Last Updated: 12th December, 2023
Party and event rental businesses provide party and event equipment in bulk quantities to both households and commercial businesses. These businesses remain in demand throughout the year. Both B2C and B2B businesses in the industry commonly rent out event supplies like furniture, tables, chairs, curtains, tents, lighting solutions, audio/video equipment, podiums, stages and small decor.
Due to lack of awareness and knowledge about conducting business operations on the internet, many party rental businesses refrain from going down the eCommerce road. However, for owners with ample experience in organizing parties and events, it is easy to understand the working and complexities of an online party rental business.
In this article, we have covered some prerequisites and recommendations to help such business owners gain deeper insights and launch an online party and event rental business.
New trends enter the party & event rental industry every year. While it is quite challenging for well-established businesses to adapt and modify their business according to those trends, startups and nascent companies can quickly switch and capitalize on them.
In 2023 and its following years, the following trends are going to direct the trajectory of party rental businesses and customer behavior.
Modern consumers are consciously aware of environmental concerns and are actively willing to participate in eco-friendly measures to a certain degree. Moreover, varying statutory regulations also oblige them to curb plastic usage and select sustainable options when possible. As a result, customers in the party rental industry are limiting their choices to degradable cutlery and similar disposable party supplies.
Destination weddings and non-typical event venues, such as farmhouses, art galleries, museums and campsites are gaining prominence amongst modern consumers. People are reluctant to host events at traditional venues like hotels and restaurants more than ever. Non-traditional event venues might be difficult to cater to some party rental businesses, but the complications arising in these venues also manifest scope for price elevation.
Tech gadgets are becoming a new norm at party rental businesses. Renting equipment such as automated food dispensers, karaoke systems, projectors, lighting solutions, voice assistants, Wi-Fi routers, Wi-Fi range extenders, LED balloons and robotic vacuum cleaners are on the rise amongst traditional party equipment.
Virtual and hybrid events enable guests to join from distant locations. The advancements in the AR and VR technology have made virtual and hybrid events viable. Some examples of virtual and hybrid events are concerts, conferences, sports events, educational events, and festivals. Moreover, event rental businesses can also expand their market regions by addressing virtual event clients.
The customer base of the party and event rental industry ranges from general households to corporate businesses and government agencies.
As can be expected, in each customer base, the type of events and the demand for equipment vary a lot.
Party and event rental businesses involve handling logistics on a regular basis. They also need to follow a strict schedule to conduct successful business operations. This schedule involves timely delivery and inventory procurement, which are often not easy to manage.
Similarly, there are several interrelated challenges that party rental businesses face. The most complicated amongst them are mentioned below:
Rental orders involving diverse products and varying rental durations render a lot of party supplies redundant in multi-day events. This means that the equipment rented for the day 1 of the event may not be required by the organizer on other days. He/she will be reluctant to rent it for the complete duration of the event.
In such a scenario, it becomes difficult for party supply rental businesses to calculate pricing for the equipment required for varying duration in the event. When grouped together with other equipment, price calculation and quotation for the entire order becomes a real challenge for the business owner.
Solution: Provide a tiered pricing option that allows customers to rent varying products on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. In addition, there should be a provision in the platform to limit or extend rental duration post delivery. Lastly, an RFQ option will provide the party rental business with enough time to prepare a price estimate and share the same with the client.
Tracking the delivery and procurement of inventory is a major challenge in the event rental industry. As implied under the previous section, customers may return specific equipment before the end of the event, or need immediate equipment replacements. In these circumstances, tracking inventory flow becomes essential for party flow businesses. Inefficient tracking can lead to business disputes, poor inventory management and make the business susceptible to frauds and thefts.
Solution: A common solution to inventory tracking problems upon which party rental businesses agree upon is real time tracking. You should be able to see all new orders, pending orders, dispatched equipment and overdue equipment at once place.
The inventory for a party rental business includes both consumable and non-consumable items. While it is comparatively easier to arrange non-consumable products (considering they are returned or procured on time), consumable products, on the other hand require recurrent investments from the business owner for stock refills.
Also, the capacity of a party rental business to serve multiple clients depends invariably on the order volume. Thus, a client ordering a specific type of equipment, for example, lighting solutions, in huge volume can incapacitate the party rental business to provide the same to another client.
Solution: To help you maintain inventory levels, your party and event rental platform needs custom stock level alerts that can notify you whenever the stock is low. Additionally, you can also encourage customers to return party supplies on a timely basis by levying a late returns policy.
Party supplies and event rental businesses need to manage comprehensive customer support channels to handle customer doubts and queries. They should also expect last minute requests from clients who can require customer support for various reasons such as equipment shortage, equipment damage and delayed delivery.
Customers want fast and reliable support channels, which are often difficult for SMBs and startup businesses to manage.
“56% of people around the world have stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer service experience.”
– Microsoft
Solution: Provide a chat messenger service on your platform and train your customer support team on common queries and issues.
Apart from the aforementioned challenges, a rental business faces many other challenges in general. You can read about those challenges in our other post.
According to Google Digital Garage, a website acts as the online home of a business. For a party rental bookings, it is the digital storefront that the rental business software powers.
Below are the steps a business owner can follow to set up a website using a party rental management software:
There are various party rental software available on the internet with each having different server requirements. Not to mention, they may differ in features and functionality also, which is why they deserve prior attention before making a server and domain choice. A business owner also may customize the software (see section “Distinctive Features of a Party Rental Website” below) as per the business requirements.
Depending on the server requirements, a business owner is required to select a server to host the website. The website should also have a unique name, which is known as the domain. For a hyperlocal party rental business, the domain name should make it easier for visitors to recognize the business. One can use a domain name search tool to know which domain name is available and which is already taken.
After selecting the server and domain name, businesses are ready to install and configure the party rental software. The software team may assist in installation and one-time configuration. After onboarding, the business can configure the software itself in the future.
After configuring the software, the business can upload detailed product listings and set rental prices. To make the products easy to filter, the business owner can set categories for different styles, event types and price tags. Once the product catalog is ready, the online party rental business is ready to launch.
Learn how we built an online rental website for a US-based party equipment rental business in this case study.
After carrying out an in-depth research of several party rental websites and their distinctive features, we have compiled the following list of features required to conduct smooth party supplies and event rental business operations:
For smooth operations, event rental businesses need an advanced booking calendar on their website. This booking calendar will display product availability, accept rental date inputs from clients and prevent double booking. Additionally, it will also assist the rental invoicing system in generating accurate and automated invoices for the number of days/weeks the product is being rented.
For safe operations, it is important for rental companies to verify customers details, such as name, address, company address (if required), etc. To automate the verification process, party and event rental businesses need a document verification module on their website. This module will collect all required documents from customers before checkout so that the business can verify customer details beforehand and dispatch equipment accordingly.
To sanction terms and conditions, party rental businesses can use a rental agreement management module. This module will help businesses in reducing any post-service disputes and also assist in damage recovery if the party supplies are not maintained properly. Just like document verification, customers will be displayed the rental agreement before checkout and they can also eSign it.
For complex rental orders, business owners can provide a Request-for-Quote option on their event rental website. With this option, customers can directly send their rental order requests in detail and ask for custom price quotes. Through the backend system, the owner can view order details and send a suitable quote. All price negotiations will be directly stored on the platform for later review.
As discussed above, inventory management is very important in a party rental business. For complete management, party rental businesses need features such as real-time tracking, custom stock alerts, custom product filters, inventory reports, overdue returns management, product bundle creation, and more.
Party rental businesses can assist customers in managing different events. For this, they can allow customers to create multiple event-based shopping carts. Each cart can have multiple attributes such as event name, number of guests, event start and end date. The option to change cart can be given at the top-right corner of the screen. Similarly, it can also arrive once the customer clicks the ‘add to cart’ button.
Kouture Studios, an events management and party rental business uses multiple carts to allow customers to save equipment for different events. It also uses an automation feature to select the quantity of products based on the number of guests.
For damage control, rental security management features are also important. The party rental website should have the functionality to collect and save a rental security amount from customers. After each and every return, the business owner can inspect the equipment for any damages and reimburse the same from the customer’s security deposit. In case, if there are no damages, then the entire security amount is returned back to the customer.
Along with the rental functionality, the sales functionality is also required on a party rental website, particularly for consumable items such as disposable plates and glasses, balloons, confetti, candles, drinking straws, etc. Moreover, the functionality will provide event rental businesses with the flexibility to switch to a sales model at a later stage, or simply put clearance sales on old stock.
Sometimes there’s a delay in returns from the customer’s end. This hinder’s the party rental business’ capacity to fulfill upcoming orders and results in lost opportunity costs. Thus, to encourage timely returns and recover lost opportunity costs, party rental businesses can define varying late return periods and charge a compensation amount accordingly. The late returns fee can also be deducted from the customer’s security deposit.
The product inspection feature on a party and events rental website will allow customers to inspect the supplies for any damages on delivery. In case of any damages, they can ask for replacement or refund, otherwise they can simply inform the damages and continue with the rental period.
During the rental buffer period, party supply businesses can inspect all returned equipment for any damages. They can further process the same for the next order. While the product is in the buffer period, it will not be added to the website’s inventory. On the other hand, as soon as the buffer period is over, the product will be added to the inventory and displayed to customers.
Selecting interior decor, lighting and AV equipment for events is not easy. Customers prefer any assistance that they can get in simplifying their product selection and rental experience. Thus, on their website, event rental businesses can provide a product comparison feature that can automatically create comparison tables for the products selected by the customers.
For conducting B2B business operations, i.e, while targeting event organizers, restaurants, hotels, and corporate offices where event and party supplies are routinely required, party rental businesses can introduce membership plans that provide various types of discounts and benefits to their clients. Some examples of these benefits are 5%-20% discount on all orders, free disposable plates/glasses, and priority customer support.
Due to event tourism, the industry also targets tourists and non-native English speaking audiences. To provide them with a satisfying rental experience, a party and event rental website requires multilingual capabilities.
Rental Add-ons are the complementary services and products that customers require along with party rental supplies. Some examples of such services and products include AV set up services, decoration services, photography services, memory cards for rental cameras, plastic wraps for food, nametags, etc.
With time, your event rental business will grow and it might get difficult to manage all operations single handedly. Thus with a multi-user CMS, you can create multiple sub-admin accounts whom you can assign various roles and privileges to help you manage the entire business.
Yo!Rent is a leading rental software with a dedicated niche-specific version for the party and events rental industry. The solution comes with all essential party rental features right out of the box to help you streamline business operations. As it also has a default party rental theme, you can immensely reduce your overall time to market with Yo!Rent. To support any additional requirements, the solution is fully customizable and to accommodate business growth, it is fully scalable. Meaning, Yo!Rent comes with unlimited transactions, listings, user profiles and admin accounts at a one-time cost to ensure you can grow your business without any software-led limitations.
Online party and event rental businesses powered by Yo!Rent:
StageWing is a US-based DJ gear rental platform that helps professional artists arrange DJ gear for their next gig. By providing quality and diverse rental operations, StageWing eliminates the hassle of traveling with expensive equipment that often gets damaged or inspected by TSA.
Kouture Studious is a full-fledged events and party rental platform that assists event organizers with their various types of requirements. Along with an array of party supplies, Kouture Studios also provides hourly rentals, which makes it easy to conduct one-day events at a flexible pricing.
View Kouture Studious Case Study
APlusEvent Rentals provides high-quality audio-visual equipment to event organizers. Based in Saudi Arabia, APlusEvent Rental has a comprehensive inventory to fulfill large scale indoor and outdoor event organization needs.
Party and event rental businesses are in demand in all major cities of the world. However, as the competition increases, so does the demand for better services and customer experiences. If your business can supply high-quality party equipment backed with superior customer experience, it is possible to surpass incumbents and establish a name in the party rental industry.
We create future-focused content to help you stay updated. Follow us on Twitter to get notified about latest tips, trends and product updates.
Disclaimer: The Blog has been created with consideration and care. We strive to ensure that all information is as complete, correct, comprehensible, accurate and up-to-date as possible. Despite our continuing efforts, we cannot guarantee that the information made available is complete, correct, accurate or up-to-date. We advise - the readers should not take decisions completely based on the information and views shared by FATbit on its blog, readers should do their own research to further assure themselves before taking any commercial decision. The 3rd party trademarks, logos and screenshots of the websites and mobile applications are property of their respective owners, we are not directly associated with most of them.
Abhishek Kataria is a business consultant at FATbit Technologies. He assists entrepreneurs and business owners in developing viable digital touchpoints and marketplaces. Abhishek is curious about exploring and analyzing new business trends and has a keen eye for the latest developments in the eCommerce sector. Apart from consulting, you can find him practicing French and exploring his creativity in Photoshop.
Comments (3)
Chair Hire
kellypark2468
Brooke Rental Center
You describe everything very clearly in few words how to start a new business regarding rental event equipments. Thank you for this great post.
Thank you for sharing this great idea about How to Start an Online Party Supplies and Event Equipment Rental Business. It’s definitely worth to read!
Thanks for Sharing this wonderful blog .I really like this blog .