Friday, June 18, 2010

Time for Reflection

Graduation season has passed. We're seeing a couple of residual parties this weekend, but they are done for the most part. First, congratulations to all of the grads! Second, thank you all very much for choosing O'Neil Tents to provide your rental equipment needs.

Now that the craziness of the last three weeks has died down, we have had some time to reflect. While O'Neil does provide tents and party rentals for some of the Midwest's largest festivals, fairs and events, we cherish the opportunity to serve the families of the Columbus area. The last couple of weeks have been a fantastic reminder of a few key thoughts:

1. O'Neil is a business driven by the needs of our customers. While many graduation parties may include very similar elements (20 foot frame or pole tents, tables, chairs and linens), each is unique in their own way. The Jones family doesn't care that we've done about 200 parties similar to their's in the last 3 weeks, all they care about is that their party is as special as it can be for them. We respect this desire and try to focus our service accordingly.

2. Cleanliness of our equipment is one of the best ways to service each individual customer. Our wash crews were thrown into the crucible over the last couple of weeks. Needing to turn high levels of inventory over with relatively short lead times, means more operational strain. Consistent rain over the last 3 weeks added one more complication as nothing ruins a tent top faster than mud stains in the stitching and webbing. Because of our experience in tent rentals, we know to use tarps while taking down tents to protect them from stains and mud. Applying our experience in the simple things like using tarps positions us to not only serve our customers next week, but it also makes happy customers in one month and one years time.

3. Growing your business means pushing your operating capacity. While all of these graduation parties were going on, we also erected over 100 tents just for the Asian festival, wedding tents, the Park Street Festival, massive clearspan structures in Cleveland and countless other corporate functions. We're moving right into the Pride Parade in downtown Columbus, the Gahanna Jazz festival and setting up the Tattoo event at Wright Patterson Air Force Base all this week. That's quite a lot, and that's ok. We'll never know how much we can do and how good of an equipment rental company we can be without pushing ourselves. After the last couple of weeks, a little breather in the action is nice, but its good to know that we are capable of some pretty great things.

4. Without the right people in place, none of our recent successes would have been possible. Some of our delivery crew members have been with O'Neil for well over 10 years. Some have joined us in the last couple of months. No matter what the duration of experience is, each member is vitally important to our success. With a lot of training and solid operational support, our guys on the road are confident they have the skills necessary to accomplish any task presented. It is this confidence that our customers see. It is this confidence that leads to a job well done.

It has been a rough couple of weeks but they have shed light on what is truly important to our customers and how we can better give them what they expect.

Thanks again for reading the blog. Let us know what you think in the comments section. (Next week we'll be back to posting lots of awesome pictures of events O'Neil is working on. We promise.)

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