I edited a story for PRO the other day in which a portable sanitation contractor said he occasionally runs an ad in the local newspaper offering to sell off some of his older units. He sells a few restrooms when he’s preparing to update his inventory.
The contractor remarked that people who call about the ad are always surprised to find out they could buy a restroom. They have a perception that a portable restroom is something that can only be owned by a service company. This left the PRO scratching his head, wondering where they got that impression. Maybe it’s because you never see portable restrooms for sale at the local Wal-Mart.
I’ve seen this phenomenon myself. Since I started editing this magazine, I’ve had several conversations with friends and acquaintances for whom it was a revelation to hear they could own a restroom. They could see how this would be handy for their summer cottage, for instance, or to place poolside in their back yards.
OFFER A CHOICE
Some PROs I’ve talked to have determined there are two ways to make money with single restroom placements. Especially if they’re trying to unload some older units, they’ve decided to let the customer make the choice: Lease a unit by the month or buy a unit and pay for regular service. I don’t know how much of a financial difference the choice makes, ultimately, for either the customer or the PRO. The bill may be similar in the long run, but I think it’s an interesting idea to give the customer a choice.
Why?
Because consumers prefer to buy many things rather than rent them, even if renting makes more sense. Whether it’s the roof over our heads or a specialized home improvement tool, Americans seem to prefer to buy rather than rent. I’ll give you an example:
Every few years I notice that my lawn is encroaching on the sidewalk, and in order to keep pace with my finicky neighbors, I need to cut a clean edge in the sod. So I go to the equipment rental area at my local hardware store, give them $24 and borrow a gas edger for a few hours. It works for me.
But, chewing the fat with the hardware store guy, I noted that several rental edgers are always sitting in the corner, cleaned up and ready to go. He explained that many people prefer to buy a $300 edger that they will use once or twice a year rather than rent one for $24. It doesn’t make any sense, he said, to buy, store and maintain the edger, but people still do it.
Not everyone, I tell him as I leave with the edger. And he agrees. But as a good businessman, he knows that he’ll get more business by offering both options: the $300 edger on the sales floor and the $24 edger on the rental floor.
BUYING MIGHT MAKE SENSE
As the summer comes to a close, I am pondering a situation where I might consider buying a portable restroom rather than renting one.
My family owns a cottage on a small lake in northern Wisconsin. Occasionally, maybe a few times a summer, visitors take a swim on the nice sandy beach. Big groups of excited kids have a tendency to track sand into the house on the way to the bathroom. The dirt, as well as the stress on our septic system, makes me think that a portable restroom would be a handy thing to have on the property.
But do I want to lease one by the month when usage would be so infrequent? No, in this case, I think buying — and getting one or two services a year — might be a practical answer.
Being involved in this industry, I realize I might be able to pick up a no-frills used restroom for a couple hundred bucks. But I’m one in 100,000 cabin owners who have access to that information. I can’t help but think many homeowners — especially in resort areas or families with septic systems that get a lot of company — would welcome the choice to own their own portable restroom.
GET THE WORD OUT
But how do you reach potential buyers? An easy idea would be to make purchasing an option whenever you rent a single unit. If a mom calls and says she’s having a big poolside party on the weekend and would like a restroom, ask her if she has parties often, or if overuse of the toilets in the house is an occasional concern. Then tell her she can buy a unit and place it next to the cabana, then call you for service whenever she wants, or you could put her on, for example, a quarterly service schedule.
If you sell her the unit, she’s more likely to keep calling you back whenever she needs service. She will be hesitant to call another service company, thinking other companies wouldn’t want to service units they didn’t lease. If your territory has aggressive competitors who often lower prices to capture more business, it would be good to be locked in with customers who bought units from you and feel extra loyalty.
Advertising is another obvious route to reach buyers. If you’re in a resort area, target the local newspapers, post ads on grocery store bulletin boards, consider local tourism publications. If you work in a rural to suburban area, target farming publications or local shopper newspapers.
If you opt to sell a unit, make sure you get an adequate return. Even if the unit’s seen better days, you shouldn’t give it away. Give some thought to how much you should charge for a used unit, making sure the sale helps offset the cost of the new unit that replaces it in your inventory. If you decide to sell a new or newer unit on occasion, only do it if you’re going to turn a decent profit or obtain a profitable service agreement along with the sale.
Especially in a tougher economy, business owners who offer more choices to consumers will capture a greater share of the limited revenue opportunities. Like my local hardware store owner with the lawn edgers, you might benefit from offering customers the option of leasing or buying a restroom.
A SIGN OF THE TIMES
When I saw a sign recently in a vault toilet at a county park campground, I had a good chuckle. From the scary tales several of you have told me about pumping campground toilets, I had to wonder if a polite sign like this would stop users from dropping any manner of foreign object into the pit.
When I’ve asked PROs about the job they dread most, pumping park vault toilets is often at the top of the list. There’s nothing like wedging a bottle or a heavily waterlogged diaper halfway up the vacuum hose to turn a good day to bad. I have no personal experience to prove it, but I’ll take your word for it.
When I saw this sign hanging over the toilet, I paused a moment in my vacation camping trip to pay tribute to the unlucky, unnamed PRO who had this remote park on his pumping route.
