Many years ago, more than 200 in fact, Benjamin Franklin flew his kite into a lightning storm to find out more about electricity. It was a rather shocking experience. He wasn’t the first to discover electricity. Nor did he do anything overly useful that I know of with it. Thomas[Read More…]
V4I5
October/November 2018
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success” – Henry Ford Whoever said that no man is an island, and no man stands alone, hit the nail on the head. No matter what your involvement is in the shed business, there are many people who[Read More…]
Four Tips for Execution
I have come to accept my own need to keep things simple. I have proven to myself repeatedly that when I start over-complicating things, my chances of success or reaching a goal decline. Both in college and in business school there was a lot of talk about the importance of[Read More…]
Full Disclosure
Although many aspects of rent-to-own (RTO) businesses mirror one another, there are definite areas that differ due to state laws governing those peculiarities. For example, laws pertaining to the information that must be included on price tags for sheds vary from one state to the next. Because of those differences,[Read More…]
Shop Automation: An Overview
Does shop automation make sense for the shed building industry? Delivery trailers and installation equipment like The Mule have made the delivery process quicker and safer. Online shed visualizers are improving the customer experience and speeding up the sales process. Why not utilize production machinery to improve the building process?[Read More…]
Shop Talk
If you’re building sheds or shed components in a manufacturing facility and pay attention to your bottom line, then you’ve certainly asked at some point, “How can I build this better?” Having set processes in place to get repeatable levels of productivity and limit waste and inactivity can go a[Read More…]
Customer Service Success
We’ve been saying “the customer is always right” for more than a hundred years, but it seems that’s never been truer than today when customers can so easily share why you’re wrong on social media. But customer service is about more than avoiding bad reviews; it’s about building ongoing relationships[Read More…]
Juggling It All
It’s just after 8 a.m. on a Tuesday in late August in Duluth, Minnesota. Lee Gelineau has been hard at work for some time, gathering materials and equipment. And he’s squeezing in a few minutes for a telephone interview before heading out to a job site to build a shed.[Read More…]
Building Teamwork on the Shop Floor
By now you’ve improved your inventory and ordering process, so it’s been a while since you’ve run out of anything. Good for you! Hopefully now the builders won’t be so upset with you all the time. But it still seems like something is missing. You don’t feel like the shop[Read More…]
NBSRA Ninth Annual Conference a Success
The National Barn & Storage Rental Association’s (NBSRA) ninth annual conference was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 5-6. An amazing lineup of speakers presented valuable knowledge to the attendees focusing on creating a culture of caring, outcome drivers and overall best practices for the RTO industry. Each of[Read More…]
