DFW Warehouse Tour Recap

A bigger warehouse won’t fix your chaos, but a labeled one will.

Hi y’all,

This week I’m handing the mic to someone special. Melissa Teague spent five years running her own rental company, Simply Chic, before she joined our customer experience team, and she just sat on the panel at our DFW warehouse tour. She came back with takeaways from one seriously well-run warehouse that are worth stealing no matter where you’re at. Take it away, Melissa!

Mallory Mullen

Goodshuffle

Hey everyone,

Thanks for letting me take over this week. I’ve spent plenty of time running my own shop over the years. We ran Simply Chic out of a 101-year-old vintage house, so I learned to make the most of every square foot. And last week, I got to walk through one of the best warehouses I’ve seen.

If you’ve ever stood in your warehouse mid-busy-season thinking “I just need more space,” you’re in good company. We talked about that exact question on the panel, and every one of us gave the same answer: space.

Liz Curlin’s warehouse at Party! Dallas Rentals runs about 47,000 square feet, and she still wants more. Cam Petty of Render Events is on her third warehouse. If your shelves are stacked to the ceiling, you’re not behind. You’re just in the events business.

The things that stuck with me most had nothing to do with square footage, though:

Every inch is maximized and labeled. Things hanging from the ceiling, everything wrapped, every item tagged. Lounge furniture in one section, the popular chairs in another, the custom piece that rents once a year up top. You walk through and just know where everything is.

Their SOPs are posted on the wall. I loved this. A lot of us keep the playbook in our heads and then wonder why the team can’t run without us. If you’ve been meaning to write yours down, here are the SOPs worth starting with. Liz’s crew even keeps a production board for their custom builds, designs and all, so the whole team can picture how the setup and install will look before it goes out the door.

They start the work early. The one thing I’d steal tomorrow: they begin a lot of their cleaning at pickup, before it ever comes back to the warehouse. Less piling up at home base, every single time.

What you can’t replace from a recap like this is the feeling of being in the room. You watch operators trade tips in someone else’s aisles, and you realize the tenting company across the way is exactly who you needed to meet. It all comes back to the same thing we landed on as a panel. A client is a client, whether it’s a baby shower or the CMA Awards, and we’re all just trying to take care of people well.

Ever toured another operator’s warehouse? Join us on one of our upcoming tours!

Until next time,

Melissa Teague

Customer Experience

Goodshuffle