BY BRIAN ALM, EDITOR

The world keeps getting smaller, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the rental industry. The new A.R.A. directory shows members in 36 countries. Rental Management has subscribers in 50 countries - our international subscriptions have doubled in less than five years. In 1996, we set out to expand our international circulation and we established a goal of making RM THE international, borderless rental publication of the world. Today it is.

Our coverage reflects the international character of this industry. This month we have an Event & Party Management feature from The Netherlands. Next month, our cover story will be on EuroRent in Antwerp, Belgium, the first tool-rental company on the European continent, and we'll report on Intermat, the huge construction-equipment trade show in Paris. Over the next couple of months, we will have features on Perkins Engines (United Kingdom), Manitou (France) and Hilti (Liechtenstein). An important point to note is that all three of these companies have very significant operations in the United States - and, in fact, have had for many years. What's new is the degree to which the rental market figures into these companies' success strategies. Rental is big and getting bigger, everywhere; it's lacing the world together. At rental companies everywhere we go, we see the similarities - the same problems, methods, needs, but above all, the same sense of opportunity and zeal to prosper in this industry.

Rental Management magazine is where rental people worldwide come to share information and see what's going on elsewhere on the globe. So our coverage reflects those common interests, and tells the guy in Chile what the guy in Holland is doing. The other 17,000-plus subscribers in the other 48 countries are welcome to listen in, too.

Our coverage also reflects the international stewardship and interest of our parent organization, the American Rental Association. The A.R.A. is the only rental organization in the world that can represent and serve this industry globally. It sponsors the world's largest rental trade show. It has members on every continent but Antarctica. And when rental operators from outside North America, or those interested in developing a rental industry in their countries, want to get started off on the right track, they contact the A.R.A.

It happened again in early May. A delegation from the People's Republic of China came to Washington, D.C., during the A.R.A. Legislative Caucus to meet with A.R.A. officials and learn about the U.S. rental industry. The meeting was planned for 30 minutes and lasted more three hours.

The 21 rental people who gathered in a store in Rock Island, Ill., back in March 1955 to mull over how they might get a rental association going never could have envisioned what this industry or its major association would become. But they did create an organization that rental people worldwide can rely on today to help them succeed.

Rental Management is glad to be part of that mission.

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