Interesting tangent / anecdote for #AVinTheAM - I moved my business out of Rental and Staging, to be a production consultant / TD / Event #A11y consultant. A good friend, who I've passed a lot of my smaller events onto is now exiting the rental market. #AVinTheAM #EventProfs 1/
I've heard from several #EventProfs clients that they have had trouble finding vendors for things like party rental (furniture and decor) and they have had trouble finding other AV Vendors who meet their needs. #AVinTheAM #AVTweeps 2/
I never did dry hire, but commodity event rental (AV or furniture) is kinda a PITA and is low margin. I closed my warehouse in 2020, moved up market, and haven't looked back. There is a vacuum at the lower end of the R&S market #AVTweeps #AVinTheAM #EventProfs 3/
You have to have economies of scale, captive customers, or both, to make that work. That's the model that 4-letter in-house companies use. But they give back such big commissions they have tight margins too, and are being squeezed by owners. #AVinTheAM #AVTweeps #EventProfs 4/
One of the main reasons costs went up industry wide is that business figured out that a lot of our services weren't really profitable. Some biz went under, and those left got out of them or set prices to where margins needed to be to justify the work. 5/