Kennedy Gates and her husband Ruben run Social Seats, an event rental business built on a simple idea: people shouldn’t have to wait days for a quote just to book a tent. They started the company after noticing how hard it was to find high-quality event rentals with clear, upfront pricing in their area.
Every request seemed to trigger slow back-and-forth emails before anyone knew what anything cost. So Kennedy and Ruben built the opposite kind of business: one with transparent pricing and instant online booking.
Today, Social Seats carries a focused catalog of commercial-grade modular tents, Lifetime tables, premium seating like Chiavari chairs, and linens to complete each setup. Wedding planners, couples, and families planning milestone birthdays make up most of their customer base, with tents paired with tables and chairs being their most requested combination.
The business runs almost entirely online. Customers browse the catalog and book directly, while the team handles delivery and setup at the venue. For an event rental company without a storefront, that online booking experience is central to how the business operates.
Before Booqable, Kennedy and Ruben pieced their workflow together using general-purpose CRM tools like Dubsado alongside manual inventory tracking. None of it gave them a live view of what was actually available to rent, so they had to confirm availability by hand for every request. That made it difficult to offer the fast, self-service booking experience they wanted.
Keeping every tent, table, and chair accounted for
Manually confirming stock for every booking was taking up time Kennedy and Ruben didn’t have, while also leaving room for availability mistakes and double bookings. With Booqable, they gained a centralized inventory system where they can add products, manage variations like different tent sizes or chair styles, and keep availability up to date as bookings come in.
As Kennedy put it, inventory tracking has been the biggest change for their business because it automates how they keep track of stock across tents, tables, and seating configurations.
With that in place, Booqable now helps them:
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Track stock across their full event rental catalog
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Keep availability up to date and help prevent double bookings
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Reduce errors caused by manual inventory tracking
Kennedy and Ruben no longer have to spend evenings counting inventory by hand. They can take on more events with confidence because they have a clear view of what’s available and when.
Building custom quotes for every inquiry
Not every booking starts in the online store. Social Seats also receives a steady stream of inquiries through its Facebook page, and before Booqable, those often turned into messy back-and-forth conversations about pricing. There was no simple way to give someone a quick, professional quote outside the online checkout flow.
Now, Kennedy and Ruben can create a custom quote directly in Booqable whenever someone reaches out. Kennedy said this gives them more flexibility in how they take bookings, whether a customer finds them through the online store or messages them directly.
That helps them:
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Turn Facebook inquiries into professional quotes in minutes
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Keep bookings together regardless of where the inquiry started
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Respond quickly without juggling separate systems
It means an inquiry doesn’t become harder to manage just because it started outside the online store, and customers get a consistent experience however they first get in touch.
From back-and-forth to a business that runs more smoothly
“Booqable acts like an extra administrative team member for us,” Kennedy said, describing how much of the day-to-day workload the platform now handles.
What used to be a fragmented mix of CRM software and manual inventory tracking is now a centralized system for managing bookings, tracking inventory, and creating quotes for new inquiries.
With that foundation in place, Social Seats is already looking ahead to becoming a full event planning and production company, handling everything from the initial concept to final teardown for the milestone celebrations they’ve built their name around.
