Progressive Rentals May-June 2004

Treasures Abound: APRO’s 2004 Convention and Buying Show The RTO Customer Survey See-Saw by Ed Winn III

Over the Top: A Tawdry Tale of Collections Gone Awry by Ed Winn III

Riding Herd on Rent City: An APROfile of Robert Briley by Kristen Card

Treasures Abound: APRO’s 2004 Convention and Buying Show

The Association of Progressive Rental Organizations is the national trade association for the rental-purchase industry, representing more than 5,000 stores. These companies rent furniture, electronics, appliances and other products with an option for ownership. The APRO Convention and Buying Show is the premier event in the rent-to-own industry. Approximately 1,000 people involved in the RTO industry will attend. 2004 Keynote Address, General Session and Business Meeting Thursday August 5 The APRO 2004 general session will kick off with an overview of Association of Progressive Rental Organizations’ activities and the election of APRO board members.

Winners of the 2004 Rental-Purchase Employee of the Year and Customer of the Year contest will be announced, following by a rousing keynote address by Carolyn Kepcher, executive vice president of The Trump Organization. The 35-year-old Kepcher recently soared with her “sidekick” roll to Donald Trump on the NBC hit reality series, The Apprentice and is currently the chief operating officer and general manager for two Trump National Golf Clubs, both located in New York. Described by Trump as a “professional and a perfectionist,”

Kepcher is a firm believer that perseverance leads to accomplishment. At the APRO Convention, she will speak on a variety of issues, including ethics in corporate America, leadership, change, balance, overcoming stereotypes and obstacles and management. At the conclusion of the keynote, the mayor of Tampa will assist with the ribbon-cutting and champagne welcome ceremony to open the 2004 APRO Buying Show. Keynote address sponsored by G.E. Appliances; champagne welcome sponsored by Imagery Marketing. Joe Eason Golf Tournament Wednesday, August 4 Tampa Tournament Players Club An instant favorite on the Champions Tour due to the layout, the Tampa Tournament Players Club course has drawn the greats of golf and challenged them to raise their games. This tournament begins with a shotgun start at 8 a.m.

It is always an early sell-out, so be sure to register right away, as space is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Your space in the tournament cannot be reserved until payment has been received by APRO. The registration deadline is July 1 or when all tournament slots are filled, whichever comes first. The APRO Tom Kitchens/Joe Eason Golf Tournament registration fee is $150 per player—$50 of every registration goes to the APRO Scholarship Foundation. Sponsored by Whirlpool Corp. Welcome Reception Wednesday, August 4 Get together with old friends and get acquainted with new ones. This reception is open to all APRO convention attendees. Special recognition will be given to new APRO members who have joined since July 2003 and first-time APRO convention attendees. Light hors d’oeuvres and cash bar. Casual attire.

Sponsored by TRIB Group. Gala Cocktail Reception: “Splitsville” Thursday August 5 Splitsville is Tampa’s newest concept in fun, offering an upscale entertainment concept featuring bowling, billiards and a dinner lounge. Great food, your favorite libation and some friendly competition are sure to keep you entertained. Complimentary beer, wine and sodas and a buffet including pizza, quesadillas, burgers and more. Wear bowling or casual attire Co-sponsored by Alliance Computing Technologies, DPI Teleconnect, Florida State Games, Foresight, Philips Consumer Electronics, Rental Information Systems and Ther-A-Pedic. Annual Awards Reception and Banquet: “Hot Havana Nights” Saturday, August 7 The ambience of Tampa’s most famous area, Ybor City, will be captured during APRO’s annual Awards Banquet.

Experience the vibrant flavor of Cuban culture with custom-rolled cigars, Latin music and salsa dancing. Annual awards will be presented during an elegant meal, followed by an evening of entertainment and music. Complimentary cocktails during reception. Cash bar during sponsored by Thomson Inc. Banquet sponsored by High Touch. Spouse/Guest Program Friday August 6 After lunch at the delicious Samba Room, attendees can shop at Old Hyde Park Village. This beautiful outdoor pedestrian mall, with its fountains and brick-lined streets, is home to many shops, including Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, Williams Sonoma and more. Next on the agenda is a tour of the Henry B. Plant Museum, built in 1891 by railroad mogul Henry B. Plant.

The spectacular architecture and Moorish style minarets are a highlight of Tampa’s skyline. Extravagant art and furnishings from around the world are on display. 2004 RTO Employee of the Year and RTO Customer of the Year This popular contest is entering its fifth year and the search is on for the best in the industry. APRO’s annual Rental-Purchase Employee of the Year and Customer of the Year contest will culminate with presentations at the general session. This year’s entries again show the warm relationship between many of your customers, your employees, your company and the RTO industry.

Many companies are holding their own contests as well as entering their employees and customers in APRO’s national contest. Look around—you may have the winner right under your nose! Winners receive a complimentary trip to this year’s convention. Call APRO at 800/204-2776 or visit www.APROVision.org for contest entry information. Rental Advertising Excellence Awards Winners of the prestigious RAE Awards will be on display during the APRO convention. The winning print, television, electronic and radio entries set new standards every year.

Entries developed by rental dealers and entries developed by advertising agencies were judged separately. Check out this year’s winners in the exhibit hall or visit www.APROVision.org to enter your company’s advertising. The deadline for receiving entries is May 7. APRO show specials More than 200 booths representing over 100 companies will be offering specials that you will find only at the APRO show. This is the time to stock up for your fourth quarter and save, save, save. Free purchase-order giveaways Each purchase order written on the exhibit floor by a vendor offering APRO Buying Show specials will be entered into a drawing in which $24,000 will be given away—$1,000 for every year APRO has been in existence!

The more orders you write the better the chance that you will walk away with $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 or even $6,000 cash! Purchase orders must equal to or exceed the amount of the prize being drawn. For example, if your order is drawn for the $6,000 prize, but was only written for $3,000, the award will be $3,000—so plan on writing up your holiday business at the APRO Show. You must be an APRO regular member to be eligible for the drawing. Why should I “book in the APRO block”? In recent years, Internet booking has enabled hotels to “dump” their excess rooms at cut rates if it looks like they may have an excess inventory over certain dates. This is similar to what airlines do with their extra seats.

It is very important that all APRO attendees book their hotel rooms through the APRO room block as APRO must guarantee a certain number of rooms years in advance in order to procure the lowest rates for our attendees. If we book too few rooms, our attendees may not be able to get a room at our convention hotel or may have to pay much higher rates. If we book too many rooms, APRO is responsible for paying for unused rooms. Every effort is made to procure the number of rooms needed at the lowest rates possible, but we need the help of our attendees in order to keep convention costs down and the quality of the convention high. That is why we have cut registration rates for 2004—to make sure that our attendees get the best possible value for this convention and to help assure that the APRO room block is filled. Important:

You must have your confirmation number from the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel to verify that you have booked your room in the APRO block in order to receive the complimentary buyer registration and the discounted registration rates of $200 for APRO members, $500 for non-members before you register for the convention with APRO. Be sure to list the names of all people staying in a room when registering with the hotel so they will receive the proper discounted convention registration rate. Exhibit hall only badges are offered at $25 to all those in the RTO industry. Exhibit hall only badges do not allow admittance into any function or event other than the APRO exhibit hall. Proper business identification is required. Call the APRO office at 800/ 204-2776 if you have any questions regarding registration rates.

The RTO Customer Survey See-Saw

by Ed Winn III

As part of the Association’s overall strategic plan, two telephone surveys of consumers were commissioned this spring. The Trenholm group polled non-RTO customers to measure the industry’s overall image. The Beemer group polled existing RTO customers to measure their satisfaction levels with the rental business. These surveys were both follow-ups to previous surveys conducted at the behest of the APRO board of directors. The first Trenholm survey was done in 1997 and the latest was an effort to determine whether the industry’s public relations efforts are paying off over time.

These image surveys, measuring non-customer opinions of the RTO concept and industry are telephone surveys followed by a series of focus groups in selected cities. As of this writing, the focus groups have not yet finished and reported their findings. When the focus groups’ results are in, rental dealers will have a more complete understanding of how non-customers feel about the business and perhaps why they do not or will not rent. The industry has spent some money on public relations over the past seven years, although not a lot. The hope has been that these public relations efforts would improve the industry’s image and allow more customers to feel good about doing business in an RTO store.

The Association’s annual statistical surveys of rental companies have shown the RTO customer base to have been stagnant over the past several years and the Trenholm survey, while showing some improved perceptions of RTO in certain areas, mirrored this stagnation in overall interest in RTO among non-customers. Likewise with the Beemer surveys. The Beemer customer satisfaction survey was first conducted in 1994 and again in 1999. Rental dealers are hoping that their customers feel better about the RTO business over time and that customer relations across the industry are improving.

By asking rental customers directly how they feel about various aspects of the business, rental dealers can better gauge where they are succeeding and where work still needs to be done. Both of these survey companies are experienced and well respected in their fields. Beemer conducts 80 percent of consumer surveys for furniture retailers and 40 percent of consumer surveys for electronics retailers. As a result, Beemer can often provide useful insight into the world of RTO by comparing RTO customer opinions to those found among retail customers.

EXISTING CUSTOMERS

Rental dealers would like to hope that, over the past 10 years, rental customers understand the RTO concept better, use it more often and are more satisfied with the RTO experience. While some of those hopes have been realized, others have not. For example, in 1994, one-third of RTO customers reported that they could have bought the item they rented. In 1999, that percentage fell to 20 percent and, in 2004, it fell further still to 16 percent. The implication is that increasing numbers of RTO customers are being driven into RTO stores instead of being attracted to them by high quality products, good pricing, attractive showrooms, friendly employees, superior service, etc.

To be sure, this finding does not so much reflect what is happening between rental stores and their customers as it reflects the state of the economy overall. It may mean that mid- and low-income consumers are feeling less and less secure about their economic circumstances. It is not true, of course, that RTO customers have fewer choices in the marketplace. If anything, there are more choices for them today than 10 years ago. eBay, for example, and hundreds of similar local Web sites, which did not exist in 1994, make millions of new and used products available every day attracting significant numbers of bargain-hunting consumers.

However, RTO customers, especially first-timers who are feeling economic pressure, may be more sensitive to how they are treated in rental stores. Add to that the constant pressure on rental employees to grow revenues and hold the line on card closes and the survey results may be understandable, if disappointing. Beemer attributes some consumer attitudes in 2004 to 9/11. There has been less shopping, overall, since 9/11 and the shopping radius around stores has decreased 20 percent since the terrorists struck in New York.

In the rental industry, the percentage of existing and former customers who had rented only once remained steady at 50 percent. The percentage of one-time rental customers who were unhappy with their RTO experience has increased steadily from 25 percent in 1994 to 33 percent in 1999 to 40 percent in 2004. As difficult and as expensive as it is to get new customers in the door, it is disappointing that the industry is not doing a better job satisfying these first-timers. Retailers shoot for a 10 percent dissatisfaction rate with their first time customers  With rental customer intentions to own running as high as 90 percent and with keep rates consistently 40 percent or lower, those two numbers mean that as many as one-half of RTO customers are having their expectations disappointed regardless of how well they may be treated by store employees.

This disappointment of expectations has been an intractable problem in the industry since it began and only lately have rental companies begun to develop innovative programs to address the issue. A number of companies have followed RentWay’s lead and are offering lifetime reinstatement, so that a customer who stays within the system does not have to leave with nothing to show for all the rent paid. Similarly, APRO President Lyn Leach has developed his “Good News” program in his Midwest stores to achieve the same result. As competition forces more rental companies to speak to the issue of rental customer satisfaction, one hopes that positive results will begin showing up in customer surveys. Good news for rental dealers is that in the Beemer survey, only 10 percent of customers felt pressured by store employees to rent something.

This compares with a nearly 20 percent rate in retail stores where sales people are most often paid on a commission basis. However, the percentage of RTO customers who felt that rental employees treated them with disrespect increased from 11 percent in 1994 and 1999 to 24 percent in 2004. This means that while RTO customers, generally, do not feel pressured at the front end of the transaction, once they are on the books, too many do not like how they are being treated. This compares with 10 percent of retail customers who feel this way. As for the reputation of the rental company with whom the customer is doing business, the trend is moving in the wrong direction.

In 1994, 93 percent of customers felt the reputation of the rental store was good. That percentage fell to 88 percent in 1999 and fell further to 82 percent in 2004. The number of customers who reported that they understood the transaction held steady at 90 percent. When asked whether they thought RTO pricing was fair and reasonable, one-third responded negatively. This compares with 10 percent of retail customers. This finding means that the industry is still not explaining the benefits and features of RTO as well as it might. If company owners were closing every deal in their stores, one might expect this percentage to be lower, because most owners do understand, in the most profound sense, the business that they are in and can explain its value to anyone.

Not all rental employees share that depth of understanding, yet they are the ones selling the deal to customers— imperfectly, it seems, from the survey results. According to Beemer, at least one-half of marketing comes from store appearance. While there was no question on the survey aimed precisely at what customers think of the appearance of the rental store where they shop, Beemer asked rental dealers to reflect on the question. Specifically, he invited dealers to ask themselves how their stores looked to their customers. How inviting are the stores if the windows are barred and dirty and the interior looks decidedly unrefurbished? If the rental store premises look like a last-resort kind of place, small wonder if customers coming in to do business feel that way.

If rental dealers are making a bad impression with store appearance, Beemer argues that all those negatives are transferring over to the rest of the RTO experience and showing up in the survey results. NON-CUSTOMERS What about non-customers? How do they feel about RTO? To explore this issue, Trenholm Research polled 400 people who had never rented or who were not currently renting and whose age, economic status and other factors generally paralleled those of RTO customers. Sixteen percent of those surveyed had rented in the past.

A full two-thirds of those polled had never considered RTO as a way of acquiring goods. The top-of-mind image of RTO was negative for 42 percent of those surveyed versus only 9 percent who had a positive view of the industry. More than one-half of those surveyed got their impression of RTO from television. Compared to 1997, overall negative impressions of the industry among non-RTO customers fell from 64 percent to 55 percent. The percentage of non-RTO customers who thought that RTO prices were fair and reasonable rose from 42 percent to 51 percent. The percentage that thought that RTO stores would not hassle customers if they were late with payments rose from 36 percent to 44 percent.

The percentage of customers who saw a positive in RTO from being able to swap out merchandise rose from 32 percent to 49 percent. Despite these gains in positive impressions of certain aspects of the business, overall interest in entering into an RTO transaction among non-customers fell from 41 percent in 1997 to 24 percent in 2004. As with nearly all such surveys, there is both good and bad news for rental dealers. It is certainly not the case that dealers can light up cigars, lie back in their hammocks and congratulate themselves on jobs well done.

There is, in fact, much work to be done, both with the current customer base to increase the likelihood of repeat business and among non-customers to make the notion of the business more palatable to them. The news from the surveys is not startling, but should serve as a prod to ambitious dealers around the country to improve marketing, store appearance, in-store merchandising and operations. Also, dealers must work to make sure that in five years there are more positive up-ticks in the areas surveyed. It is no surprise that the industry still has image issues. The surveys bear this out. Improving the industry one store at a time is the best and perhaps, finally, the only way to improve the industry’s image. Copies of the new surveys are available to APRO members through the home office.

Ed Winn III is APRO’s general counsel. His e-mail address is edwinn@e-bylaw.com

Over the Top: A Tawdry Tale of Collections Gone Awry

by Ed Winn III

RTO can be a tough, gritty business. Everybody in it knows that. It’s not like that every day, of course. Some days are as peaceful and serene as you please. And then some days, the clouds gather and it’s just one rotten thing after another—enough to test any man or woman to the limit. This is the story of one of those days. It started out easy enough. A customer came to the store late last July and rented a sofa, loveseat and dinette. It was all new stuff. It was a good account for the store at $175 a month. She paid a month and a few days and wasn’t due until September 3. She got paid on the first.

Everybody in the store was feeling good about adding some BOR in the dead of summer. The delivery went smoothly. It wasn’t a great apartment, but the delivery guys had seen far worse. There was a yard full of kids, mostly hers, it looked like, and they were happy enough that Mom was getting herself some new furniture. The trouble started pretty quickly, though, like it often does. She never paid in September—a first payment default. Who knew? All those good feelings from such a short time ago turned to sawdust. It was mid- September before anybody could get her on the phone.

She had a story—lost job, family emergency. She pleaded for a little time, a couple of weeks. She made a commitment to come in and get caught up, but then she broke it. By the end of the month, everybody sort of knew that the account was no good and that the stuff would be coming back. Oh well. Welcome to the rental business. That’s a familiar enough story. But it got worse—a lot worse. The store guys kept calling trying to get the furniture back. She kept making excuses and hanging up on them. The calls coarsened on both ends of the line.

She said they were harassing her. They said they needed to pick up their stuff. Pick-ups were scheduled—one time, two times, three times. No one ever came to the door. It became obvious to all concerned that she knew the system and was working it. They should have kicked the file upstairs right then, but they just couldn’t. There was pride at play and honor. She was alternately rude and then so smug that she got under their skin with all of her pious talk about being religious and wanting to do the right thing. They were all lies. It should have made them laugh after a while, but it didn’t. It went the other way and infuriated them. Getting the furniture back became a quest for these two guys. They couldn’t let it go.

Calls continued going back and forth during October and November. People started calling one another names. Threats were made to cut off the power to the apartment on the one side and to call the police on the other. They didn’t talk to her every time. Sometimes they talked to the kids about their mother. Sometimes they talked to her friends who were visiting, and not in a kindly way, it seems. A man got involved on her side—a husband, maybe? He told them that he had been to prison and that he wasn’t afraid to go back. He told them that he was from the city and that he knew people who would kill the rental guys and everybody they loved if they ever called her again. Now suddenly, manhood and primal fear were in the mix.

More than once she told them outright that she was stealing the furniture. “I’m going to steal your stuff. That’s what I do. You’re going to lose your job and I’m going to Hell,” she said. There was a confrontation on the front porch in late November. Two delivery guys who knew nothing of the work and emotions underlying the account went out to make a pick-up, because that’s what the work order said to do. A man came to the door and wanted to know, “What the [deleted expletive] the delivery guys were doing there?” That’s not the best way to start a pick-up, but undaunted, the delivery guys explained their mission. “She’s not home and you ain’t getting [deleted expletive]!” the man said menacingly, and got in their faces from his porch.

The delivery guys, not being in on the ongoing verbal gun battle, left with a cacophony of threats from the man, including more death threats aimed at the guys back in the store working the account. Hearing the latest news and seeing the cause as completely lost, one of the guys decided to let off a little steam. Not content with verbal jousting with the woman on the phone, he started leaving messages on her answering machine. They were ugly. They were obscene, these messages, and now they were on tape. Even for hardened rental guys, seeing the transcript of these messages felt like looking at the Abu Ghraib photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq. They were that bad—much too filthy to print here.

This was customer abuse and it wasn’t a close question. With the tapes in hand, she quickly made arrangements to give the furniture back in early January. She wanted clean hands. Shortly thereafter, she played her tapes for an office full of lawyers. The demand letter to the home office came a few days later, exhaustively listing the company’s sins, ignoring the customer’s altogether, and demanding $100,000 in exchange for a quick and confidential settlement. “Mind you we expect that a…jury would award a much larger amount when they hear the tapes of your employee’s messages to [our client],” the demand letter said. The lawyers attached a copy of the lawsuit they were prepared to file, which included allegations of Intentional Infliction of Mental Distress, Defamation, Negligence, Negligent Infliction of Emotion Distress, Negligent Hiring, Training, Supervision and Retention.

Some of the claims were just hers; others belonged to her and her kids. The suit claimed that she had begun seeing a doctor and had to miss work because of the stress caused by the company’s harassment. The company sent the letter to its insurance company seeking coverage under its Commercial General Liability policy. The insurance company first said that it wouldn’t defend the claim and then said that it would defend the claim after all, under its reservation of rights clause. In the meantime, the company hired local defense counsel because it had no choice and began investigating the claims. It didn’t take long to start learning about her. She was, in fact, a thief and had demonstrated her considerable skills in working over several other rental companies. She had a big screen television, a stereo, a computer and a sofa/loveseat set from other rental companies who had written her stuff off. She had lately stiffed a payday loan company not very far away. And the investigation into her past is not over.

The employees, who had been around for a while and had helped open the store in the new market and who had performed adequately until this, were let go. You can’t have rental store employees letting off steam on customers’ answering machines no matter the provocation. The plaintiffs’ lawyers have lately dropped the settlement demand to $25,000 “and not a penny less.”

Maybe they have learned something about their client. The insurance company, when it weighs the costs of defense, will probably write a check. There may be a bit more wrangling to get the settlement down a bit, but a bad person is going to get more money that she deserves. The rental company has already suffered a black eye and some loss of morale because a couple of employees got carried away with a bad account, broke company rules, and by their own admission, left “rude/unprofessional messages” on a customer’s answering machine. The company will survive. Life will go on. But nobody on the rental side of things is feeling all that good right now. It can be a cruel business sometimes.

Sometimes the bad guys make out like, well, bandits. The lesson from this sad tale once again is that rental store employees cannot afford to retaliate—ever— against customers, even when they are baited to do so. Especially when they are baited. This company, which trains employees pretty well overall, is going to pay more for insurance—if it can get insurance in the future—because employees were egged on and succumbed to the temptation. Don’t let it happen in your store. It costs too much and, if you were to ask the store guys in this story, they would tell you that it didn’t feel that good.

Ed Winn III is APRO’s general counsel.

Riding Herd on Rent City: An APROfile of Robert Briley

by Kristen Card

It’s not that Robert Briley is proud of his company’s new digs, but following a few minutes of conversation about Abilene-based Rent City’s new corporate headquarters, one wonders whether he didn’t pass out a few cigars the day they moved in. “It’s stunning,” said APRO General Counsel Ed Winn III after a recent visit. Briley clearly believes a nice workplace encourages longer tenure and happier and more productive teammates. From the double leaded-glass doors etched with Texas stars to the solid wood conference table with a Texas-star design ironwork base, Rent City’s new office reflects Briley’s pride in his company and its image, as well as in his home state. The entire facility is Texas-themed; you name the icon and they’ve got it: buffalos, longhorns, cattle drives, horseshoes and Indians. Briley describes it as “almost like a mini- Capitol.” “It’s really first-class, from top to bottom,” he says. “And that’s what our industry needs to be—first-class, through and through.”

PUTTING THE BEST FOOT FORWARD

Briley, 52, is serious about that first-class image— for his industry, for his company and for himself. He reiterates its importance frequently and stresses that he’s not just talking the talk; he strives to live it, day in and day out. Briley grew up in Abilene, raised with three sisters by a diesel mechanic stepfather and housewife mother. He helped pay his way through Lubbock’s Texas Tech University by working at Fields’ University Shop, a men’s clothing store located across from campus. In 1974, he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree and the intention of going to law school.

But the store’s owner, in his mid-80s, was planning to retire the following year and asked Briley to stay and manage the shop until its closing. Briley obliged and used the additional time in Lubbock to take more business classes, following the graduate school curriculum. He realized his interests lay in business and abandoned his law school plans. Once Fields’ closed, Briley returned home to Abilene, wed his college sweetheart, Lou Neely, and accepted a position with Western Marketing, a petroleum marketing company owned by the Wright family that ran a string of convenience stores and truck stops.

President Bill Wright’s entrepreneurial spirit inspired Briley to new heights. Beginning as the assistant restaurant manager of a truck stop, Briley worked under the command of the company’s vice president of operations, Jim Naler. Naler was a former wing commander from Abilene’s Dyess Air Force Base and became a life-changing influence on a rather cocky, still maturing Briley. “The timing of that job was perfect for me,” says Briley. “Here I was, young and prideful—I didn’t want to be wrong. Naler taught me that I needed to be responsible for my actions, not give excuses.

It was just cut and dried. We had stand-up briefings every Tuesday morning where you had to stand up at the front and present your results. Then you had to talk about what you were going to do to solve your problems. Excuses weren’t acceptable, but ways to solve the problem were. He gave us a serious dose of discipline.” One of Naler’s many systems was “shuffling the deck” annually—giving everybody within the company a new assignment every year. Briley rose quickly through the ranks, from his original job, to manager of a convenience store to market manager over all convenience stores, to Naler’s personal administrative assistant. “One day toward the end of that year, he and I were talking about our truck stop outside of Abilene,” says Briley, “and he says, ‘What do you think about that truck stop? It should be making more money, don’t you think?’ And I say, ‘Well, all I know is, if I were in charge and somebody wasn’t making a minimum of $30,000 a month there, I’d fire ’em.’

“Well, of course when they did the assignments for the next year, I was the general manager of the Abilene truck stop. It had been making only about $8,000 to $10,000 a month and the first month I was there, I made something like $29,500. I came in to go over my numbers and was real proud of myself. Naler looked at the sheet and I still remember him peering over his glasses at me and saying, ‘I see you didn’t hit your numbers.’ That’s the kind of guy he was.” The following year, Briley was the division manager of all truck stops and then was named to be sales manager of the company in 1981—but he had already decided it was time to move on. A banker friend and tennis partner, Brad Stephens, had brought a new opportunity to Briley’s attention: the owner of a local Curtis Mathes Home Entertainment Center franchise was searching for a buyer.

“I had about $2,000 in a savings account and Brad had about $5,000,” says Briley. “This guy wanted $550,000. But Brad knew where to get the money. We went to Mercantile Bank up in Dallas and they loaned us the money.” The pair had no collateral. They signed a loan at 23.5 percent interest. Luckily—or perhaps miraculously—the deal worked out for Briley and Stephens. “I learned what it meant to be in the right place at the right time,” says Briley. “There was a boom in the electronics industry. Televisions were going crazy; we put in movies, which had just begun being rented.

We were about 75 percent retail sales, with the remainder in rental movies and TVs. We were very successful; we paid off our bank debt within about four years.” With Briley in charge, the booming business grew to seven West Texas stores. Then, in 1986, the oil bust hit. They consolidated and survived. But by 1990, Curtis Mathes had filed Chapter 11, and Stephens had discovered a corporate CFO position he wanted to pursue. So Briley bought his partner out and decided to go exclusively with rental. Rent City was christened.

ROBERT’S ‘RULES’

Today, the Rent City realm has steadily grown from three stores to a stable of 15 through a methodical series of sales and acquisitions. Located throughout West and Central Texas, Rent City features a selection of mid- to high-range furniture, electronics, appliances and computers. “We’d like to continue to grow,” says Briley. “I don’t have a set number, but on the APRO Statistical Survey, it reflects that the most profitable number of stores is in the 11 to 20 range. So if we got into the 20 range, then I think that would be good.” Not surprisingly, what Briley believes sets his company apart from his competition is, in a word, image. “All of our stores are extremely nice,” says Briley. “When you go into most rental stores, you have an image that it’s used, it’s plain.

We don’t do that. We have nicer carpeting—we use bright, upbeat colors like red and yellow—and we use a lot of decorating tactics to make our stores more inviting. Your store is your advertising. We want our stores to be more inviting.” At Rent City, anything less is not an option. Delve further into the day-to-day operations of the company and you find Briley has established some definite “Rules of Rent City”—hard and fast policies, personally enforced by the boss himself.

RULE NO. 1: Image is (almost) everything. “My No. 1 job is the image of the company,” says Briley. “So I’m the one who inspects the stores. I ask them, ‘When you come by the corporate office, how does it look?’ and they always say ‘perfect’—they never say ‘good,’ they say ‘perfect.’ And I say, ‘If I’m walking the walk and that’s what I want at the office, then that’s what I want at your store, too.’”

RULE NO. 2: Orderliness is next to effectiveness. “For example,” says Briley, “at our office, you can’t leave any paper on your desk when you go home at night. If we need five more filing cabinets, fine—that’s not the point. What I want is when people come in our door, they think we’re a professional organization that’s organized and in control.” “Orderliness creates confidence and the image that we’re successful. We may not be successful, but we sure look like we know what we’re doing. And if you look like you know what you’re doing, then that goes a long way with your customer. They think, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of this.’”

RULE NO. 3: Spare the money and spoil the image. “The way something looks is the most important thing to me,” says Briley. “If I have to choose between what it costs and how it looks, it will always be how it looks. Always. Which means I may not be wealthy, but I’m going to like where I’m living, how our office and stores look and the quality of the merchandise we’re selling. The real bottom line is, people won’t be disappointed when they go into our stores.”

RULE NO. 4: It’s now or now! “I’m a ‘right now’ kind of guy,” says Briley. “When I want something done, I want it done right now. When I walk into our stores, immediately my employees come up with a pad. I tell them what I want changed or cleaned or moved or fixed and I want it done. I want it done right now.” Sound a little like a, um, military officer? Briley concurs. “I think part of it is just who I am,” he says. “Since I was a child, my mother stressed cleanliness and appearance. But I also had it beat into me by Naler.” Naler wasn’t all push-ups and brass tacks, though. Briley also learned some vital lessons from him about the people you work with and how to treat them. “I think the most important thing he taught me is to work with people who you care about and with people who care about you,” says Briley. “He cared about me as a person.

Now, I didn’t like him all the time because he pushed me beyond my comfort zone. But looking back, my favorite teachers weren’t the easiest ones; they were the ones who pushed me the hardest and taught me the most.” Today, that’s what Briley endeavors to be for the staff he’s deemed his “teammates”—a caring, yet disciplined, coach. “Our people make the difference,” says Briley. “Craig’s [Shewmake, Rent City’s chief financial officer] been with us for more than 20 years. Terry [Bilbrey, the company’s operations manager] started with us in 1985. Tracy Martin has been with us for five years as our office manager. Scott Lunsford, our district manager, has been here for three years and Mandy Horton has been doing our accounts payable for over two years.

These key people, along with our great store managers and other teammates, are what have made Rent City successful. “A first-class image is important to me,” says Briley. “But it’s the people who make the difference. We’ve had stores that were doing terrible and we change the people and they do great. It’s just that simple.” Briley says Rent City has actively adopted the philosophy of hiring for attitude and willingness to learn, followed up with intensive training. The company combines face-to-face training at the Abilene office using in-house training manuals along with Internet based training offered through the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations. “There’s more than one way to do things,” says Briley.

“But we call our training The Right Way, because it is the right way—for us.” For Briley, a basic element of doing it the right way is developing relationships not only with customers and teammates, but also beyond company borders. Briley has been an APRO member since 1989, is currently serving his fifth year as a board member and was APRO’s 2002–03 treasurer. Additionally, he’s extremely involved in the Texas Association of Rental Agencies, where he served as a member of the executive committee for the past decade. “In 1983, I was named the Curtis Mathes franchisee of the year,” says Briley. “I liked that, but it was less about the award and more about serving the industry. It’s important to me that I serve our industry. During my tenures at APRO and at TARA, we’ve improved those associations. And I’ve developed some rewarding professional relationships to show for it, too. I’m a big relationship guy.”

FAMILY FIRST

Being a stickler for control and a ‘big relationship guy’ at the same time might seem a little incongruous to some. But it’s easy to understand once you know about Briley’s life apart from work. Briley and his wife, Lou, are dedicated to their family. Lou’s main focus is caring for their son Zach. “She’s basically a private duty nurse,” says Briley. Briley’s 26-year-old son, Zach, was born with spinabifida and a connected complication known as hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. Zach had a stroke at the age of two and has undergone a total of 42 surgeries, eight of them within the past year.

Despite being paralyzed from the waist down and requiring medical attention every three hours, Zach enjoys a relatively active social life. When he’s not attending high school and college sporting events all over Abilene, Zach works at the new office with his dad, answering telephones. “Zach has had a tremendous influence on Abilene,” says Briley. “I mean, everybody in Abilene knows Zach, y’know? It’s been good for Abilene and it’s been good for us. He’s become a real part of the community. “Family is very important to me,” says Briley. “Spending time with Zach doing what’s important to him…I’m not trying to be dramatic, it’s just that all of our focus has been on him for the past 26 years. It’s about spending time with him.”

Briley’s younger son, Parker, is an attention-getter in his own right. At 23, he recently graduated with honors from Texas A&M University with a finance degree, where he was also the co-captain of the golf team, having competed nationally in golf (tennis, too) for years. Parker’s wife, Natalie, is a junior at Texas A&M and excels scholastically. Additionally, Parker and Natalie have provided Briley and Lou with another way to spend their spare time—being grandparents to three-year-old Preston. STYLE AND SUBSTANCE For all his rule making, Briley is decidedly compassionate.

He’s taught Sunday school to preteens for the past 15 years—“I probably enjoy that hour and- a-half better than any other time,” he says—and having been faced with so many health-related issues within his own family, is watching over the well-being of his company teammates as well. The new corporate office, originally a physical therapy facility, will house a fully equipped workout area for the Rent City staff, showers included.

“Their health is important and we’re not getting any younger,” says Briley. It’s clear Briley cares about the people he works with and he cares about the image of the company. And those two most closely connect at Rent City’s swanky new Texified headquarters, which Briley will proudly tell you were produced via a thoroughly collaborative process. “Designing this office was a team effort,” says Briley. “Everybody contributed different things to the way the office ended up. And that’s the way our company is. Around here, we all work together. My job is different from theirs, but I’m still accountable to them. We don’t have any one person who’s more important than the others. Everybody contributes in different ways.”

Kristin Card is an independent business writer in Austin, TX.