He joined up with Erik Dreyer, a fellow UT Austin grad he met watching Longhorns games in D.C., to build this process into a neighbor-to-neighbor lending platform. Dreyer’s art skills and user interface design specialization complimented Garcia’s tech skills and the two worked together to build GoodShuffle, based in Northwest Washington.

AD

AD

As Garcia and Dreyer started to market their new web platform at events and conferences, they kept hearing requests from organizers for help in renting items for the events. They discovered the event rental industry hadn’t yet caught up with the current technology being used in many other marketplaces. An entrepreneurial light bulb went off and the pair pivoted GoodShuffle to focus on the event rental space.

The pitch

Andrew Garcia, co-founder, GoodShuffle

“GoodShuffle is modernizing the event rental industry. We are following the OpenTable playbook: We’re centralizing the reservation process in one place for an entire industry. We are also licensing a software-as-a-service platform to individual vendors to streamline their on-site operations. It allows vendors to generate quotes and invoices and process payments for all of their business, not just the business that comes through the GoodShuffle marketplace. In addition, we provide vendors with the technology to offer e-commerce on their own websites.

AD

AD

“Currently, we have vendors from Baltimore down to Richmond, offering everything from tents and tables and chairs, to photo booths, to vintage décor. The vendors create accounts and post all of their inventory on our platform. And as a renter, you have the ability to find the best vendor with the best prices for your needs. Renters include both professional event planners and average consumers playing do-it-yourself planner. As we continue to bring on larger event rental companies, more event planners are using our site.

“We launched the platform in June 2016, which proved to be a very complex process. The rental industry is extremely heterogeneous – every rental company has its own cancellation and reservation policies, payment structures, and delivery rates and logistics systems. All of those things need to be explained to customers.

“We also realized that it’s not just enough to have all of the rental components in one place. We had a really healthy inventory of tents, tables, chairs, linens, etc., but we were seeing customers come onto our site and not know what they needed. For example, if you want to throw a backyard party for 100 people with a tent, do you know what size tent you need, how many tables and what size linens you should rent? Probably not. So we build a tool into the platform to help renters figure out and narrow down exactly what they need and match them to the vendors that offer those specific things.

AD

AD

“We know that in this industry, we need to educate consumers and this is one way we’ve tried to do that. What other avenues or tactics could help us accomplish this objective to make customers feel confident enough that they are making the right rental decisions and use our site to make their purchases?”

The advice

Elana Fine, executive director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business

“Your website looks great and it’s user-friendly, but it seems like renters still need to generally know the components they will need for their event. Take it a step back and create a tool that walks people through building a cart for their entire event, not just each individual item for the party.

AD

“You could accomplish this with a quick survey tool that includes questions to answer about the event, then GoodShuffle could generate a shopping list of the elements that should or could go into that party. You could use this tool not only on your site, but also as a very powerful tool to drive traffic to your website. You could use distribution channels — social media like Facebook and Pinterest or other tools — to get people to your website to actually shop for the items on their list. Also make connections with local companies like WeddingWire and Cvent that could be good partners for you.

AD

“The other thing you need to do is really dissect the different categories of customers who would benefit from using your platform. Understanding the potential of the business-to-business portion of your user base is really important. Think about who else could use the GoodShuffle platform, other than professional event planners. For example, in-house human resources staff who perhaps plan the annual company holiday party or summer picnic might really benefit from your tools and service. There are a lot of people in event-planning roles within organizations who are not event planners and are not comfortable in that role. You have a great opportunity to help them.”

The reaction

AD

Garcia

“We’ve been asked before to create static ‘checklists’ based on particular event types, but I like the concept here of taking a more fluid, survey approach to more accurately suggest what the renter would need. We definitely also like idea of using this ‘engineering as marketing’ approach — to use this tool as a way to generate leads for the marketplace. You’re also 100 percent right on partnerships with WeddingWire, Cvent or SocialTables, all of which are on our radar as we continue to grow. With respect to the business-to-business renters (i.e. in-house human resources staff), we are always refining our marketing strategy to effectively reach out to them. Those unlucky souls stuck with planning the holiday party are usually more than happy to find any way make their job a little easier and we’re doing our darnedest to make sure they know we’re here.”