Hiring versus buying: where the money actually goes

Somewhere in planning, the thought arrives: it would be cheaper to buy these than hire them. Sometimes it is. Usually the comparison is being made on the wrong number, because the object is rarely the expensive part.

What hire actually includes

A hire price typically covers the item, cleaning, replacement of breakages within tolerance, delivery to a point, and collection. Some of those are worth more than the item.

Cleaning is the one people forget. Hiring two hundred glasses means returning two hundred dirty glasses. Buying them means washing them, at midnight or the next morning.

The costs that appear after you buy

• Transport. Two hundred of anything does not fit in a car.
• Storage. Before the event, and after, until you sell them.
• Setup and pack down. Same labour either way, except nobody is collecting at midnight.
• Cleaning. Yours.
• Resale. Real, but slow, and usually at forty to sixty per cent of what you paid, after the effort of listing and meeting buyers.

Buying also means you own the failure. If forty of the two hundred arrive broken from an overseas seller two weeks out, that is your problem to solve at short notice.

Where buying genuinely wins

• Small, light items in quantity — candles, table numbers, place cards.
• Anything personalised, which cannot be hired anyway.
• Things you will genuinely use afterwards. Be honest here; most people are not.
• Events where there is no hire option locally.

Where hiring wins clearly

• Anything heavy, bulky or fragile — furniture, glassware, crockery, linen.
• Anything requiring installation or a licence.
• Anything you need two hundred of for six hours.

Compare the whole job, not the item

Take the buy price, add transport, cleaning, storage and the hours involved, then subtract a realistic resale figure. Compare that to the hire quote. The answer is often closer than expected, and when it is close, hire wins on the strength of somebody else collecting it.

Stuey has planned events for himself and sat as a guest at hundreds more, which is where this judgement comes from: knowing which savings are real and which ones just move work onto the people who least want it on the day.