Future proof: Small business Value Van Rentals make flexibility pay

Morgan McAndrew and Sean Curley set up Dublin-based Value Van Rentals in 2005 with just three vans. Today they have a fleet of more than 240 vehicles and they have diversified from vans into other business-related vehicles such as refrigerated units, off-roaders and people carriers.

According to McAndrew, it was precisely this diversification that kept them afloat when the downturn came and enabled them to grow through it.

“We set out to build a rental business that was different to what was already out there,” he says. “We made flexibility our main differentiator by which I mean we gave customers what they wanted. If we didn’t have the particular vehicle they asked for, we were prepared to take the risk and to go out and buy it for them.

“This flew in the face of how most of the traditional operators approach things. They generally have a defined fleet of vehicles that either meets your needs or it doesn’t.”

Both McAndrew and Curley had worked in the motor industry for a long time before setting up Value Van Rentals.

Curley had spent almost 25 years with Budget Car Hire while McAndrew had experience in retail sales, leasing and rental. Curley now looks after the rental side of the operation while McAndrew handles purchasing, disposals and long-term contracts.

The company has been particularly successful in growing its business among SMEs and sole traders. “We recognise that small businesses and the self-employed have been very much at the mercy of what work has been available, especially in the construction sector,” McAndrew says.

“If a job comes in, they may well need a van in a hurry but only require it for a day or a week or a month. They are not in the market to buy a vehicle because they don’t know when the next job will show up. We’ve been plugging that transport gap for them with a vehicle to suit their business.”

McAndrew says the company has always managed to get the finance it needed to keep going even when motor lending hit an all-time low during the downturn.

“We both know the people involved in lending here and they know us over many years,” he says. “We’ve never been refused a request for money and I attribute that to not putting a foot wrong with the banks.

“We’ve never given them any reason not to lend to us. Yes, we’ve gone to whatever bank was lending when we needed money and sometimes that was more costly than others, but we just had to live with that.”

Being canny with how it spends its money has also paid dividends for the company, McAndrew says. “If we raised €100,000 to buy new vehicles, we didn’t run off and spend it all in one shop so to speak,” he says. “Instead of always buying new, we used our experience and contacts in the industry to pick up young used vehicles and dealer demonstrators at a better price. That meant we could grow the fleet by seven or eight vehicles at a time instead of four.

“With one or two exceptions when we were starting off, all of our vehicles are sourced in Ireland.”

Value Van Rentals employs five people and this is set to grow to eight in 2015. “We are big enough to have a decent- sized fleet but small enough to still offer a personal service and I think that has stood to us,” McAndrew says.

“If someone rings up, they will talk to Seán or to me, and we have always made a point of being as fair and reasonable as possible.

“We have grown at around 20 per cent a year since we started trading and I put that down to the fact that we make it easy for people to do business with us.

“We have faced the same challenges as everyone else, especially in this recession, but we believe that if you really meet customers’ requirements rather than paying lip service to doing so, people will come back.

“Yes it’s been challenging and we’ve had bad debt experiences with some customers but we have always been careful to control our risk. We never put ourselves in a position where one bad debt could destabilise the whole operation.”

McAndrew says business is now gathering momentum in line with the pick-up in certain sectors of the economy. “There is more happening in construction for example and we are benefiting from sole traders and contractors who have work and need transport but are still waiting for their credit to come through in order to fund a vehicle purchase.

“Our customer base is split about 50:50 between short- and long-term rentals and is very diverse in composition, covering everything from music and marketing companies to builders, retail, food service and the trades. I think we’ve survived and grown during this recession for one main reason: meeting customers’ needs speedily and making things work for them over whatever period they required.”