Black Friday Crowd Control To Purchase or Rent is the Question

Clients with seasonal needs for retractable belt stanchions, metal barricades, and signs often inquire about the possibility of renting equipment from Pro Stanchions.  

Big-box stores like Target, Best Buy, or even Apple Stores expect a great deal of customer traffic through the busy holiday shopping season and Black Friday sales.  Asset Protection Managers and others charged with maintaining safe and orderly flows of visitors, need to rely on the correct equipment to assist them in do so.

Renting crowd management equipment makes sense practically and fiscally...in the short term.  As a onetime solution, renting typically costs less than purchasing and when the crowd control equipment is not needed, there is no demand for additional storage to house it, the products are simply picked up and returned to the rental company.

However, before any organization rents crowd management equipment for its seasonal necessities, it should first compare the cost of renting versus purchasing.  

Aspects to consider:

• Economy Retractable Belt Stanchions, in a seasonal use capacity, should withstand 2-4 years of abuse, and can be easily disassembled for storage.
• Galvanized Steel Bike Rack Barricades in any crowd situation, indoors or outdoors, will maintain their look and usefulness for many years and also simply breakdown to minimize storage.
• When comparing costs, NEVER use website pricing.  ALWAYS make a phone call to a professional crowd control distributor, to ensure quantity discount pricing.  You may be surprised to learn about drastic discounts available, especially leading into the U.S. Black Friday and holiday shopping seasons.
• If your organization is going to use this equipment on an annual basis, make sure to divide the cost of purchasing by the anticipated number of years that the equipment is expected to last and be used to arrive at a conclusion whether to buy or rent.
• Remember, a manager's time is consistent of greater importance year after year.  If the equipment is on hand, the time needed to rent, coordinate delivery, and delegate duties to manage the arrival and departure of the equipment is eliminated.

Currently, manufacturers are offering tremendous pricing on crowd control equipment to distributors, but you MUST contact a distributor directly to obtain those discounts.

Have a prosperous 4th Quarter!