Rental Management is sporting a new decoration this month - the Apex Award for Publication Excellence. RM won in the Most Improved Magazine category. The Apex Awards are given annually for excellence in business communications. There were 4,198 entries this year, 602 of which were magazines; just 14 of these were judged "Most Improved."

We are especially pleased to win in this particular category, because it recognizes what we have been trying to do to make Rental Management more valuable to our readers and serve them better - not only the members of the American Rental Association, but all of our readers, in all 36 countries where RM has become a trusted business partner of rental professionals who count on this magazine for sound management information.

For many, RM has become the rental magazine of choice. In June, we reported the results of a survey conducted by Readex, an independent research company, which showed that 90 percent of the rental professionals surveyed read RM regularly, compared to just 66 percent for our nearest competitor, and that 57 percent of rental owners and managers said that if they could read only one rental industry magazine, they would pick Rental Management (28 percent for our nearest competitor).

RM is about management - management of assets, inventory selection, marketing, business development, issues and personnel - in other words, it's about "managing for success" in the rental industry. The Readex researchers found that 57 percent of those surveyed came to Rental Management for just that reason, vs. 10 percent for our nearest competitor. We see that reflected in our circulation figures, too - we're adding more than 60 subscribers each month. That's the real test of our efforts - we're not out to win awards. But when we do, it helps confirm what we've been doing.

We've refined the editorial package to include more management information and we've added features such as Counter & Yard Management, Managing by Computer, Competitive Management, Wave of the Future, which covers family business issues, Risk Management and others, in order to provide a wide variety of viewpoints on key matters of managing a rental business for success. We've focused on making RM a forum of information and ideas.

We've been trying to make RM a more informative, more user-friendly and more visually inviting product. As RM's vitality has increased, so has its competitiveness - as the research confirms. But it's the needs of rental people, not contests, that drive us.

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