Hello and welcome to the Trunk Show. I’m your host, Allison Howell, here to talk with leading professionals about their event rental businesses, hard-earned wisdom, and ongoing adventures in the industry.
The show is brought to you by RW Elephant, mighty inventory management software designed to help you conquer the chaos in your event rental business and reclaim your creativity, because the world needs more of the beautiful events and environments you create!
In this episode, you’ll hear my conversation with Mandy Majerik, founder of HotHouse Design Studio and PropHouse Rentals and Styling in Birmingham Alabama.
Mandy tells us how, over the last 2 decades, she turned her small 3rd generation mom and pop flower shop into the renowned HotHouse Design Studio that exists today while at the same time building a sister company, PropHouse Rentals and Styling, to double team the wedding and event industry across the southeast. Mandy is a highly accredited veteran in the industry, a regular at Lend & Gather, and has some great insights for us. Alright. Let’s dive in!
Mandy Majerik: My grandmother owned a flower shop. So I grew up sleeping in flower boxes. After school, going down there, picking up the blooms off the floor and making those little arrangements for my mom, that kind of thing. And as I grew up, just like in any family business, there’s some child labor involved, especially for holidays, just was around it all my life.
And I come from a family of entrepreneurs. So my mom took that business over after my grandmother was done doing that, had it until after I graduated college. I did some work in the interior design field still while helping her. And then we just had a round table family discussion that it was time that I take it over if I wanted it.
Because my brother had a baby. My mom was ready to be a grandmother and so it was like passing on the torch and let me do what I wanted to do with it. So, I took it from your typical mom and pop flower shop to more of a wedding and event floral studio. When I took it over, the name of it was Belle Florist.
So, it was just your typical, what you would think of, neighborhood florist would be. And when I took it over with my family and we had the big discussion. I was like, number one, I want to move it. So, I took it from a suburb of Birmingham and moved it straight to downtown. And then I changed the name of it.
So, I changed from Belle florist to HotHouse Design Studio. And so I did both things, moved it out of the area, rebranded it, brought it into the new century. The beauty of it though, was that I still kept the same phone number. And so the phone was automatically ringing when I opened up downtown.
I was still fulfilling the orders we had always done to keep the lights turned on and the bills paid while I was then hustling, trying to get that new wedding and event client I was looking for.
Allison Howell: So you studied interior design. And so that’s the eye you came into the floral business with. Were you being inspired by other influences at that point too, or what was fueling the creativity and the trend setting at that point?
Mandy Majerik: I think that was just something personal too. It’s just what I’ve always loved to be creative. And I’ve always loved that field. To me, interior design really parallels the whole market with weddings and events, and people want lounge furniture and things like that at their events now.
But they’re also looking at what Crate and Barrel has or what they see in all of these advertisements. When they’re looking for that, it really does go hand in hand. So, I think starting out, I knew that I loved interior design, and I knew where I wanted that floral business to go.
And so, I think that was bridging the gap people needed to see and be able to touch and, be able to get what they were seeing in the magazines or what they were seeing in those type of, publications.
Allison Howell: So 2006, you’re taking over the floral business. You’re coming in, you’re really freshening up the look and the phone’s still ringing so that you’ve got that bread and butter, but you’re really starting to do more events. Are you thinking all the time, hey, I’m going to start doing prop rentals on the side, how did the props get to be part of it?
Mandy Majerik: So when I was out doing the wedding and events, I would have a bride who wanted a different kind of container. So instead of the bride coming in and me saying, here’s three choices, they may want black containers. And I thought I don’t have black containers. I would love to have black containers.
So I’m going to take the money they’re paying me and buy some black containers. And so I really reinvested a lot back into the company. And so we really, had tons of containers and candelabras and anything you think a florist would bring to the table back then for a wedding, I had, and then it just became where I had so many of those things people would ask to borrow them or hey, call Mandy. She probably has that or knows where to get it.
Allison Howell: So you recognize this could be its own business rather than just under the florals. You recognized, oh, this needs to be a separate brand.
Mandy Majerik: Absolutely. Especially when weddings in our market started wanting more furniture and more bar facades and things like that.
There was no one here that was offering those type things. And I was one of the trend forward floral designers and floral companies. And so I decided, hey, I’m going to buy a couple of pieces of lounge furniture, and I’m going to make a couple of bar facades. And I was quickly one of the go to people here in the area to be able to offer those things.
And so that was definitely when I was like, this needs to be its own business.
Allison Howell: And that’s because you recognized, hey, I’m going to be selling to the trade. So other floors, caterers, venues, that sort of thing. And there’ll be more comfortable renting from a different business rather than a florist who’s a competitor.
I see quite a few different models out there and I’m always interested in that kind of decision point. How did you decide two businesses rather than all under the same brand?
Mandy Majerik: I think because, and anyone will tell you, it’s not a hidden secret in the floral world. The profit margins are definitely not what they are in the rental market. And it’s also, we hustle in the rental market, but we don’t hustle like a floral designer has to hustle on the day of an event and the long hours that are put in on that.
Allison Howell: There’s a tremendous amount of labor on the floral side, not that there’s not labor and rentals, but it’s a different kind of labor.
Mandy Majerik: It is. And for me, the value of that was, if I was the one who was selling the wedding to this client and they were worried about this was going to be the wrong shade of peach of these flowers or, and it was a guessing game because they didn’t see the fresh product until the day of the wedding.
It’s like your one chance. But with rentals, they know what that peach sofa looks like because they can come and see it beforehand. And so it also allowed me personally not to have to be at every event, and it allowed us the opportunity to scale and add different salespeople and things because when you’re doing the floral people always wanted Mandy to be there.
They just had that safety net that Mandy’s there. She knows what I want. She can handle it. But with the rentals, they’re happy having other salespeople on the sales team be their go to. So I’m not having to touch every order that happens.
Allison Howell: So it wasn’t just that you liked buying stuff. It wasn’t just that you saw there’s an opportunity. It’s also that you recognize the rentals is scalable in a very different way than the florals. Because the florals, it’s not that you’re just doing one wedding a weekend with the florals. You’re doing a big volume with the florals, but the rentals are scalable in a different way. Totally different way because they can be in more places at once without you personally having to be there.
And because it sounds like the sales side is a lot more independent from you personally.
Mandy Majerik: Correct. Yes. And I was looking for a way to set me apart and keep. Keep me on the forefront of being the go to person in the floral world in our market, because I was able to offer those things. And so that was really where I was in the beginning.
But after we added more and more inventory I realized, Hey, this is, and I was there long enough to realize, Hey, you know, this is where a lot of our profit margin, this is where a lot of our cash flows coming from this able to be retained. Because, with floral, you’re buying all the flowers and it’s once and done.
And obviously with the rentals, you’re procuring these sofas, but you can use them multiple times as long as you take care of them well. We definitely were able to see that difference happening. The first, few years of having it.
Allison Howell: And it is even interesting that you were able to invest so much in vessels and decor at the beginning when you were primarily doing florals because your margins are so small in florals that it’s easy to say, oh let’s get him to talk him into using a vessel we already have rather than reinvesting in inventory that you’re not going to be using every single weekend. So how did you make those choices at the time?
Like before you had the full-fledged PropHouse brand, how did you decide when am I going to make a purchase versus sub rent from somebody else versus try to use something I already have. How did you justify those purchases?
Mandy Majerik: I’ve always been a little bit of a risk taker. I think every entrepreneur is a risk taker.
And I think being that I was younger. I was able to take a little more risk. I was the only one counting on my paycheck. It wasn’t a family. I didn’t have kids. And so I think led to reinvesting a lot of that money back into the company to buy the things. But I think too, it was just because I think that was some of the things that I liked about it, that I liked working with different vessels or I liked having a different look every time and not having to use the same glass cylinders every time. And I really wanted to set myself apart from the other people. We had 15 or 20 floral companies here in Birmingham that did beautiful wedding flowers. So what made people want to come to me? And that was one of the advantages that I saw as long as I allowed myself to reinvest some of that.
Allison Howell: Yeah, no, that’s really interesting. So you were pushing the trends in the florals. Tell me a little bit more about the market in Birmingham. Is there a big market for those early adopters of trends or is it a much more traditional market? What’s the landscape like?
Mandy Majerik: So Birmingham, they are hospitality driven.
People love to throw parties here. And a lot of times when I would travel and speak about florals and teach people and do seminars, people would be like, you’re so lucky to be in the South. People in the South love to have a party and it’s true. It is. I’m in a lucky region of the country, I think.
But people really they’re, I would say. They’re traditional, but I think they want to have, they want to be traditional with a twist. I think they want to do something a little bit different. I think we have some clientele here that, are looking at what’s happening in New York or what’s happening in California or Texas or a place like that where people are introducing new props or different ideas for, bars or back bars. And they bring us some of that inspo. I think they just want to put their own twist on it, but they don’t want to get too far out of the lines. But for the most part, I think we can push them a little bit.
Allison Howell: Yeah. So it sounds like there’s a receptiveness to your creativity.
So as you’re bringing in these props, you’re not having to fight tooth and nail to get somebody to actually rent them from you. It sounds like there’s people who are ready and willing.
Mandy Majerik: We also do design for the event. And so that allows us to incorporate some of those pieces that someone just might not say, oh, I want that right there. It’s how we work it into their whole design plan to get it into the whole event.
Allison Howell: Tell me a little bit more about that. Are people mainly coming to you for florals and then you’re adding on the PropHouse stuff?
Are they coming to you? For design in general. And you’re saying, here’s your bill from PropHouse and here’s your bill from HotHouse. Like how does it all work?
Mandy Majerik: So it used to be the first way that you said it used to be, people would come to us for flowers and then we would add in the props as the secondary piece of the pie.
But now the ship has shifted. And people will come to us more for rentals than floral. Because with everything you have to decide, where are you going to put your focus? So we definitely decided it was, or I definitely decided it was better for me to focus on the PropHouse side of things.
And we raised our floral minimums. And so now people, especially corporate are coming to us to design their event. So we’re designing the event, orchestrating, sub renting out from another company, the tents and what I call big box rentals, the chairs, chiavari chairs, because we don’t do that in house.
And so we’re designing the event, and then we’re bringing in our prop decor, our boutique props to make the look and then the florals then are just the icing. So they’re just the last thing that kind of sets it off that we do in house for that.
Allison Howell: Are you charging a separate fee for the design or?
Are they coming to you knowing that, oh, we’ll get props and we’ll get a concept.
Mandy Majerik: That’s where it shifts when they can come in and depending on who the client is and they sit with me, then we will have a design fee associated with designing the event. But if it’s truly our sales team just depending on the caliber will offer is a little bit of concept without charging a design fee.
So if they just know they want a lounge and they want a bar, a back bar and maybe one other thing, our team will draft up just a little concept page for them to make sure they can see that, see the visual, they can see the picture. But when they come to me and we’re bringing in designing the whole event, like I said, the tents and all the linens and all of that, then that falls under a different category with more time. So we do definitely charge a design fee for that.
Allison Howell: How do the businesses work together? Do you share staff, or do you have separate staff? Help me understand where the overlaps are.
Mandy Majerik: We do share a little bit of staff. But we try to keep it separate. We don’t do as much floral as we used to. So I use a lot of freelance florists when we have big weekends.
I do have one floral designer that we count on to do a lot of the in house corporate things that kind of tag along with props. But for the most part. I would say probably I’m the only one that is cross referencing on both. And then of course our, our props are always a part of the wedding or the floral.
So then our warehouse team and trucks and things like that we’ll share, but for the most part.
Allison Howell: So your sales team is bidding on both the props and the floral.
Mandy Majerik: Yeah. They come to me and say, can you do some flowers for this event we have into June? So they come in and they make sure that we can handle doing it in house.
But yeah, they’ll prep it. And then they’ll come with me with inspo and things like that and ask if we can do it. And then we price it together.
Allison Howell: Separate accounting for both businesses.
Mandy Majerik: Yes.
Allison Howell: Okay. And, but the same space.
Mandy Majerik: Correct.
Allison Howell: Yes. Okay. Okay. At this point, it sounds you don’t give the businesses equal attention.
It sounds like prop house has really taken more of your attention and it sounds like you’ve made that decision strategically because of the profit margins, right?
Mandy Majerik: Absolutely.
Allison Howell: Yeah.
Mandy Majerik: And my sanity. So yes.
Allison Howell: You’re not giving up floral. So that’s an interesting strategy because you haven’t said oh it’s not worth it to do.
You still find that it’s a good symbiotic relationship.
Mandy Majerik: It is. And I think because especially designing the events it helps us control that little bit of that creative factor that may go downhill quickly. And so I do having the control of the floral when we’re doing the overall event design.
Allison Howell: It’s a long road from a retail floral shop to full event production, which is what you’re talking about when you’re sub renting tents and tables and chairs and props and florals. That a big shift in responsibility.
Mandy Majerik: Yeah, it is.
Allison Howell: We’re doing more things. It’s like the customer expectation is a lot higher. Because not only do they expect the execution to be on point, they have an expectation that they’re coming to you and you’re going to have this creative concept just flowing out your ears.
Mandy Majerik: That’s right. They call it the Majerik Magic.
Allison Howell: But beyond that when things go wrong, you’re accountable for more than just, some pedals that are brown.
How do you weigh the balance, the pros and cons of that? Like at what point did you say, oh, it’s worth it to do all these things under our umbrella. That risk is worth it because we can control the end product more.
Mandy Majerik: I think when I made the decision that I would raise the minimum for floral and really push towards the props I wanted to be a leader in that market in our area.
Being able to do the whole event design and incorporate or push new ideas on people. That was the avenue that I saw was opportunity was to be able to take that because I was really doing it anyway. And people were coming to me, even, event planners, not all event planners are event designers.
And so we had a lot of planners who were coming and asking my opinion or, hey, can you help with this? Or, hey, can you help with that? I’m not a wedding planner. And I don’t want to be a wedding planner. I don’t want to be your best friend when it comes to that but I do want your event to be very cool and executed well. And so I think from that perspective, that is where personally I was able to shine. And so I realized that, hey, this is for me. And I think it’s very self-fulfilling when I get to do that concept from beginning to end. So I think for me, it’s a lot of liability and responsibility, but I think if it’s me and I have the staff with me to execute it and make sure all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed then I feel really good going into the event.
Then we’re prepared and there, we really don’t have any issues. Weather is the biggest issue, but other than that, we don’t really have too much.
Allison Howell: But you’re not just doing events there in Birmingham. You guys travel, right?
Mandy Majerik: We do. Yeah, I laugh and joke and I’m like, hey, my trucks have wheels.
So we will go wherever you want us to go. We’ll take however much you want us to take.
Allison Howell: So you pretty much do events all over the South, right?
Mandy Majerik: We do. We do a lot in Georgia. We’ve done Tennessee. We’ve been up to Virginia. We’ve been in Mississippi recently, Florida. So yeah, we get around in our region.
Allison Howell: And what do you think draws people from outside of your immediate area to hire you to those places? Is it your inventory? Is it your style? Is it your service? Is it the fact that you can offer so many different things? And you’re a little bit of a one stop shop, not meaning that they don’t have to think about it, but that you offer this kind of complete solution for them?
What is it that draws them to you when there might be another solution closer?
Mandy Majerik: I think in our area in town, it’s driven because we are a one stop sort of shop for these corporate clients. They want us to design the whole thing. When you get maybe out of state lines a little bit. I think it is more about the inventory that we have because well two things I think stand out for me.
We have things in numbers We have things in collections. So we have 12 of one type of sofa or 15 of one type of banquette so we can do a real overall design with the same things. And two we do things that are very custom. So we do a ton of custom building and custom painting.
So people are really able to take something and make it match their event brand. Or what they’re going for. And I know a lot of traditional rental companies don’t do that. So we do offer the customization options.
Allison Howell: You’re not a big box in that you’re not standardized, but you’re not a little shop in that you have the quantities. So you’re in a sweet spot there because there are a lot of boutique rental companies that have one offs or maybe four of something, but they certainly don’t have 12.
That’s a very unusual position to be in. And also the capability to paint and repaint or build and rebuild. There’s, to be honest, only a couple dozen companies across the country are in the position that you’re in to be able to do that kind of work. I can imagine that there’s a real demand for that in your region.
Can you give us an idea of the scale of your operation? How many events are you doing in any given year?
Mandy Majerik: I will say we’re just rolled off of May. We’re closing the month out because we’re doing this on May the 30th. And this is our largest month ever with rental numbers. So between will call and deliveries, we’ve done 106 events for the month of May.
So that can be anything from a will call of a cake plate all the way up to, we’re doing some things for some universities and things like that. It varies from year to year based on if it was a floral event that came in or whether it was a came in as a prop house event.
It’s definitely grown to be a successful business over the last, I would say, five or six years, seven figures and higher in demand. Yeah.
Allison Howell: Okay. And is this what you were imagining when you sat down with the family and said, okay, yeah, I’ll take over HotHouse or I’ll take over Belle Florals at that point?
Mandy Majerik: I’ve always been motivated, and I’ve always been driven and an overachiever. And I think in the end what I think I would be over a staff of 30 people. I don’t know, but I do know that I was very driven to make it something that was distinct and different. And I think I’ve just been riding the wave going in that direction.
And wherever there was an opportunity, I think I was like that risk taker a little bit, educated risk taker to really dive into that sector, like the custom painting the custom building, because that does add a lot of staff. To be able to accommodate those requests. My parents are super proud.
They’re just like, we used to know what this was, but we have no idea now what all this entails. So they’re super proud. And when they come to the showroom and they see the warehouse and they’re just like, oh my gosh all this stuff my dad laughs because my mom is a decorator at heart.
And she used to have a little retail shop when I was younger. And she loves to collect things and decorate her house. And my dad laughs because he’s you’re just like your mother. You just realized how to monetize everything, which is true.
Allison Howell: Yeah, you definitely have played on your strengths, right? You recognize, okay, I don’t like designing the same wedding over and over. So if I know I’m going to keep buying, I might as well start renting it to other people rather than keep buying and have it just sit on a shelf because Mandy, there are thousands and thousands of florists out there who kept buying and have been getting bigger and bigger storage units, but they’re still not doing the same wedding every weekend, but they’re not getting rid of their stuff either. And so there are people who have a storage unit or a warehouse worth of stuff that they could be renting, but they’re not.
And I think it is unique in that way because as a creative entrepreneur, sometimes people chase that bright, shiny object, right? They chase that next fun thing, that next thing that’s interesting to them and have a hard time seeing, how do I take advantage of the thing that’s right in front of me?
But it seems like you’ve been able to harness that.
Mandy Majerik: And for me, I’ve always been a person who wanted to play nice in the sandbox with other business owners and have great relationships with other people, company owners in town and they may have 6 of these vases, but they need 15 for this weekend.
More than likely, we probably have either the same thing or something very similar. And so they’ll come and rent those. It opened up an opportunity when I did that then to have a little bit of a better, relationship with some of those people too, because we were sort of the getting place.
We were the place. We probably had it. And it was a nice, interesting twist to something I didn’t expect. It wasn’t always about competition and things like that. And they would come to me and say, hey, we have this ceiling installation and what would you do? Or what do you have that we can use to try to do this? Because for them, it was a lot easier to rent it and our guys would help deliver it. And then, everybody wins at that point.
Allison Howell: Absolutely. Tell me a little bit more about how you lead your team. Are you setting goals for them or are you asking them to set goals for themselves?
Mandy Majerik: We set goals for them. It’s interesting because, when you start out, own a floral business and you’re like, I’m going to start the props and then we go into custom builds and you add more and more people to your team. You can’t do everything. And so having those really, foundational people on your team to help you do that.
And I know you’ve met several of the ones that I have, but in particular Ashlyn has come with me to Lend and Gather a few times. And she came into this business being my assistant when I did floral. And she did all those grueling floral proposal proposals every day. She’s really seen the good, the bad and ugly from the beginning. She leads a lot of the teams, and she helps set those sales goals.
I think just treating people the way you would want to be treated and realizing, hey, when we’re in that mode of, we’ve got to work hard and work late today, everybody’s a team player. And then when you have the chance to relax, then everybody gets to take a minute, take a breath, catch their breath.
Allison Howell: Tell me a little bit about how you handle some of the things that I think lead to the most burnout for people in this industry. Because you start thinking, okay, I get to make pretty things all the time. And then you recognize I’m running a glorified moving company, right? And I think some of the things that really burn people out are last minute changes.
How do you guys handle those there at PropHouse when a planner calls and says, oh, you can’t deliver at 10, you have to deliver at noon. What do you guys do?
Mandy Majerik: Ah, you can hear it down the office hallway. We know something has gone sideways. The best way is you just have to make it work.
You got to do it with a smile on your face. I think we have really great customer service. Our clients do too. To have repetitive business, you have to try to keep those people happy. And maybe that’s something that’s not in their control. Maybe the tent company wasn’t able to get the tent up the day they thought they were.
So it sends everybody after that a day behind, for me, it’s just explaining it to our team and being very transparent and being like, hey man, I know, I’m sorry that this didn’t happen. Pick up was at 10 o’clock, but now it’s at midnight. And the best way I can work with you is maybe you’re not going to unload the truck that night when you get back.
And we’ll save that for the next day. So I think it’s just really learning, here’s the situation. There’s not really much you can do about it. You got to handle it and try to make the best of it on the other side.
Allison Howell: Do you feel like over the years you’ve tried to give yourself margin or you’ve increased your pricing in order to stave off any of the fallout from those kinds of things, or do you feel like you’ve always padded enough that you feel okay?
Mandy Majerik: Probably in the beginning I didn’t, but I think as the company’s grown and we’ve added more salespeople to the team, I think you do have to have some of that cushion in place because you are doing more orders and more things are going to go wrong.
It’s inevitable. You’re going to have changes happen. And so we do pad a little extra here and there for delivery or something like that. Knowing that this may be a difficult time. Difficult client, difficult delivery. However you want to, when you want to put it on your invoicing.
But I think, you definitely have to be cognizant of that because you will start eating into your actual rental income versus your delivery income. We do try to pad it just a little bit.
Allison Howell: It’s interesting to me to see the domino effect that sometimes these kind of last minute changes have or things like no call, no shows have on businesses that maybe when you’re smaller, they don’t.
You don’t experience them at all because you have these two really trusty delivery guys, but then the larger you get, the more people you have, the less control maybe you have on your staff. So are there problems that you feel like you face now that you have a staff of 30 that you didn’t face when you had a staff of five?
Mandy Majerik: I think it’s really just realizing that when you have, when you grow, when you have a staff like that, you’re always going to have someone who’s off, you’re always going to have requests off sitting in your inbox, you’re always going to have last minute things. Oh, my child is sick. I can’t come in today. I think what we’ve learned is we almost always have one or two more people that it takes to do it then we actually need because you’re always going to have someone who’s falling short somewhere.
I had a set of three sales team people. And they weren’t able to get the orders out fast enough. We weren’t able to turn around the proposals quick enough. And it was hurting us because, people, when they want it now.
They want to know before they go down the street and say, how much is yours to rent? And so we quickly saw that was really becoming a big issue as we got larger. And so we hired on assistants to every one of the sales team. There’s two of them for every pair of a team. And whoever got to the email first to be able to respond, we were on it.
We can kick out proposals, the assistants can prep it and they can turn it out and get it on. And so with that, it leans back to if somebody’s sick or out of town or on vacation, then their assistant can step in.
Allison Howell: You have fail safes.
Mandy Majerik: Yes and we do that on the warehouse side too we always try to have enough delivery team to be able to handle everything.
If somebody falls short we have usually have one or two people that are on call, which are usually the managers or the salesperson who that was their original order. So there’s a few safety nets and fallbacks there to be able to pick the pieces up internally.
Allison Howell: Yeah, it’s interesting because on the one hand, sometimes you feel like, oh, sometimes I’m not busy enough to be able to afford those safety nets, right? But then you get to a point where you have to have those safety nets. So there’s a little bit of a volume problem. Sometimes you’re not big enough, but you need them.
But you have to be big enough in order to afford them. Do you feel like there was a sweet spot where you felt like, okay, once we hit X number of events or X number in revenue, that’s when I felt like, okay, we were really comfortable in being able to have those kinds of safety nets in place?
Mandy Majerik: As the company has opened up other avenues, such as like the custom painting department or the custom building department.
Those people in their own right, have their own job, but they were also treated as a safety net. In case of any issues and so really just having a company with that many staff internally, no matter if that’s their job or not, I think the important part was just everybody being cross trained.
Allison Howell: So you’re not calling your brother in law and your friend at midnight on a Saturday because you’re stuck in a ditch.
Mandy Majerik: That’s right, and I’m not on Facebook, saying, hey, I need help this weekend. You know what I mean? I really try to draw the line from the outside client facing.
We look like we got it all together. If we’re scrambling on the inside, that’s for us to know. And I think we have enough. Enough staff now with all those different areas to be able to jump in when it’s needed to jump in.
Allison Howell: Yeah. So it’s interesting. Those additional services don’t just provide you with additional revenue streams.
They have a secondary benefit of giving you those safety nets or larger pools of people to depend on when you are in that pinch or in an emergency or need somebody to shift quickly.
Mandy Majerik: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve, been, we’ve made deliveries one day where it’s like, Oh my God. We forgot this or got left off the truck and we’re two hours away we’ll call up somebody in our custom pace department, hopefully they’re on task and on timely manner of target and they can be like, Hey, yeah, we can run those down there to you, so it really is nice to be able to have that, that pull to pull from. Absolutely. It’s definitely an advantage that I don’t think a lot of people think of until you’re in it.
Allison Howell: Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about your collection. It’s quite extensive. It includes everything from lounge furniture to bars and rugs, macrame, architectural pieces, lanterns, votives, lighting, draping, an Elvis cutout, multiple poodle statues, a da Vinci bust, eight 14 foot dogwood trees, a shark backdrop, Marquee letters and on.
I bet if I named a random object, you would say we’ve got it. But Mindy, tell me a little bit more about your collection. If you were to describe what you rent, what would you say?
Mandy Majerik: Definitely our standard would be lounge. Bar rentals, bar backdrops for what we have locally. We do a lot of local things.
Like we have a large magic city sign, which is a Birmingham trademark. We have a Vulcan statue, which is a Birmingham trademark. There’s a little bit of a method to the madness of what the collection is. When you put it in its own terms, we do a lot for universities and mascots. So some are elephants, some are tigers, some are bulldogs.
And so we have some of those supplemental things that we can add in for photo ops or something like that. That’s how we’ve gotten some of the random things. And then some of it is just really for conversation. There’s nothing like walking into a warehouse and being like, you have a British leather sofa.
We only have one of those, but people comment about it. And so I do get a few things here and there that are just interesting and start the conversation and like, when we have an Elvis song. If we have an Elvis cut out or show girls cut out, we did that for a particular event that they requested.
And we were like we’ll keep them in house. Who doesn’t want to stand behind an Elvis statue or show girl statue, for a photo backdrop? We do have some of those things that are quite crazy requests that we have obliged to entertain and it was perfect for the event and we didn’t have to keep it in inventory, but it was some of those fun things, but I definitely would say, we do a lot of custom build, a lot of custom painting.
And we do have quite an extensive selection of bars and stage facade that allow us to make it very customizable.
Allison Howell: How do you decide what to add to your collection, whether it’s a piece that you’re purchasing or a piece that you’re custom building?
Mandy Majerik: Some of it has to do with client request. If we have one order who is spending 65,000 in rentals and they want two green benches. Then I’m going to oblige and buy these 2 green benches and add them to inventory because I’m not going to tell that person that we’re not going to do that. So a lot of the inventory gets added that way.
Another way is our planners, repetitive client, wedding planners bring in inspo from their clients and say, my client really wants this champagne. And we have three other champagne walls, but this is the one they want. And so we price it out, say, hey, this is how much it’s going to cost. And if they want it, then we’ll be happy to build it.
If it’s a one of kind that we’re doing for them then cost and some profit is priced out in the initial rental of that and it debuts on their event. And then the other part is just that, I go to market, I go shopping.
There’s some things that I buy just because I personally think this will do well in the market or someone doesn’t have it to offer where we are. And so that gives us a leg up sometimes of something different that we have that can be that little pivot point as to somebody tipping the scale to rent from us versus someone else.
Allison Howell: You mentioned the volume that you have. 12 of one couch, or, groupings of things. How do you decide how many is enough?
Mandy Majerik: You never have enough. Ever. Never have enough. I start, it’s funny you ask that because when I started out, I was like, Oh I’m going to have, the two of these, and this is great.
I need two sofas, I can make it happen. And then as we started to add more, my planners would say, oh I want this side of the ballroom to have two sofas and this side of the ballroom to have two sofas. I want it to mirror on each side of the dance floor. Okay, then I really need to start buying fours.
Then when you do that, you realize, if one gets damaged, I’ve got three sofas that aren’t good anymore because everybody wants them in sets of four. So then you say, okay, I’m going to buy in five, right? I’m going to buy an odd number because then you have a backup. And the way we are now, our showroom is separate than our warehouse.
And we try to keep one in the showroom if we can. And so I always have that one extra, which is our backup in case something happens. And then it just depends, banquets, people want four sided banquets. You have to have, four, then you have eight and then you want an extra.
So that’s nine. So it just compounds. It just does after a while. And you’re just like, you know what? Every banquette I buy, we’re buying like 13 of them. So we have 12 and a backup because you never have enough.
Allison Howell: Yeah, so I, I think you really are right that you can never have enough because the minute you do one goes missing or gets a rip or gets a stain.
Mandy Majerik: You buy something and maybe that manufacturer doesn’t make it anymore. Or, my horror is to order the first time and get this run of fabric. And then when I reorder the same thing, it’s a different run of fabric. And so they don’t match when they come in. So it’s just, if it can happen, it has happened.
And so I have learned from the hard lessons of purchasing. It’s hard to get it right every time, but if you do buy enough quantity, you probably can get there for a while.
Allison Howell: What is your budgeting process like for purchasing?
Mandy Majerik: Like I said, a lot of it that is custom build or a custom purchase for someone will depend on the client who’s ordering it.
So I don’t really factor that in necessarily when it comes to our overall, we have 300,000 a year to buy new inventory. It’s not necessarily as cut and dried as that. And I don’t go past it. I think it really ebbs and flows with seasonal things, how much we’re getting rid of versus how much we’re retaining.
Cause we do a prop sell a couple of times a year where we do sell off some of our slightly damaged inventory or things that literally just don’t move anymore.
Allison Howell: What have been some of your most successful purchases?
Mandy Majerik: When I first started and I really like dove into, I’m like, I’m going to get some lounges because I need some lounges.
I bought some pieces and before you have all the connections of the best places to buy things or the best bargains to get, I bought them from Ballard Designs. So I paid a lot of money for them when I first got them and we still have them in our inventory 11 years later. The frame of the sofas are wonderful.
They’re still going. The fabric has been through a lot. We’ve cleaned it out to the point where I don’t think we can clean it anymore. So we’re about to have them reupholstered. But I think it’s just looking at, the life of what the item is. Is it worth getting it reupholstered because the frame is so good or it’s a popular shape?
Versus then, just deciding to get rid of that and add new inventory to the market.
Allison Howell: Yeah, you have quite a few unique or one of a kind pieces. Where are you doing your buying? Are you just out shopping? Are you on the hunt all the time? Are you an auction hunter?
Mandy Majerik: When it started out, I loved an antique store, loved an auction. And I think that was great when you just were looking for one piece, right? And that’s how I think most rental companies start out is like the love of the thrill of the hunt. And I was definitely in that position.
But I think as I really got into the big event world of doing a lot of corporate, then you needed the number. So you couldn’t shop at those places like that for that kind of stuff. But I still love the antique shores and I still love to find those one of the kind of things that I think is an interesting add.
So for the most part, to answer your question, yeah, the antique stores still happen, obviously. But definitely going to market Atlanta, Las Vegas, different ones, high point to see, what’s trending and what’s new and coming.
Allison Howell: Over the years, have you had challenges with storage?
Mandy Majerik: We, we do every day. Yeah.
Allison Howell: Tell me about some of your challenges with storage.
Mandy Majerik: It’s funny you say that because we’re at a benchmark now where we’re about to get growing pains again. And we’re looking to move into, hopefully, either build on to the location we have now or completely buy a new facility that has more space.
I think the difficulty is really learning that after you have so many things on the ground, you have to go more vertical with everything. And I think storing it that way, training your staff to be able to drive forklifts, different things to be able to get the inventory off the shelf. So I think, yes, we’re always in growing pains when it comes to space, but I think really using vertical space is an important thing.
Allison Howell: I’ve noticed that you don’t have dining tables and dining chairs in your collection. Is there a reason that you’ve chosen not to invest in those things?
Mandy Majerik: The easy answer to that is just because a lot of the people around me, that’s what they have. I’ll say when we’re already running out of space with our custom build and our lounge collections, that was one segment that I didn’t feel like I needed to dive into because I knew what a space was.
And so I really shied away from the tables unless it’s a cake table or a specialty table. And then we just recently, as probably in the last few months, bought a couple of dining chairs in quantity. In quantity, I say like a hundred.
Because I’ve made a promise to everyone. We would never carry a chiavari chair, because people want 600, 700 of those, and if I told my guys that I have working for me, that they had to line up 600 chiavari chairs for a ceremony setting and get them just perfectly lined, they would look at me probably like I have two heads.
And so I’m just like no. To keep them happy, to keep me happy. We’re the home of no chiavari chairs.
Allison Howell: It’s good to know the limits of your team. It sounds like you’ve got a pretty amazing staff. What have you done to maintain your collection so that it lasts as long as possible?
Mandy Majerik: We try to take care of it. And I think trying to teach our team about how to be respectful of the inventory, I try to hire individuals and retain them. So I don’t use temp agencies for busy weekends and things because I think when you start introducing people who don’t work with the product all the time. They’re not as careful or delicate or don’t wrap it appropriately.
So we do try to, on deliveries, pack the trucks with the blankets and the straps and do the procedure that we’re supposed to. And then when it comes back in, obviously using the proper cleaning techniques, we spot clean our furniture, vacuum it in house, but if it does have major stains or something, we have partnered with a cleaning company here in town that comes and does deep cleaning of our lounge and things like that. So I think just being able to invest a little bit into taking care of the inventory really will give it some longevity.
Allison Howell: How do you get your team members, the last one to touch it, to care about that as much as you do?
Mandy Majerik: That’s a hard question, I think, because we do some training, obviously, and you tell people what you want it to look like and what your expectations are. Now, whether they do that in the field or not, when you’re not looking, I don’t know, but we do have a few areas of ways that we entertain the fact of trying to make sure everyone is doing part of that job.
If we know we have a difficult planner or difficult client, we will make sure that we send a member of the sales team there. To make sure they’re doing a final approval of what it looks like to make sure everything is appropriate. Our guys are really good though. I have to really sing their praises because, I’m real particular about when we put pillows out in furniture, zippers always go down.
And there’s nothing better than getting a note from a planner and they text you on Saturday afternoon at about three o’clock and they’re like, I can’t believe that Will just made sure all the zippers were down on the pillows. This is amazing. And when you share that with those guys, they love to know that people appreciate that.
And I think it’s definitely sharing that success with them when they’re getting compliments and things like that.
Allison Howell: It’s interesting because sometimes you’re hiring somebody because they’re strong or enthusiastic or are willing to work at 3 a. m., right? Those are characteristics that are not usually the same as somebody who cares about a zipper going down, right?
Or, something being aesthetically pleasing in the same kind of way, right? They’re not always aligned values.
Mandy Majerik: That’s right.
Allison Howell: But when you’re able to say, hey, this is what this client cares about, and they’re able to internalize that can be a really powerful motivator for them to recognize, okay. I can really make a difference here.
Mandy Majerik: Absolutely. And we pair our delivery teams together. We’re pairing them appropriately to that end result. So we may send two strong muscle guys, but we send one girl to make sure details are happening or we send two muscle guys and a guy who’s really savvy with a drill who has to hang signs or do certain on site installation.
So we really pick the delivery teams based on what’s needed for each event. And I think it’s really worked out in our favor.
Allison Howell: It seems like you’ve gotten to a point where you have that luxury. I know a lot of people who will be listening to this podcast are thinking, I send whoever will respond to my text that they’re available.
And I imagine you’ve had those days, right? You’ve been through that season.
Mandy Majerik: Yeah. Yeah. And for me, a lot of it was, oh, I need to learn how to work a drill and I need to make sure I know how to do those things because I was the one out there doing it too. The time will come when you get there, you realize, hey, it’s worth the extra labor or the extra qualifications you’re looking for that position to be able to be trusting of that person, that the job is going to get done and done well.
Allison Howell: If you could go back and tell your past self two things before starting PropHouse, what would they be? Are there two lessons that stand out to you that you think would have made a difference when you started?
Mandy Majerik: I wish I knew how to be a better interviewer for a job.
Allison Howell: Okay, because is there a formula now that you have?
Mandy Majerik: Not necessarily a formula, but there are things that we do depending on where they are in the business.
For instance, our sales team, I want to make sure that they have somewhat creativity because that’s what they’re selling is something in a creative market. And so if they make it through the first round of interviews and they come to the second round, the idea actually came from anthropology.
But I get them to bring a box with five things that represent them and they get to tell me about them because we all know like an interview process. People are very like rigid. You ask them a question and they’re going to answer it and stop talking. You know what I mean? They’re very nervous.
So to have something that’s an icebreaker that they can talk about, this is a picture of my dad when we were fishing. I love fishing. They tell you so many things about them that you don’t know to even ask about, and so that’s been interesting to learn people’s characteristics of if they would be a good fit with the team, definitely hiring the right staff is imperative.
And I think the 2nd thing is that as an entrepreneur in a growing business, you have to learn what it feels like to take your emotions out of things a little bit. And when you have to let someone go or fire them you have all the reasons and you have everything behind your decision that you made.
And so the blow is a little bit less, even maybe even be expected on the other end from the people at that point. But to really realize that when it’s time to cut ties, it’s time to cut ties and move on and hire the right person for the position. No matter if they’re a friend.
Allison Howell: What brings you joy right now in your business?
Mandy Majerik: Being able to have the luxury of having a little extra income to be able to share it with people and give back the way I would have liked to had I been given the opportunity and it’s not always just monetary. Maybe it’s somebody takes a chance on you to really step up and take on this client or somebody getting married and you’re able to give them a nice gift because they dedicate a lot of time and effort to your business.
Because there was a day where I didn’t even get a paycheck, right? As the company, I was reinvesting and buying new vases and all those kinds of things. And then you get to a point to where it’s like you have the opportunity to give back. And I think for me personally, bringing me joy is being able to give back to the people who I think dedicate themselves so much to the business, the crazy business that we’re in.
Allison Howell: Sounds like you really spread the Majerik Magic. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m so grateful. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom and all of the wonderful things you’ve learned along the way. We are so grateful.
Mandy Majerik: Absolutely.
A big thank you to Mandy Majerik, of HotHouse Design Studio and PropHouse Rentals and Styling. You can find all her info in the show notes.
And a big thank YOU, for listening to The Trunk Show brought to you by RW Elephant, mighty inventory management software designed to help you conquer the chaos in your event rental business and reclaim your creativity, because the world needs more of the beautiful events and environments you create.
We hope you enjoyed the show! We’re releasing episodes every other week, so be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app. As always, I’m your host, Allison Howell. Happy renting!
