Yesterday Webb posted about the difficulty we are having with vendors. There is a notable exception: our leasing agent. As we've mentioned before, cash is critical to us during our bootstrap phase. One of the solutions to the "we need equipment, but don't want to spend money yet" dilemma is to lease our production equipment. After putting together our $20K commissary kitchen package, I clicked the "lease this equipment" link on the equipment vendor's site. After filling out the form, having our credit checked, and waiting a week, I finally called the leasing company and left a message.
I got no response. (remember yesterday's post?)
Since time is almost as valuable as cash, we decided to look around for other financing. A quick Google search and some site review turned up Pinnacle Leasing. 2 days later we had our approval and it was time to finish our purchase.
If they were simply fast, convenient financing I probably wouldn't be posting this. The thing that really impressed me was our agent's industry knowledge and helpfulness. Our agent, Tod, went to culinary school and worked in restaurants for several years. He knew the equipment, he knew which of his lenders would finance which gear -- it turns out that very few will finance our exhaust hood and fire suppression system -- and what "good restaurant terms" look like. Since Webb and I have strong credit histories, Tod actually got us a MUCH better deal on our kitchen than most restaurants. Not only that, but a couple of times when there was a question for the equipment vendor, he volunteered to contact them instead of putting the burden back on me.
Lesson learned: If you can find a vendor with experience inside your industry, you're very fortunate. It's going to be much easier working with them since there's a built-in level of understanding.
I eventually heard back from the equipment vendor's "preferred" leasing company. I ended up playing phone tag with them for a couple of days and then figured out that if things were this difficult during the sales process, they were probably going to be a nightmare if we ever needed help.
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