Shop the competition before its too late!

Pete kicks off Season 3 solo and uses the Trib Group's Store Tour Challenge — launched by newly elected president Mike Tissett — as the jumping-off point for an episode about why every rent-to-own operator should be actively studying what their competition is doing.

The Store Tour Challenge had operators across the country filming walkthroughs of their own stores and posting them on social media. Pete watched them all and came away with five takeaways. First, store placement — the best locations pull traffic from anchors customers already visit regularly: grocery stores, auto parts stores, government buildings, post offices. Second, first impression pieces — what greets a customer the moment they walk in matters enormously. Pete saw stores leading with full living room setups, others with bedding front and center (bedding being one of the top sellers in the industry), and some with high-end washers and dryers right at the entrance. Third, signage and displays — modern letter-on-wall signage without frames, platform risers for recliner displays, Ashley dresser risers that let you stack furniture vertically behind a headboard, and bedroom sets with actual curtain and window displays all caught his eye. He ordered the Ashley risers for his own stores after seeing them. Fourth, company-specific ideas — one store had a dedicated "gold customer" area where loyal or paid-out customers got first pick of select inventory. Another had a proper customer refreshment area, not a forgotten coffee pot but an actual dedicated space for customers to sit and relax whether they were buying anything or not. Fifth, products — watching what competitors are carrying reveals what's actually selling in your market faster than any vendor pitch.

The episode also covers the VersaRent User Conference, their first in seven years, which Pete attended. The platform has expanded significantly — custom branded apps for individual companies, field payment collection, digital rental order intake through tablet or laptop. Pete sees it as a sign of where the whole industry is heading and encourages operators of any size to look at what tools are available and how competitors are using them.

Transcript

Pete Shau 0:07

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the RTO show where we talk rent to own. My name is Pete, and today we're talking about shopping the competition and what you can expect to see when you're walking through the doors of somebody else's establishment. Let me tell you, it can be a straight eye-opener. First things first, coming out of uh season two, going into season three, there were some changes out there in the RTO world. First off, we have a new APRO CEO, Charles Smitherton, started June 1st, 2023. Congratulations to Charles. I think it's a great, great thing that he's able to fill those shoes that Jill left him. And I hope that he does a wonderful, wonderful job at April. We love APRO here. Also, Mike Tissett went from vice president to president of the Trip Group. Congratulations to Mike. And uh, you know, we love him. I call him Nazar. He is uh almost like on the face of everything. But what I wanted to talk to you today when I talk about shopping the competition is probably something that Mike started called the Store Tour Challenge. Now, if you guys have trip connections on your Facebook or on your social media, you guys have seen it. If you do not, try to see those videos because Mike did a great thing. He started off the store tour challenge in Ohio in his stores, actually doing himself, and he does it as a walkthrough of what is in his store, how it's set up, what it looks like, what the idea was, where it's putting at. And let me tell you, amazing idea coming straight out the gate. President of Trib now taking over for Chris Kale Jr., who did a wonderful job. And then Mike comes in, shares a great new idea, and it just catches fire. And it just brought the idea for this episode because you really need to shop your competition. This was a great idea. This was a great way across the United States to kind of open our doors, pull back the veil, and say, hey guys, this is what I'm doing, this is what's worked for me. This is what we use to put our best foot forward. Let me tell you, there were some takeaways. The first thing that I want to say is on this social media competition, you know, the shop to competition is a great idea, but the social media competition starts with the store tour challenge, and the first thing I saw was store placement. So everybody's kind of commenting, and I want to say this was kind of like the blueprint that Mike set down first, but you know, kind of saying why the store is where it's at. And I thought it was a great idea to be around some of the places that your customers are naturally going to be on a regular basis. So some of the eateries that they go to, auto zones, government buildings, post offices where they have to do some of their business at. And these help the customers stay in the parking lot, stay in the area, and focused on what's going on in your business. Let me tell you, there's nothing better than having one of those really big anchor stores on the end or somewhere like that. But when you have like an auto zone, when you have a supermarket that's drawing in the crowds and you can pull off of that, that's great. That's an amazing deal. I don't know how, and I would like to get some feedback from some of you guys as far as like let's say being in the same area as a Target or a Walmart where they do sell items that are very comparable that you could shop for one place to the other. Does it help you? Does it not help you? I know big lots has been coming on the scene in Tampa. Let me tell you, I don't know a friend or foe, but they do have a rent-to-own program. It's starting to really uh kind of shape up in a lot of different areas and a lot of different things that they sell, but you can get approved to do furniture through them as well. So is that hindering or is that making it better? You know, I've heard that where you see a McDonald's, you see a Burger King. Does it help to have the competition right across the street or in your plaza? You guys let me know. The email here at the RTO Show Podcast is Pete at the RTO Show Podcast. Let me know what your thoughts are on that, or come see us on the website, www.therto showpodcast.com. Take a look, and then you can submit through the website and just let me know your feelings on that. I think it's a great idea to have friendly competition, but you also have to remember you got to keep an eye on them. That's the point of this entire podcast right now is to keep your eye on them. And I think Mike did a great job, but store placement was one. And now a word from our sponsor. Unlimited Marketing Solutions is a social media marketing company that can market directly to your specific customer base and provide solid and trackable results. Unlimited Marketing Solutions are also extremely flexible to meet your unique needs and budget and are currently running a promotion for 10% discount off your first six months of marketing. When you mention the code RTO show, that's R T O S H O W when you call them at 352-553-3245. You can also email them at unlimited marketing solutions LLC at gmail.com. Number two on the list of things that I thought was really important to take away from some of these videos. The first impression pieces. When you walk in through the door, what is that the what is your customer going to see first as they look to the left, as they look to the right, as they look forward? You want to set that forward. Now it's a video, and I've always said, and I've always been taught this in the world of rent to own. We have the sights and sounds and smells, right? So the sights is what they see, the sounds is what they hear, and they don't have to be married to one each other. So in other words, you can have TVs up that are running a 4K or 8K signal on loop so that they can see that or something, you know, games playing or whatever, and you have stereos that have the lights on, but you don't necessarily need to have one volume for everything. So your TV's gonna be playing something, and you can have the local stereo playing something else, right? On a station that that kind of goes all over the entire store, right? And then you walk in and everybody's got different things on the front. I've seen as you walk in, some some places have the living room sets right there up front. Wow, bam, nice set. You've got reclining sets, you've got leather sets, you've got a whole package right there, right when you walk in. To the right, you might have brand new bedding. Brand new bedding. That was something that I didn't know that they were doing. I know it sounds crazy. I've been in this industry a long time, and I have seen bedding set up where you have those beddings that are static, that they don't go anywhere. You're set up with your good, better, and best, but I've never seen them right by the doorway. Now, if anybody knows anything about rent-to-owned, bedding is probably one of the number one hot sellers that you have out there. So it makes sense to me to have that, but I did also notice that there were beds right there by the front, your good, better, and best, set up as in a regular, maybe a pillowtop, maybe a memory foam. And they weren't that close to the bedroom section. They were actually on their own. You guys let me know if that's something that you guys like or not. I don't know. I thought it was a little different. I've also seen washer and dryers at the door, and we're not talking about the regular, you know, entry level. We're talking about some nice LGs, Samsung, a lot of bells and whistles right there by the front door when you walk in. And I thought, man, there's so many different ways to set this up. If you guys are a part of a chain and you have different stores in different locations, I wonder, do you guys set them all up the same way or are they set up differently? Do you have it set up? You know, one is in a could be in a rural area, one could be in the city, one could be out, you know, probably a little bit far off in a stretch. And do you set those stores up the same exact way? Do you set them up differently? I'm gonna say I would set up my stores differently. I have seven stores that I watch, I'm a division manager, and I want to say they're all different. When you walk in, it's just a little bit of different everywhere. But you guys should shop the competition and find out what's really going on in your area. How can you be different? How can you stand out? You don't want to do it just like the competition does. But first impression pieces really kind of thought that was pretty amazing. Third piece that I thought really kind of stuck out was the signage and the displays. Now you walk in, right? So you're looking at the location, you see where it is, you see why it's there. You walk in, you see your showroom pieces, your upfront pieces, right? Your first impression pieces, you're looking at, you know, whatever that they have up front. But then I saw some of these stores were just displayed amazingly with the way they have their new signage, the way they set things up. You know, first and foremost, I've seen platforms. Now I haven't really seen platforms that much. And then, of course, Mike goes through some of his stores, and they have platforms. So imagine walking in in a certain area that has maybe an eight-inch riser or a 10-inch riser or whatever the case may be, and there is a display of recliners right there to greet you, where it's the zero gravity recliners that they have by Catnapper or just different, different things. You've got your big guy recliners, your leather, your traditional, your lift chairs, you know, everything that you have set up on this riser. And I thought, man, I I thought risers were dead. Apparently not. And again, because it looked really good. Some of the signage I saw brand new on the wall. I'm going to tell you guys right now, what I saw was a whole lot of signage without the sign. So you got the lettering on the wall, but not like it used to be like these big squares or these big rectangles, and you know, there was writing on the rectangle. You kind of put them over there. These are letters attached directly to the wall. I like a lot of writing on the wall. It looked so good, it looked so modern that it kind of stood out. I was like, that, you know, great ideas. Some of the contrast of the letters with the paint from one to the other really, really, really stood out. I thought that was a great job too. Another I think that I saw in the bedroom sections, and this is something that's standing out. Two things actually, I noticed that certain people were actually putting up curtain and window displays with their bedroom sets. And I thought, wow. I I mean, I'm not saying that it was a groundbreaking thing because I have seen it once or twice. I have not seen it with every single bedroom set. And I thought that was a really great way to display it. Every single bedroom set in some of the stores that were on this store tour challenge actually had curtains and went almost like window setups with each bedroom set. The other thing that I noticed was standing out was these risers from Ashley that I can't remember whose video it was in, but they actually have the dresser standing up above the headboard because of these risers in the back. Now you can buy them, they're not free, but you can buy them from Ashley, and it kind of gives you a better use of your space where you can kind of stack it behind your headboard so that your dresser kind of sits up. If anybody has any questions of what that looks like, please go to Facebook, go to the Trip Group Connections, take a look at some of those videos. You're gonna see exactly what I'm saying. You're gonna say, wow, Pete, that was that I like it. I liked it. We actually ordered some because I saw this, I'm not gonna lie, and I think they look great in our stores. Seeing the curtains up, seeing the risers, those were something that I would have never really thought of, or at least I don't I wouldn't have thought of it as soon as I did, but seeing them on those videos made a difference. I'm gonna tell you guys 100% getting ideas from the competition is not a bad thing. You don't want to steal their ideas, but you want to learn, you want to see, you want to grow. And the way that Mike did it, where he kind of brings everybody together and says, hey, these are the ideas that we're coming up with. We are one team. You know, there's nothing wrong with friendly competition. You always want the customer, you always want to do it better. But I'm not trying to make them, I'm not trying to get them to fail. I'm just trying to do better than they are. I don't I don't wish them wrong. I don't want anything bad to happen to their location or their people. I just want to take care of my customer just a little bit better than they are. I want to grow, I want to be successful. And then opening this up to everybody, great idea. Another thing I noticed, number four, company specific areas and ideas. I actually saw, I'm not gonna say who did this, but I saw in one of the stores, they have a customer area for their gold customers. And when I say gold customers, we're talking about customers that pay out or have paid out or have continually paid on accounts for years. They have really become part of the RTO family of that location of that company, and there's an area in the store just dedicated to them where they can go, I've paid something off. I'm gonna walk right over there to my gold area, and I'm gonna pick something for me. Whatever it is, whether it be a great deal, whether it be a low cost, uh pre-loved item, whatever the case is, they get that first pick. They get to walk in there and go, hey, this is for me because I'm a good customer and they're taking care of me. What a great idea. I thought that was a great idea. Another thing that I saw, and I want to say it was from the same company, but I won't say anything, is like a drink area or like kind of like a snack area, just dedicated to the customers. Not one of those coffee pots that we forgot ages and ages ago that we haven't cleaned, that you know, we forget about, or we kind of stick that Keurig over there because it's a one cup thing and we forget it. No, an actual area dedicated to customers to relax, to open, you know, just to unwind where they want to drink, they don't have to buy anything, they just come in and relax a little bit, kind of take a load off, whatever the case is. Great, great idea. I thought it was wonderful to see that they're taking care of the customers, whether they're doing business at that moment or not, because the truth is when you set something up like that and you're put in their mind that they can come in and relax, take a load off, and still be loved as customers, still be loved, even if they're inactive customers, they're gonna be back. They're gonna be back, and that's a great way to show them that we care about them. I thought it was wonderful. The fifth thing that I noticed was people. Now, I'm of course I'm gonna tell you that there were some absolutely beautiful locations and beautiful stores. Some that, you know, I'm not gonna say any one was worse than the other, but I will say there were some that caught my eye specifically, me as a person for my taste, that looked really good. Some of them are really big. I want to say that, you know, some of the national TV sales and rental stores were absolutely huge. Uh we'll give a shout out to Jay Roberts. Jay, the GM out there, I he was on, you know, we have talked to him before. We took a lot of ideas and put them on the beginning of our show and our podcast in season one. It was great to see Jay out there, but did a great job showing a huge store, beautiful location. I've got to give it to Josh Zinski when he was doing his video. The Clearwater Great Rooms. Oh my god, Clearwater Great Rooms in Florida looked amazing. But talking about Josh, how about this? How about some other names in the business that actually did some videos for the store tour challenge? Just to, you know, just to name a few. Mike did one on his rent-to-own stores in Ohio. You got John Sprayberry, Premier, he did some. You've got Continental, I think Thomas Thomas did some from Continental in Michigan. John Luxick from Magic in Harrisburg, he did some. Great looking store. We got Dial RTO in Guam. Danny Singh actually came and showed his stores, and they had like 20 employees. I thought it was amazingly great to see. I just wonderful location, beautiful view if you ever look out the windows. Donnie Palmer from Trading Post, Tori LaBuck and Faulkner, who also commented on my video. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. She she did her thing out of Wisconsin. Uh Aaron Windsor actually did his directly from National TV Sales and Rental. Chris Kale Jr. did Happy's Home Furnishings in Tampa. Chad Fosdick from Nebraska, Premier from Nebraska. Let me tell you, that is a long ways out there. And I see him at a lot of these get-togethers. So he travels a lot for rent to own. That's somebody who's dedicated to their craft, let me tell you. Joe Fisher from Eagle Rentals, Sandy Fry from Premier, John Cleat Jr. from Cleet. I mean, hey, that's the way it goes, right? I mean, it's a family thing. You got Angelo from Premier, Trent Agin from Rent One. These guys have been in the business a long time. They take a lot of pride in what they do. And to open the veil and open the doors and see how they do it. Let me tell you, it was something spectacular. It was special to see. I can't even begin to say how much I appreciated that. Again, Mike, wonderful idea. Great idea. I'm actually looking for more of those ideas to come forward. I thought it was a great idea. Um, also, and I don't want to say like sixth, but one of the things that I looked around, I wouldn't say number six, but I would say when I was, as I was looking around and everybody was going through, I'm looking at the products. I mean, because of course you're looking at how it's set up, you'll look how it's lit, you'll look like how it's designed. But I'm looking at the products, not just the showroom. And when I see some of those products, I'm telling you what there, guys, you can also learn from your competition what's the big thing that's out there. You don't want to miss out. You really don't want to miss out on anything. And you can always ask your vendors, but the truth is your vendors are there to sell you product. I don't mean that in a bad way. They're just there to sell you product, and they're gonna sell you it, they're gonna do it, they're gonna back it up. But what's really selling in your area? And a good way to find out is number one, asking your customers. And number two, shopping to competition. When you go out there and you find out that there's some really, really big things that are going on and you're not a part of it, that's a hard way to find out, but you'd rather find out that way than never find out at all. It's also different to see some of the stores and how they react to their seasonal changes, what seasons they do have. So here in Florida, when we say seasons, we mean literal seasons, like our fourth quarter season amazing, and I think everybody else has that. But our summertime really hurts us. We have a really downturn in summertime because it gets really hot here. There's a lot of tourism that comes in, it gets really hot, the kids are out of school, and it kind of slows down as far as rent on goes for us. Now, that might change in the winter months for some of the northern stores where we actually have a lot of snowbirds that actually go up north at that point in time and uh, you know, kind of spend their money up there. We also have, when we say seasons, hunting seasons. So I didn't even take into account some of a lot of my stores are city stores and they have, you know, rural locations, and I do have rural locations in Florida, but uh some of the stores they carry a lot of information as far as what season is, what what animal is in season, so that they have the different size freezers that they carry for those animals, different types of heating elements. Now, you guys know in Florida we don't need heaters. We probably have the biggest supply of electronic fireplaces just so that we could turn on the light and liquid and looks good. But we don't need heaters over here, at least probably not at 360 days out of the year. But the different type of heaters that they have in the different areas and what that means to them and how they use it. I mean, I can't rent a snowmobile out here, but is that something up for over there? They got snowblowers. I never thought that I'd ever see a snowblower for rent, but then I said, Man, I'm I'm not in that area. Shop to competition, and you'll see. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, as I go out to these different cities, I'm gonna take a look at these stores. I love seeing these stores. If you ever see me come into the store, please, I will give you a card, be on the show, say hi, shake hands. I want to meet you guys, I want to see what you guys have, and I want to get some great ideas. I think definitely getting out of your state and seeing rent-to-own places as they sit, you couldn't do any better. Now, talking about getting out, what happened recently is Versarent had a training. So you talk about getting out and shopping a competition. Well, we shot Versarent. We were on high touch for a while. We went out, we got to Versarent, and let me tell you, it was like a completely different situation going from a high touch system to the Versarent system. And so they put on this training event May 24th, excuse me, 23rd, 24th, and 25th, almost like a two and a half day event where they had all kinds of classes, they had the Versarent user conference to kind of train and give back and kind of show what they have coming up, how to deal with what they have, and some of the things that they have on their new updates. If you guys know VersaRent updates quite often and you get some new features that happen with that, well, I think the last one they did, and I want to say this, if I'm saying this right, Sal, Dave, John, you guys did a wonderful job. But if I'm saying it wrong, please let me know. But the Versorant User Conference hadn't been held for I think seven years, which means that there's been seven years since the last time that they had their conference. Imagine if you guys know anything about technology, you've got to know that when you're running technology and you go seven years, there's a lot of change. Now I know that they have a great program. They have anybody that you can call, you can call Versarant anytime, they will help you out. But having this class was a lot of there was front end where people like me in the operations department where I'm doing inventories, I'm talking to customers, we're doing uh past dues on the front end. You've got the back end as far as inventories, as far as depreciation, as far as POs, as far as uh setup allowables and ranges of what people can do and what can't they can't do. Listen, it was a wonderful thing to see. It was a wonderful thing to get into. If you don't have that knowledge, you're gonna want to go to the next one. It wasn't a bad thing to do. It was kind of great to sit in those classes and kind of get to learn Versorrent from a whole different standpoint. And then you get to ask the people who are actually doing it right there. Hey, how's this to get done? How is this calculated? What percentage of this, or why is that set up, or why do there limitations on this particular customer? You kind of get to see it all. You gotta get to see it all in the works, especially the back end. There was a whole lot of back information. I'm gonna tell you guys right now. I did not understand, but I thought it was great for a lot of people to understand uh what's going on and how to get there and what they're doing. But talking about shopping and competition, getting back to the VersaRent, so we're looking at there, and now Versarent has gone way out. And let me tell you, their new technology is a place you want to be. Now, I'm not saying that they're the only operating software system that you should use for rent to own. I know that there are a lot of different areas, and a lot of different people use a lot of different things. I can tell you that Buddies right now is using the Versarent system. They actually have like a kind of a branch off system of their own. I know that they got the rights and they're kind of doing their own thing. But down the road, we're talking about you can get an app tailored to your location, tailored to your company. How many people out there have apps on their phone that they use to shop? I'm gonna tell you Amazon is one, offer up is one. You've got all kinds of different apps out there. Why not be on their phone full time? That's something that VersaRent's offering. I thought it was amazing. They can tailor it for your company. Oh my god, that was great. Talking about being able to take payments in the field, being able to take rental orders from Jot Form straight into. The system through the CRM or having them come in and fill it out on a laptop or having them fill out on a tablet. I mean, these are the things that are coming down the pipe. Now, if anybody knows, if you guys are going to been a rent uh rental centers, or I believe some errands are doing it now too, they've actually been doing that for a while. Now, I know that we're a smaller company and some of you other smaller companies probably want to get there. This is a way to do it. I'm not saying go to VersaRen. I'm saying take a look at what's out there, shop your competition and take a look at how they're doing things. Take a look at how they're set up. One of the things that I never thought I'd say is we'd be doing something online all the time. We'd have somebody that would go out there and take payments almost straight from the field, possibly. You know, there's a lot of possibilities that are coming up, and man, rent to owners just changing every day. One of the ways to make sure that you're up to date with everything that's going on is shop to competition, walk around, be friendly, open up yourself. Uh, you know, of course, your proprietary information you keep to yourself, but open yourself up to different ideas, go out to the competition, say hello, shake hands. You're gonna find out that there's a lot of people doing the same thing that you are day in and day out. And uh making a friend across the lines might actually help. And the reason I say that is we have some friends over here in the Tampa Bay area, and we like to share those informations on some customers, or let me rephrase that, some individuals that probably are trying to do something that we don't want them to do, or they're trying to get away with something that they shouldn't. And you know, being able to be open with your competition and with your neighbors can kind of help you guys both eliminate those situations. With that being said, I want you guys to know any questions that you have, you're always welcome to email me at Pete at the RTO ShowPodcast.com. I will try to respond to you immediately. You can go to the website at www.thertoshowpodcast.com. Please go directly to that. You're welcome to buy merchandise. The merchandise is changing. We have a last few of those shirts before we change those up. We've got some amazing interviews coming up, some segments that are coming up. I have just talked to the uh magnificent Paul Mativier on a segment that we're gonna do. You guys are gonna love it. I think that's something going forward that we can really kind of learn together. And this is something that I want to do this season is I want to learn from the guys that are in this business, the different things that we have going on. I will be talking to vendors, I will be talking to owners, and I will be talking to you. I really appreciate what you guys have been doing. I have that you guys have stuck with us through these kind of seasonal changes and a little bit of what's going on with season two, nowadays season three. We really appreciate the business. Go online, see us on social media or on Facebook and the Instagram. We will be posting a lot more this season, but we appreciate everything. And as always, be good to each other. Have a great one, and we'll talk to you later.