Table of Contents
At Waterford Event Rentals, the test for the warehouse is whether somebody who’d never set foot inside could walk in and pull the right linen off the rack. Owner Alyse Conyers started out with chair covers and her own washer and dryer. Today, on the floor of her team’s Chesapeake, Virginia, warehouse, the answer to “where is it?” is written on a label.
If the counts in your event rental warehouse still live in one person’s head, this tour is for you. It follows a Waterford order from the linen aisles to the truck and back to check-in, with the habit worth copying at each stop.
Key Takeaways:
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An event rental warehouse can be labeled so a stranger could pull an order.
Waterford Event Rentals keeps its most-used linens on the bottom shelf, one fabric per aisle, sizes small to large, with a label above every section.
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A stapled laundry bag is a linen count your rental team can trust.
Waterford writes each confirmed laundry count on the bag in permanent marker and staples it shut. An open bag hasn’t been confirmed.
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Z racks labeled by day and route save delivery drivers a search.
Waterford’s going-out zone marks every rack with its delivery day and route, and stages napkins by the day they go out.
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Check-in decides what an event rental business can quote next.
Waterford checks every item back in and sorts problems into set-asides in Goodshuffle Pro. Its sales team sees what’s held before quoting it.
Event Rental Linen, Labeled by Aisle
Waterford Event Rentals organizes its linen rental warehouse so a new delivery driver could find the right piece without asking. The house colors go out the most. They sit where they’re easiest to pull.
- Bottom shelf: House colors like poly black, white and ivory.
- Aisles: One fabric per aisle, such as velvet or matte satin.
- Order: Sizes run from smallest to largest.
- Labels: One above each section, naming what’s there.
Every tablecloth on the rack is bagged and tied, and any slight dye-lot change is marked. Across the aisle, the napkin wall is sorted by color family. Wood chargers and fringe place mats wait in milk crates, bagged in the same quantity every time so they’re quick to pull.
A Stapled Bag Is a Trusted Rental Count
Waterford no longer washes its own linens. Laundry is a huge expense. The team counts everything the outside laundry sends back against what it charges.
Once a count is confirmed, it goes on the bag in permanent marker and the bag gets stapled shut. Anyone pulling an order can trust the number on a stapled bag. An open bag means the count isn’t confirmed yet. Without that mark, every pull starts with a recount, and only the person who counted last knows which bags to trust.
Rental Linens Get Checked in Good Light
Waterford pulls linens off the shelves onto a Z rack, then brings them out into the light and looks through each one. A pearly white never ships beside a blue white. Napkins get flipped through one by one on the napkin table, even with the count already confirmed.
All of it is planned at a Monday morning meeting, where the team goes through every order going out that week and everything on it.
When dye lots don’t match, sales and marketing manager Kayla Wortham asks the client whether any of those linens are going to the cocktail hour. The team then splits them on the order so mismatched whites don’t end up side by side.
Waterford’s three order checks cover what happens after the pull, from the manager’s check to the truck.
Rental Z Racks Labeled by Day and Route
Finished orders move to the going-out zone, where a small whiteboard on each Z rack names the delivery day and who’s on the route. The team admits there were days when Z racks ended up all over the building, which slowed loading.
Napkins are staged by route day, in areas marked with the days of the week. Each bag carries a sticker with the order name, quantity and napkin.
Waterford also adds laundry bags to every order, which makes pickups easier.
A Signed Rental Contract Hits Dispatch
At Waterford, a signed contract shows up on the dispatcher’s screen before anyone says a word. Operations manager Kari Mustain is also the dispatcher, and her second monitor shows Dispatch in Goodshuffle Pro all day. When something new shows up there, Kari knows a contract just got signed. If it’s a big one, she’s in Kayla’s office before Kayla has finished with it.
“When it has 500 chairs, I am running into her office.”
It used to take a printed invoice and a few phone calls to get an order to the warehouse, and that delay cost the team pulling time.
Rental Check-In Decides What Can Go Out
Waterford checks every item back in, and anything with a problem goes into a set-aside so sales can’t quote it. Rental warehouse coordinator Gracie Evans called check-in arguably the most important step of all.
“We are a rental company, we want our stuff back.”
That means every linen and cushion, and all 500 chairs when 500 went out. Set-asides in Goodshuffle Pro take an item out of availability until it’s resolved, and the team leans on them for every kind of problem. Kayla can see when something is held and leaves it off her quotes.
When Kari bills a client, she can see on the event in Goodshuffle Pro whether everything came back or something is missing, without clicking all the way through the order. Our guide to handling rental damages picks up from there.
A Star Board for Rental Warehouse Crews
Waterford noticed it ran plenty of incentives for sales and few fun ones for the warehouse crew, drivers and event staff. A star awards board went up in the corner of the warehouse.
- Who gives them: Anyone on the team can give a shout-out, and each one is a sticker on the board.
- Prizes: Five shout-outs earn a pick from the prize bin, with new prizes at 10 and 15.
The shout-outs get read out at a staff meeting on the third Monday of every month. Event and delivery staff are hard to catch otherwise. The meeting is mandatory and written into their offer letters. It covers what went wrong, what to celebrate, and the employee of the month.
Start With the Stapler
If you copy one thing from Waterford, make it the stapled bag. It costs a stapler and a marker, and every count after the first becomes a glance.
Our recap of the Waterford roundtable covers the rest of the visit, including how the team decides what earns a spot on the shelf.
FAQs
Waterford Event Rentals puts its most-used house colors, like poly black, white and ivory, on the bottom shelf. Each aisle holds one fabric, sizes run smallest to largest, and a label above each section names what’s there. Napkins sit on a wall sorted by color family.
Count what comes back. Waterford Event Rentals counts every linen returned by its outsourced laundry against what the laundry charges for. Once a count is confirmed, the team writes it on the bag in permanent marker and staples the bag shut. An open bag means the count isn’t confirmed yet.
Check them in good light at the pull. Waterford Event Rentals brings pulled linens out into the light and looks through each one, and flips through napkins too. When dye lots don’t match, sales asks the client what’s going to the cocktail hour. The team keeps those pieces apart on the order.
Check in every item, then sort the problems. Waterford Event Rentals counts back every linen, chair, cushion and flatware set. Anything damaged, dirty, held in a showroom or lost goes into a set-aside in Goodshuffle Pro, where sales can see it’s off the shelf.
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