This month, my column in rAVe for Rental and Staging outlined a number of things that I felt were combining to create a true change in dynamic in the rental end of the business. It’s gotten a lot of email, and led to quite a number of discussions. So I’m looking for opinion.

The first thing that I said was an important change in the market dynamic was the fact that companies and organizations seem to be booking, or at least confirming, events much later than in the past. I further reasoned that this will lead to increased costs as it will make for less efficient use of both labor and inventory assets, as well as increased outside labor and cross-rental costs.

But I have another question, especially for those of you involved in event sales: Does it change who’s important? If projects are being booked later, does it mean they are being booked with different people, either people farther down the management ladder because it was simply delegated to them? Or in some instances are the contacts moving up the ladder, because organizations are being run more top-down in these recovering economic times? In other words, is it not only changing costs and planning, but who we’re planning WITH?

JRR