Party rental: what to stock for a season

Rental stock is bought for a season of weekends, not for one room. The expensive mistakes point in opposite directions: too many colours and no workhorse size by June, or pallets of one size that turn out to be the wrong drop in October.

Start with the calendar, then the shelf

Map the season by month before ordering. Rental calendars usually run on three blocks: spring graduation, summer weddings and outdoor parties, and the holiday run from late October through New Year. Each block books different rooms and different drops.

Weddings and holiday parties want a full drop and a matched look, so they consume cloths in set sizes: 84 in rounds, and 54 × 108 in for rectangular tables. Corporate lunches, craft tables and back-of-house surfaces need a cover that reaches the floor edge and nothing more. That is where a roll earns its shelf space, because the size is decided on site.

Size the film by peak weekend, not by average

Average weekends do not run you out of stock; the two or three peak weekends do. Take the table count of your busiest weekend, multiply by 100 in per 54 × 108 in cover, then add 10 percent for tables added on the day.

Rolls are 54 in wide in 100, 200 and 300 ft lengths, each with a built-in cutter box, so there are only three quantities to plan against: 12, 24 and 36 covers.

Tables on the peak weekend	Film needed	Roll mix to hold	Spare after the run
12	1,200 in / 100 ft	one 100 ft	0 covers
24	2,400 in / 200 ft	one 200 ft	0 covers
36	3,600 in / 300 ft	one 300 ft	0 covers
60	6,000 in / 500 ft	300 ft + 200 ft + 100 ft	about 6 covers

Matching a total exactly leaves nothing for a miscut, so hold the next size up when a count lands within 10 percent of one.

Film carries the overflow, cloths carry the look

Do not stock every size as a finished cloth. One 54 in roll cuts 78 in for a 4 ft table, 96 in for a 6 ft table and 120 in for an 8 ft table. The client's odd 7 ft table stops being a special order.

Put the arithmetic on the wall: end drop = (108 − table length) ÷ 2, side drop = (54 − table width) ÷ 2. On an 8 ft (96 in) table a 54 × 108 in cloth leaves 6 in at each end and 12 in at each side; on a 6 ft table the end drop is 18 in. Below 8 in the cover reads as a runner.

Round tables are separate stock. An 84 in cover gives a 12 in drop on a 60 in table and 6 in on a 72 in table. Film does not span a round table, so count rounds as pieces, never as feet.

Colour: fewer shades, ordered together

Three film colours and four cloth colours cover nearly every booking, and are easier to keep in stock than a fifth shade that exists in one size.

• Keep one shade card per colour in the stock room, not in a desk binder.
• Order film and cloth of one colour name in a single purchase. Black film against black cloth under warm ballroom light reads brown next to blue-black, and the client sees it in photos.
• Check each delivery against the card under daylight and a warm lamp before shelving it.
• Never mix shades within one event. Two blacks on adjacent tables look like a shortage.

Reuse versus replace

Film is single-use by design: it leaves with the event and never comes back to be washed. Cloths and round covers do come back, so the decision on each piece should be a rule, not a mood.

1. Count stock back in per event and log write-offs by size. A size writing off twice as fast as the others is the size you under-order.
2. Retire a cloth when cleaning and pressing would cost more than half of replacing it, or when the hem, corner or coating has failed. A dull patch under light cannot be fixed.
3. Retire a round cover when the edge no longer hangs level. A wavy edge reads as a damaged table.
4. Keep rolls until under about 12 ft. Below that it is a patch roll, good for a card table only.

Write the remaining length on every roll after each job. A roll of unknown length gets opened, measured and abandoned, and that is how a stock room fills with half-used film.

The one-page stock list

• Film: 300 ft and 200 ft in your two main colours, 100 ft in every colour you carry.
• Cloth: 54 × 108 in and 84 in round, sized by the peak weekend.
• Spares: one unopened 100 ft roll per colour, never allocated to a booking.
• Tools: cutter boxes stay with the rolls; shade cards stay in the stock room.