyl, the odds are very low that the vinyl I buy then will match what I have. You need them to match, so that your collection is consistent. If I buy from a retail company or from an importer, each item will have different parts that may or may not coordinate or be available. Not everyone understands everything.

For example, feet break off, holes go through the under lining, and women in high-heeled shoes dance on sofas and puncture them. If you plan to get into furniture rental, you want to consider your investment carefully. If you prefer to buy a quality product to rent rather than building your own, you can save yourself a lot of headaches. hay about a chair pudeEverybody has their strengths and I feel that many operators know how to manage their business, serve their customers and train their crews very well. table and chair rentals perry gaThey may not be designers or builders. buy captain kirk chairFor example, once you are invested in a dining chair or a linen pattern, it’s hard to move into something new. original eames chair hong kong

Buying the wrong furniture will leave you in a predicament where you have invested a lot of money into something that you may not want to continue with, but feel as though you have to. This can be a costly mistake. One of the most important things I’ve learned from attending seminars at The Rental Show is that this is a very personalized industry. table and chair rentals cypress txEvery customer thinks differently and, every market has different tastes. chair cover hire ipswichTime will tell what the new standard is. high chair graco cover replacementIt’s hard to say what would be the Chiavari of the modern furniture trend for each market, because it’s a new category. clearance wingback chair

There’s something to knowing what will work in multiple markets. Building from scratch and hoping for the best is riskier. Some people are getting lost when trying to create a collection of event furniture because it is very different from decorating a house. herman miller aeron office chair usedWhen designing an event and incorporating a theme, it causes issues if you buy a table from one place and a sofa from somewhere else. Dimensions, colors and materials won’t match, and the look won’t be cohesive. When I’m designing an event and doing floor plans for furniture, symmetry is very important, both in dimension and in aesthetic. You want it to look like things are part of a collection. If you’re creating a lounge area for 50 people and you have all these odd pieces, that’s hard. Consistency and symmetry are paramount. There are fashion pockets that change from season to season and sometimes Grandma’s attic is in season, but that’s not long-term.

If you’re looking to create an investment in furniture, it’s hard to invest in one season. You have to invest and then recoup that investment. Once you have your collection, you have to protect it. About 90 percent of the damage is caused by your own employees, so the idea is to protect the product the best you can. For all of our tables, which break down, we build cases and let the case get beat up. The product lasts longer. Everything needs to be able to be moved on wheels, because furniture is cumbersome. Your employees are used to smaller furniture, and you don’t want them to resent you or resent the inventory and treat it badly because their job is now harder. You also have to promote your furniture rentals. If you do a spectacular event, one of the most important things to do is take photos. If you take photos, you can show people what you can do and people will pay attention. Then they can envision it themselves. Typically this is going to be a more expensive category, so what will make them say, “Wow?”

We will set up a fake event to show what we can do and take photos for marketing purposes. Not all clients want to be risk takers and be the first to try a new look. Customers want to see that someone else already has had a good-looking event with something similar. Then they are more likely to envision it. Also, promote yourself and what you can do with your product. We just finalized a printed catalog, which may seem like an old idea, but it still works. You also can upload one to an iPad. The vast majority of our clients are event coordinators and caterers, and they want something they can flip through. We have a Facebook page with a lot of new photos of events we do. I think in the next five years, we’ll go from people thinking furniture is a rental category to much more of a staple. Before the modern furniture and lounge look became popular a few years ago, trends in rental were stagnant. Chiavari chairs and folding tables existed more than 50 years ago and are still being rented now.