Anaheim, the west coast of Southern California, played host to this year’s ARA Show and proved to be a brilliant choice of venue. Over 700 exhibitors traveled from far and wide to take part in the US’s largest rental exhibition and display their latest innovation. Kevin O’Leary of TV’s “Shark Tank” opened the exhibition with a powerful keynote speech, giving guidance on how to develop a strong business model alongside useful tips for effective team management. The ball was now in motion for The ARA Show 2019 and was a sign of great things to come.

Education for all

The American Rental Association are renowned for their educational approach to events, so it comes as no surprise that 2019’s show took this to the next level. New for 2019, Seminar day featured 16 educational sessions, covering a wide range of topics, beneficial for all in attendance. Topics included family business advice, mistakes to avoid, and motivational stories such as Jim Davidson’s “Preparing for the Unknown”.

Another addition to the educational offering was the newly created Rental Town Hall Sessions. Split into 4 categories, these sessions covered everything from technology, operations, young professionals to human resources. The sessions were all held by experienced rental industry professionals and showed just how dedicated the ARA is to sharing knowledge within the rental industry. Educating young entrepreneurs and securing the future of rental is of great importance, so this was a welcomed addition to the show.

The sold-out “Women In Rental” breakfast was also a highlight of The ARA Show experience. Here, the ARA president-elect Beth Hoff Blackmer discussed the difficulties women often face in the workplace, such as managing the work-life balance and having their expertise undermined by colleagues. Beth then proceeded to stress the importance of women in the rental industry and promoted her initiative to grow the number of women in the industry. We couldn’t agree more!

inspHire in action!

Each year we’re eager to exhibit our latest rental software developments and this year was no different. A great number of visitors stopped by Booth #5721 to see inspHire in action and took a particular interest in our new telematics integrations with leading providers Trackunit, Teletrac Navman, JCB Livelink and CanTrack. The ability to unify telematics data from various systems into inspHire works wonders for improving the visibility of equipment and streamlining the user experience. You can discover more about the benefits of telematics here.

To top things off…inspHire’s US Business Development Manager and rental industry professional, Marc Tedeschi, was celebrating his 20th rental show appearance and had great things to share about his experiences, saying “It’s not just a trade show, it’s educational, informative and fun! It’s a coming together of the rental industry, where visitors, exhibitors and speakers openly share their knowledge and experience. The industry continues to grow and improve year over year, driving suppliers to deliver new innovative products and solutions.”

As always, we’d like to say a big thanks to the ARA for the tremendous work they’ve done with the show. That’s a wrap for The ARA Show 2019 and we look forward to its return, next year in Orlando Florida. We’ll most certainly be there, and we hope to see you!