James Turner is the CEO of Viberent, an inventory management platform for the furniture, styling and events industries. James talks to The Home Staging Association UK & Ireland on his “organic†route into the Home Styling industry and his “excitement†to be speaking at the Home Staging Forum 2019.
Tell us a bit about Viberent and how you started the business?
Viberent is an inventory management platform for the furniture, styling and events industries. My business partner and I have a background in the hire and rental industry and we started the business after identifying there were no inventory management systems built specifically to help small to medium size rental businesses. The majority of inventory software on the market was target to big businesses who could afford to pay ridiculously high prices which made it really hard for small rental businesses to grow an efficient and profitable business.
How did you get into the Home Styling Industry?
We got into the home styling industry purely organically. When we launched our software in 2012 we started to get lots of enquiry from home styling businesses who had been looking for something to help them manage the business and leave spreadsheets behind. If I am being honest I didn’t actually know what the home styling industry was at that time. Once we started working with property stylists we quickly understood that we could really help to drive efficiency and save hours each week on manual processes. Today we work with over 400 stylists around the world who use Viberent to manage their styling business.
What is your biggest piece of advice for Home Styling Businesses?
We love working with styling business and creative people that have a real passion for what they do. Our only advise would be to always remember that behind the creative, you are running a rental business. Each of your pieces of furniture is a business asset and if you effectively manage your assets, your business can grow. In a nutshell, you can’t manage what you don’t measure!
What are you looking forward to about the upcoming conference in London?
We are really excited to come to London and continue our support for the HSA UK (we will be wearing every jumper, scarf and beanie that we own…). We have really enjoyed working with Paloma and the team and if we can further support UK styling businesses to effectively manage inventory and in turn grow their business, then we hope we can play a small part in growing the styling industry on a whole.
See you there!!
You can find out more on James by visiting www.viberenthq.com, or visit https://homestaging.org.ukevents to take a look at all the Home Staging Forum guest speakers.