To the editor of a business magazine, a visit to Fiesta Rental, an event and party company in West Palm Beach, Fla., is like stepping into a little a microcosm of good business principles in practice. It's a chance to see how a small, relatively young and very successful company got that way, and how its owners are guiding it in well-considered directions, not blinded by their success and not yielding to the temptation of uncontrolled growth. But that's not what the customer sees, of course.

To a customer, a visit to Fiesta Rental is a party in itself.

When first-time customers come into Fiesta's unpretentious, concrete-block store tucked away down a side street in a residential neighborhood, they're in for a surprise - the moment they come through the door and find themselves in a Spanish courtyard. The room is three stories high, open to the ceiling, and the walls are painted to simulate blue sky and puffy white clouds. An ornate fountain gurgles on the left, and on the far wall, above an arched portico covered in vines, silhouettes of people having an awfully good time appear through the second-story windows of a Spanish villa. Beneath the portico, a table beckons the passerby to stop and experiment with scores of linens, all colors and styles, handy on a rack nearby. A table under a canopy is set and ready for the guests to arrive.

Customers frequently hang around for a couple of hours, playing with table settings, matching up linens - letting the fantasy wrap around them. Owners Lori Haynes and Jane Hutton have created the setting and mood to do a party business.

Now one of them, or perhaps Kathy Wall, the manager, steps in to turn the customer's dreams of the elusive Perfect Party into a reality.

"Customers get charged when they come through the door," says Haynes. "It's sort of like they kind of feel right at home here. I wanted our store to make you want a party. When they can come in here and play with things, it's hands-on and they love it. Saturday three women were in. They said they were not going to go to any other company. They just got that excited. Customers spend a lot of time here. Of course, the idea is to have a contract before they leave. It's just not a bunch of flat walls. There's a lot of dimension, a lot of depth.

"It seems like we have been attracting a lot more homeowners through our corporate contracts. When they have a smaller event, they seem to come over on their own now, and they like coming in our showroom and kind of hanging out in here."

"They'll come in and get lost in the linens," says Hutton. "We have people come in and just want to see our tables. They'll walk in and want to see how we set things up and try out tablecloths. We have one table where you can pull anything off the rack and dress it, put china on it, whatever you want to, because you want to see what it looks like. I had a customer Saturday who came in and stayed for two hours, picking out things for 20 people. She got so excited and involved. She showed up at 8 o'clock in the morning on Monday with a bottle of champagne for me. She said, 'I've got wonderful pictures. I am hoping to come here for every party I have. I had so much fun with this.' We get a lot of that."

"We're creative. That gives us an edge," says Haynes. "We were creative in creating the environment in the showroom and the linen choices that we pick, and we have a good eye for equipment, and also we can help you put a party together - I mean we can go in and really help create a party, and that's what needed."

"Creating the fantasy the customer expects is very exciting," says Hutton. "I love [it when a customer says], 'Oh, my God, this is more than I ever dreamed it even could look like!'"

Spanish courtyard ... practice table ... linen selection - it all comes down to customer relations.

"The shoppers are going to call every single store. They're looking for price," says Hutton. "If you're going to look for a company that rents it a nickel cheaper, you'll always find it. But we feel that if we price it fairly and we service the heck out of people, they'll come back, and that's what happens.

"We enjoy people and we want to make each event successful, no matter how large or small. We strive to make each client feel comfortable and secure and try to remove the stressful feeling that having a party can create. Our clients know that they can call us for just about anything and if we don't have it, we will do our best to help them find it. People always remember us for our helpfulness and come back because we've left them with a good feeling.

"I will do party planning if I'm asked to, but it's not something that we seek. Most of my services are offered as part of the rental package. I do not charge for going out and doing consultations with people. I'm happy to recommend a florist or caterer. If they want it coordinated, I'll do it, but that's not our main focus. Our main focus is party rental and we found we're really good at that and we want to stay with that."

"A lot of people call us and ask us things like where to get ice sculptures," says Haynes. "It might not have anything to do with renting - we might not get a rental from them that time, but we try and find a source for them and that's valuable.

"We work really hard with our tent installers to make sure that everything is installed properly - stakes all in a row, ropes all tied properly," says Haynes. "And we go to the site and do inspections - we do spot inspections on our staff. They know that we'll be showing up to see. That tent better not look mildewed, it better be clean, it better be in order. Our customers know they're going to get a good product when they rent a tent from us."

"I will not put a tent up unless I see where it's going first - unless they say they have a football field and want a 20 by 20. OK then, fine, we'll set up delivery," says Hutton. "But you know I may have to park two miles away to get to it, so I really want to see where it's going and make sure I know about sprinkler lines and underground utilities, so I like to go on every single job before a tent gets installed."

"We put our guys in uniform and we're really trying to get the truck drivers to think 'team,'" says Haynes. "Our employees are expected to behave a certain way and look a certain way. They have to be happy and pleasant - we don't want to hear, 'A grumpy driver came to my house.' When we do get a complaint like that, our drivers are horrified. They want to know why somebody would say that. They come up with suggestions like 'Can we do driver follow-up, like send them a note and ask how they liked the service?' They're proud of working here and sometimes our competitors' employees ask if we have openings. You know, that kind of makes us feel good. People do like to work here."

Now, what business principles have we seen in the Fiesta story? If you read everything, you probably came away with some insights into these key issues:

• commitment to quality in the service product and creating a total-quality rental experience by seeing the service product through the eyes of the customer.
• identifying and pursuing marketable advantages, including inventory selection, meticulous attention to details, quality of customer service and creativity that exceeds the customer's expectations.
• analyzing and defining your market, so you are reaching the best segment in terms of matching inventory and resources to a sustainable level of a highly profitable business.
• the importance of selecting the right location and making the setting an integral part of your business strategy; recognizing the critical importance of company image - building equity in it consistently and continually.
• accounting control: selecting the right level and kind of inventory and keeping assets employed; controlling costs and preserving margins before venturing beyond the point of no return.
• long-term business development strategy and continual needs assessment: examining your business history as a basis for future development and proceeding strategically, maintaining disciplined control of the rate of growth.