People born for greatness learn from their failures and turn them into success. Shane Melancon constantly desired to own his own business but came short of success several times. Each time he got back up and when he finally tried party rentals, his business came to life and has been uphill ever since. Booqable has helped him take it to the next level.
They say the most significant life lessons come from our failures, which couldn’t be more accurate. Rarely do people look back on success and learn from it, but they reflect on their failures and dissect where they went wrong. It takes perseverance and patience, but one day it pays off, and past failures feel like a blessing in disguise.
Backyard Party Tent Rentals
Baton Rouge-based Shane Melancon always had the desire to own his own business and be his own boss. He tried different types of businesses and experienced failures before trying and landing on party rentals. He learned from his past attempts that success lay in building a solid website and spending the time to optimize it for local SEO.
Shane built his website offering tents, tables, and chairs and started accepting bookings before even having any inventory. This allowed him to justify his business model and validate the idea before investing serious money. Of course, it was a success, but then came the issue of acquiring rental inventory during the middle of a pandemic with long lead times.
He had to get creative and reach out to other party rental businesses to see if they had any inventory they were offloading. As luck would have it, he found one and was able to fulfill his first rental order the very next day! From there, his business came to life. Shane was still working a 9-5 but putting in late nights, sacrificing hobbies, and working on weekends paid off.
Step-by-step
So, he had built his website and started fulfilling rental orders, but this wasn’t the end of starting his party rental business. The first six months of Backyard Party Tent Rentals was a learning process for Shane. At this time, he concluded that he needed software to deal with the problems he faced in the day-day running of the business.
He found that there was room for issues through the many steps of turning someone who needed rentals into a customer. Shane had difficulty keeping track of inventory availability, communicating with customers, and ensuring that everyone had paid what they owed. So, he started looking for rental software that would be able to meet his needs.
The next level
Shane came across Booqable and decided it met his needs not only for his day-to-day management but to provide a better customer experience. He can use the availability calendar to see what products are available on a given date. While also sharing this with his customers to see availability on his website in real-time and make a quick decision.
He has also found that having access to emails, quotes, and invoices in one place has been a huge time saver. It has made communicating with his customers much quicker than before. In addition, he can easily create and send payment requests that meet his customers’ needs. He also says having online bookings has been a blessing for his rental business.
Finally, the introduction of the Booqable iOS app has allowed him to check availability on the go, check upcoming orders, and make changes quickly without needing access to a computer.
Onwards and upwards
Shane finally found success in owning his own business when he tried rentals for the first time. Through trial and error he was able to achieve his dream and he did so in a low-risk way. By setting up his website and accepting bookings before he had inventory, he was able to validate his idea before making any serious investments.
Now, he runs a successful rental business that he built from the ground up himself. Shane has joined the ranks of entrepeurs who have the perseverance and dedication to learn from their mistakes and create a successful small business. Since adding Booqable to his rental business, he has seen a marked increase in sales vs the previous system he used.
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