Attendance at the A.R.A. convention and trade show set records this year - 13,603 people, 1,621 more than the previous record (11,982 in Atlanta in 1995). The number of exhibitors and exhibiting companies were also records. There were even 495 non-exhibiting visitors from the industry, many of whom were apparently first-timers who couldn't get booth space and came to see what all the hubbub was about. (Booth space was sold out by August.) What they saw, of course, was the biggest rental trade show and the best seminar lineup in the world. For rental people worldwide, it's the hottest ticket on the planet.
The one number that wasn't a record this year was the number of rental companies represented: 2,545 rental stores vs. 2,713 in 1995. The logical conclusion: rental stores are declining in number but growing in size. That would hardly be surprising, considering how the industry has been consolidating and incorporating.
We have a second cover story this month: Sunbelt Rentals of Charlotte, N.C. Sunbelt is one of those new, large rental corporations that we see advancing through what once was essentially a mom-and-pop industry. Sunbelt is a power player, big and getting bigger; it is powerful, well financed and well led; and it is intently, intensely, single-mindedly focused on growth.
There is a corporate boardroom quip that goes, "If you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." Aggressive expansion is gospel for large, successful corporations - they have big appetites; they thrive on growth. Growth is oxygen to them. That's the part of this drama that many independents find frightening.
But how do corporations think? How do they operate? What are they doing? There may be some valuable lessons to be gained from knowing that. Because when you get right down to it, it's business. Some might like to think the small-business rental store is somehow above the bottom-line mentality that rules large corporations. But the rental store is not a monument to idealism: it is a business, and businesses of whatever size are ruled by realities.
The trend toward larger, fewer rental stores, consolidation and incorporation does not mean the end of the independent operator. But ignoring the lessons that corporate thinking can teach us about modern business management - focusing resources on results, financial control, managing assets and people, strategic planning, marketing, customer service - could.
Rental Management exists to help you manage for success. The large companies have more people around to think and plan, and so they may turn up answers sooner than the small operator who has to do everything from making coffee in the morning to hosing off a tamper before lunch to balancing the books at night.
But then you have Rental Management. We go and ask rental people, large and small alike, what they're turning up, and then we tell you.

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