Can you ever learn enough about event AV pricing? For anyone out there planning an event, probably not! When you’re busy planning, your ultimate goal is always to deliver the best event you possibly can, at the best price you can find. Of course, you should always focus on getting the best value for money. And when it comes to event AV pricing, there are several tiny little things that can affect what your final bill looks like.
One of these aspects is the day of the week. Not something you would immediately consider, right? But truth is, not everyone works 24/7, and that includes AV companies. And unless you know a magic little company run by elves that don’t care about weekends, you’re in for some surprises! Event AV pricing can actually depend on the days of the week your event falls on. On today’s Whiteboard Wednesday, join Will Curran and learn all about how days of the week affect event AV pricing!
Video Transcription – How Days Of The Week Affect AV Pricing
What’s going on, Endless fans? Will Curran, back again for another Whiteboard Wednesday. Today we’re talking about how the days of the week can affect your AV pricing. This is a very, very small detail that really can affect your AV budget, that you might not be made aware of. And, you might be thinking to yourself, oh well, how’s this matter to me? It shouldn’t matter, but if you’re more aware of this sort of thing, it helps you understand as far as planning your events and your schedules and everything like that.
And, one thing to keep in mind too, that every company is slightly different. When I kind of explain this, some major fact about this has to do with the fact of what weekends are too people, and when offices are closed, and we’ll explain that really shortly. But today, we’re talking about all about the days of the week and how that affects your budget.
Think Ahead!
The big thing is to make sure that you plan ahead. Plan ahead when it comes to this sort of thing. You want to make sure that you do that because if you think about the way that you plan your events, you might be able to land it perfectly in the middle of this kind of weird zone that can happen that will cause you extra costs.
Are They Open?
So, we’re going to plan this event and it has to do with the fact of when the warehouse for the AV company is open. Most companies, in general, are closed on the weekends, right? Everybody wants to have a Saturday or Sunday off. Even event companies should have a Saturday and Sunday off. Obviously, we’ll work weekends, all that sort of stuff. But, when it comes to the warehouse, the warehouse team who preps the gear, gets it ready for the next show, cleans it up, gets it prepared and organized for the next show. Typically those warehouses are closed on Saturdays and Sundays, right? You can’t expect a company to be open 24 hours a day. Chances are they like to take their Saturdays and Sundays off, so they tend to do work ahead of time in the week before.
They Will Be Prepping In Advance
So, for example. Let’s say your event loads in at 9:00 AM or 8:00 AM or 7:00 AM on a Monday morning, right? That means that obviously, you want to make sure that gear is all prepped and set up and cleaned and checked beforehand. They’re not going to clean and prep the gear and get it ready the day of your event at 7:00 AM, or from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM. Not unless it’s a crazy turnaround and a crazy weekend.
So, chances are is they’ll do it the day before. Well, for most warehouses, they’re usually closed on the weekends, right? So, what that means is they’re not going to do it on Sunday. They’ll probably prep and get all of your gear ready on Friday. Most AV companies will do it this way. So, what that means is, hey look, we’ll just get done before the weekend. So, then that way on Monday morning when the truck driver comes to pick up the gear at 6:00 AM for your 7:00 AM load in. Boom, it’s all ready to go Friday by the end of the business.
So, what happens then is your event loads in totally fine, right? But, let’s say your event then goes on from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And, this is a typical three-day conference, right? But then, you have a late night gala dinner or something like that. So, the team comes in and tears and loads out everything on Friday then.
You’re Not Using It, But You’re Using It
Well, what that means though is that the gear’s going to get loaded out. It gets loaded on a truck, it comes back to the warehouse, and let’s say that’s at the end of the day, right? Let’s say the tear down’s from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM or so, or 2:00 PM or so, which is about a five hour day. What that means is that gear’s going to get back in the afternoon. Chances are it won’t get prepped and cleaned and returned back into the warehouse back until Monday. Sometimes they can get prepped if they need to back again on Friday. But what happens is it means the gear is occupied and used by an event. The second you prep it and get it ready for the show, it can’t go on another show, it can’t make money elsewhere.
It means that it’s in use from Friday, Saturday, even though you’re not using it, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Then finally comes back into the warehouse maybe on Friday afternoon. But, to be honest, they probably won’t get a chance to clean it all in two hours left in the business day. And it comes back really then on Monday. What you find though is this week to week means that the gear is gone for a whole week. If you’ve ever done AV pricing before, you’ve seen this thing known as a day rate. And, a lot of AV companies love to, for example, give you a discount. They might say something like, hey, your event is three days long. Normally, we’d have to charge for every day of the gear, but we’ll give you it through for one and a half days, or one day.
Charging The Week Rate
Well, that’s really easy to do when the event is only for three days. For example, the load is in on Tuesday, the event’s on Wednesday, Thursday, and it’s back on Friday, right? It’s only gone for a couple of days. We’ll give you a discount. But when it’s gone for an entire week, then the AV company obviously has to make money for that. Because instead, they might’ve been able to get two or three events in this week for that same gear. What you’ll end up finding more common than not is if you have this long schedule where it’s on for so many days and it loads in and just happens to be that the gear has to be prepped the week before. So then doesn’t come back until the week after or till the end of week, you end up getting charged a week rate. What a week rate usually is, is three days of what the normal gear. So, it means your cost can go up by three times if you’re usually paying one single day.
Don’t Rush The Goodies
This all depends on the AV company and what they do as far as their operations. Do they work on Saturdays, how fast are they at prepping gear, everything like that. But, you want to always keep in mind this idea of prepping and getting the gear is always going to take time. And, the last thing you want to do is rush this gear check. That’s why AV companies tend to have a whole day in between events where they’re cleaning the gear, they’re checking it, everything like that. Because the last thing you want is, let’s say a projector breaks on the show before, or in transit on the way back to the warehouse. Then they just ship it right off to your next event. That’d be really bad. You want that quality control and that test as well. So, that’s something just to kind of keep in mind when it comes to your schedule.
A Possible Solution
Potentially figure out a way to have your event load in on a Tuesday. Then instead, maybe gets picked up on a Saturday in the truck driver. So that way you occupy one of those close dates and it gets returned then. It just seems like always on these Monday morning early morning load-ins, it tends to be that the gears are prepped and checked on a Friday. And then, usually, for most three day conferences or so, it means that we’re loading out on a Friday. Or maybe we were loading late on Thursday night, and the gear’s just coming back again on a Monday. So, I tend to try to avoid this early morning Monday load-ins because the gear ends up getting occupied for three days.
Conclusion
So, getting into the deep dive of AV nerdism. I hope this was really helpful into understanding how an AV company’s operations can affect your budget and what you’re providing for your event and all the gear. So, I would love to know though, do you have any tricks as far as how you lay out your schedule to save money on AV? If so, post it in the comments down below, let us know. We’d love to know the tips and tricks that you’ve come up with to saving money when it comes to your AV schedule.
If you like this video, feel free to give it a thumbs up and smash that like button. But, if you didn’t like it, give it a dislike, and let us know in the comments below, what can we do better? What could we have elaborated on a little bit better? But, if you really love this content and you want more of it, smash that subscribe button. You’ll get tons of Whiteboard Wednesdays every single week. And, we hope to see you guys next week on Whiteboard Wednesday. This has been Will Curran teaching you how the days of the week can affect your event AV pricing. We’ll see you guys all later!
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