Kelsey Sheofsky - Money in glamping? Building SHELTER CO., a high-seven-figure glamping and outdoor event production company

Kelsey is the owner of Shelter-Co, a full scale event production company with luxury canvas tents and beautiful furnishings to boot, that has gained a reputation for well-designed, thoughtful, and environmentally conscious productions. Prior to starting Shelter Co,  Kelsey cold-called Alison Hotchkiss of Alison Events to see if she had any job openings. After five years of working for Alison, Kelsey was ready to branch off on her own and created a tangential offering that allowed her to maintain a strong relationship with her former boss.

Shelter Co has built pop-up hotels in remote locations, produced magazine-worthy events around the country, designed VIP spaces at music festivals including Outside Lands in San Francisco and Bottleneck in Napa, run corporate retreats, built a semi-permanent outdoor, open-aired meeting "rooms" on three of Google's campuses, and has been featured on the cover of Sunset Magazine, and on The New York Times, Vogue, among many, many more.

You can check out her business' inspiring and beautiful designs on Instagram @shelterco

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Transcript

Kelsea Sheofsky (00:00.11)
There's a hole in the market. So we identified, hey, doing a pop-up hotel service is something that is really necessary in the event industry. There's all these people with so much money and so much land and aren't able to utilize their properties because they're not close to hotels. And that's really where the idea for ShelterCo came from.

Anne McGinty (00:30.23)
Welcome to episode 10 of How I Built My Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McIntee, your host, and today we'll be talking about building a full-scale event production company with Kelsey Shofsky. Kelsey is the owner of ShelterCo, a company that not only produces events,

but offers luxury canvas tents and beautiful furnishing rentals and has gained a reputation for well-designed, thoughtful, and environmentally conscious productions. Her company has built pop-up hotels in remote locations, produced magazine-worthy events around the country, and designed VIP spaces at music festivals, including Outside Lands and Bottle Rock. Shelter Co. has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue

and on the cover of Sunset Magazine. You can find a link through to her business in the episode's description. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Kelsey, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So let's get straight into it. Can you tell us a little bit about how you gained the skills that you needed in order to venture into event production? It is kind of multi-fold. I grew up in a home with a father who was an entrepreneur.

ran his own business my whole life. And I think that being around that gave me confidence to start my own thing eventually. I always loved planning parties. I always loved being the person that's gathering people. My grandmother was really the matriarch of running the show and always having people over and we have a huge family and just being around large gatherings my whole childhood. And

The first time I really even thought about getting into the event world was after doing my wedding. I planned my own wedding and it really took over my life as it often does for people. Had you ever planned any other large-scale event like that beforehand? Not to that extent. I definitely put together lots of larger parties and planned my five-year high school reunion and had done things like that but not to that scale before.

Kelsea Sheofsky (02:55.754)
So I, at the time, was a shop girl. I was working in a vintage clothing store and was super boring. And so I just spent all day long sitting behind that desk planning my wedding, essentially. And I was trying to figure out what's the next thing for me. And one of my girlfriends said, why don't you be an event planner? I mean, that's what you've been doing for the last year and you've loved it and you did such a good job.

And I guess actually that was before I had my wedding. And so while I was still planning my wedding, I cold emailed an event planner whose website had a, you know, a good looking website in San Francisco and said, hey, I've been doing my wedding and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I think I'm decent at this. And it just happened that her assistant was leaving soon and was like, let's have lunch, which is so weird. I mean, we get those emails all the time and you just, thanks but no thanks, but it just hit at the right time for her.

So that's how I got my foot in the door and then learned the business from there.

Anne McGinty
So what was that like working for that event company?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, Allison Events is the company. It's owned by a woman named Allison Hotchkiss and she's awesome. We're still really good friends. It was great. She had one employee at the time who I overlapped with. I was there for about five and a half years and we specialized in destination weddings. So we traveled all over the world together.

you know, high end expensive weddings. I really learned a lot, not just about event production, but also dealing with a higher net worth client and that whole world of fine dining and wine and travel. And I really was exposed to a lot over the course of working at that job.

Anne McGinty
That sounds amazing in that you kind of owe a little bit to Alison for helping getting you where you are today.

Kelsey Sheofsky
For sure. And she's an investor in my next project. So, you know, yeah, full circle.

Anne McGinty
So when you decided to open up your own business, how much capital did it require to get up and off the ground?

Kelsey Sheofsky (05:00)
So I felt that my job with Alison had run its course. And, you know, I left on great terms, but really wanted to do something on my own. And also with my husband, I had been taken out of the country so often every year and was traveling and it

was difficult, you know, he wasn't able to come with me and he wasn't happy in his job. And so we'd started noodling on what is something we could do together. And I really didn't want to leave Allison and become a direct competitor because I just knew that was going to be really difficult both professionally and for our relationship. It's a really small world, the event planning world in San Francisco. So we were really trying to figure out like what could we do that's still event based. It's something I know really well. It's something I'm super connected with.

that would speak to both of our skill sets, mine and Mike's, and where's the hole in the market? And that's really where the idea for ShelterCo came from. So we identified, hey, doing a pop-up hotel service is something that is really necessary in the event industry. There's all these people with so much money and so much land and aren't able to utilize their properties because they're not close to hotels. And I'd experienced that.

over the whole course of my event career, of just having these barricades of like, where you can do things because you have to be within 30 minutes of a hotel to really make something successful. So that's how we landed on the idea and found a tent company in Europe, bought one tent, tried it out on Christmas Day, 2011, I guess, and loved it and said, okay, let's do it, we're gonna do it. And bought three more on credit cards. I wasn't making a lot of money then, neither was Mike.

and did a photo shoot, had all of our friends just do it for free. You know, my friend Mel Barlow did all the photography for free, and all my friends came and helped style it, put up a website and had one bed, four tents, maybe, all on credit cards and put it out there. And then from there, in terms of capital needs, we just maxed out every card we had to buy the inventory as the jobs came in. So it was like, oh, OK, we need to do

Five tents, okay, we need to get four more beds. Okay, got them. All right, we booked a 2010 job and it was like, oh my God, how are we? We don't even know where to get that many tents. It was a total hilarious process of putting it together. How did you get a 2010 job? We were really, really fortunate that when we launched this, it came about at a time when the world was just like really ready for this whole concept and.

Kelsey Sheofsky (07:38.75)
We got so much press that first year, like so much press. It was unbelievable. We were in the New York Times, we were in Time Magazine, we were on the cover of Sunset Magazine, we were on every blog. It was insane. Every editor was wanting to go do a camp out with us so they could report on it. It was just whatever was happening in the world right then, we just nailed it. And that was kind of like when Instagram was like really starting to take off. And it was a very...

beautiful photo friendly business, you know, like one photo evoked such a vibe. And so it really took off with very minimal effort on our end, which was, I mean, lucky, to be honest.

Anne McGinty
How long did it take before your business became profitable?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, so the kind of rule of thumb in the rental world is that your cost to buy your inventory should be paid off within three jobs, just because of the depreciation and

wear and tear on equipment, you want to be able to get your money back out of it within three. We're a little bit under that, which is nice. And that ratio has gotten better and better as we've started to manufacture our own stuff. Yeah, I mean, it was profitable that first year. We made good money that first year. And my big thing that whole first year was we've got to start getting bigger jobs. I know to throw a party for 200 people, I've been doing this my whole almost whole adult career, but it's really hard to sell.

A 200 person job when you don't have any photos or any clients that can attest to your ability to do it. So we were just waiting for like that first one to really take a chance on us and do it. And that came that second year. We booked a big corporate retreat for a VC firm and they just were willing to sign off and we're like, yeah, cool. And so then we were like, oh my God, we need to buy another 80 tents and figure this all out. So you went from 20 tents to 200 tents.

Anne McGinty
How did you pay for that?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Oh, I was still working for Allison, and Mike was still working at his job. So we were doing both for the first six months that we were in business, which was totally insane. And I also was pregnant. So it was a very crazy time for us. But the tenting thing was really insane, because when we'd first purchased our tents, we bought them from a company in England, but they weren't fire certified to use in California. And they had sold us one.

but then they were unwilling to sell us anymore because it was illegal to ship them to California. So we shipped them to Oregon to Mike's mom and then drove them down just because we didn't have another supplier. Now you can get a bell tent anywhere, but back then they were very hard to find. So then when that 2010 job came in, we were like, well, where do we get the tents? They won't sell them to us. So I went on Alibaba and bought one sample tent. It came, it was horrible.

And then we were out of time. We didn't have time to get another sample. We had to just place an order for 20 or they weren't going to come in time. And so I just found this manufacturer, was like crossing all fingers and toes, ordered 20 tents from them. They show up at my house, which was a 600 square foot tiny house in San Francisco. And I was like, oh my god, I didn't even think about where we would put them because we didn't have a warehouse yet. And

opened one up when set it up and they were perfect. And we just were like overjoyed. And that's still the manufacturer we worked with to this day. And they-

Anne McGinty
That's insane.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, Mike went out and visited their factory that next year to really understand their capabilities. And then we were able to customize all of our tents. They now manufacture all our stuff for our retail line. Anyway, super lucky. There's so many places along the way where it could have gone so south. Yeah, and that is definitely one of them. Yeah.

Anne McGinty
The first manufacturer that you contacted?

Kelsey Sheofsky
That was the, I think it was the third one we'd actually like talk to, but it was the only one we ever placed a big order with. It's a small family run manufacturing company. They're awesome. They'll do anything for us. And so we've over the years, yeah, like tweaked things and changed materials. Did you have to wait for a sample of that one before- I didn't have time. Oh my gosh. So I just ordered it. Oh my gosh. I was like, okay.
Here we go.

Anne McGinty
That's amazing.
Okay, so now fast forward. How many tents and furnishings do you have in your arsenal at the moment?

Kelsey Sheofsky
So we have about 350 sleeping tents, another probably 18 gathering tents, which is anything from a large format dining style tent down to like little meeting tents. And then we've got 90 sofas and 300 chairs. We've built the business. It started with just doing the sleeping tents. And then as we started,

(12:21.294)
producing some of our own events and realizing, oh, there's things that we need for these events that are not on the rental market. We started manufacturing more of our own stuff. So we need some smaller tents for gathering. We need one sofa that we can have 80 of that stores well, works indoors and outdoors, is easy to clean, can change the cushions. So we manufactured our own sofas. So we've kind of added to.

the inventory not really based on a plan of having everything that you would ever need in at an event, but more like where's the hole in the market. We can always get this type of chair down the street at Encore Rentals. We don't need to have the same chair, but what's something that we need that nobody else carries. And that's kind of how we've driven what our rental inventory looks like. And just browsing your website, I feel like it's very design centric. Yeah.

Anne McGinty
So what types of events do you primarily produce?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah. So we kind of have.

Three buckets of the way that we work with people. We have just straight up rentals where someone says, I need five sleeping tents and two lounge pods for my 50th birthday in Healdsburg. All we do is deliver it, set it up, leave. So that's, in terms of the number of events we do every year, that is the bulk of our business. We do about 90 events a year, and probably 75 of them are that type of setup. Then we do...

kind of partial planning where we'll come in and we'll just produce the hotel aspect of it. So there's a huge event happening, there's an event planner attached. They wanna do 50 sleeping tents with restrooms and check-in station and butlers and lighting and power and all that. We will produce just that portion of it and then the event company that's managing the whole thing will do the actual event. So we're really just producing whatever you would experience once you enter a hotel lobby essentially.

And then we do another probably five to eight events a year where we're the lead producer on. It really, it's probably closer to five these days because they're bigger productions and we just can't handle more than that. And those are primarily corporate and that we only do one wedding a year as a rule. It's just too labor intensive in terms of us planning them. We do a lot where we just do rentals, but we do music festivals, corporate retreats, weddings, but most of what we plan is corporate.

(14:36.726)
with the odd wedding thrown in. And then we do a lot of design services for music festivals, which is just a weird niche we've gotten into. We do pretty much every area that you touch at Outside Lands, except for the Golden Gate Club, we design and furnish now. Wow. Which is cool. Yeah, they've increased it every year. So we do all the VIP, all of the cabanas, all the artist lounges, GA Plus, all that. And then Bottle Rock, we do all of the suites for them.

Anne McGinty
It sounds like a pretty diverse and large number of revenue streams.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yes, definitely, which is nice. And it's also just more interesting. Probably, you're looking at it like, what takes the least amount of time and makes the most amount of money? Just going straight rentals is probably where it's at. But in terms of myself and our staffing, it just keeps it so much more interesting to be involved creatively in some of these jobs and really getting to reinvent the wheel.

and do things that are a little bit more creative. And it keeps our staff more interested. It's much more fun to do an outside lands and get to go to the concert and get to design all these spaces rather than just setting up sleeping tents over and over and over again. Totally. So speaking to those events, which one has been your most memorable? I think my favorite all time event was we produced an eclipse party for Virgin Galactic.

in 2017 during the Great American Eclipse, which was, it was a very short timeline. They had contracted with another company that ended up not quite working out and approached us, I think, like three months before the eclipse. Didn't have a location, didn't have a caterer, didn't have anything on board. And we're like, please help us. We've already sold tickets to this thing and we don't have a plan. So we went out to the middle of nowhere in Idaho with their chief astronomer,

and some Virgin Galactic people to just figure out where can we go on this path of totality? Because that's the big thing when you're an eclipse chaser, you wanna be in the place where the eclipse lasts the longest in total darkness. And so he had his GPS and was like, okay, this little town is where we should be. And so we went and found a couple of ranches and this guy Ralph randomly had this cow pasture. They kind of like checked all the boxes. It was like the right.

(17:00.37)
spot of totality. It was flat. It was accessible from the road. And it was close enough to town where we could put people up in hotels and Airbnbs and stuff. And so we rented this random cow pasture from Ralph and figured out what to do. And it was really us pulling in all of our relationships and came into play so heavily there because everything was sold out because that was where the eclipse was going to be happening the best in the whole country was kind of this like circle of like 40 mile radius.

And so there were no event rentals, there were no event big tents, there was nothing. And so we needed like a big, big tent, way bigger than what we carry. And we'd already booked some other event that weekend, somewhere like another place, totally different than it wasn't for the eclipse, which was the same weekend. So we were already strapped on inventory. I contacted my friend who had owned a Sperry tent company, which is like those big sail cloth tents, but he was in the process of closing it down. And I was like, you.

have to do this event for me. I have no way of getting a tent. You have to come." And he drove it out from Michigan and totally made it happen for us. The caterer we brought in from Colorado, again, was like a friend of mine who we'd worked with before. And I was like, do you have any availability? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, you gotta come camp with us out in middle Idaho. They drove out. It was hilarious, but we pulled it together. And it was so cool. I was very, okay, Eclipse, this is so weird. It lasts for two minutes. I don't get it.

And then we experienced it and it was like, whoa, that is so cool. It was one of the coolest things I've ever, ever done. It sounds like such a unique experience to just have whether you're working at or attending. Yeah, it was amazing. And there's another major eclipse happening in April 2024 that we're doing. We're partnering with Atlas Obscura and doing a big festival out in Arkansas. And it's going to be a whole music festival. And yeah, it's a ticketed thing.

So that leads me to wonder about the logistics, because now you've mentioned Idaho and you're saying Arkansas.

Anne McGinty (19:23.622)
How do you manage the logistics for these events nationwide?


Kelsey Sheofsky
We nowadays just hop in a truck and go. When we started doing this, it was a lot cheaper to put things in a 52 foot container truck, a big rig. And the way that the supply chain...

issues coming out of COVID and just pricing changes, it no longer really makes sense for us to do it that way. And so we now drive all our own stuff, which is annoying for our staff, but we get it done. So we put it all into penskis or rider moving trucks and take it to where it's going.

Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah. And then we'll fly people from here. We'll hire local labor a lot of times, just like extra hands so we don't have to bring every single person from California. And then we have a

moving company out of Colorado we have a really good relationship with and they're willing to travel and so sometimes when we're short-handed we'll hire those guys to come out wherever we're going. I'm sort of surprised that it is cost beneficial to do it that way. It's not a huge savings by any stretch but it logistically is so much more trustworthy because you're controlling your own inventory rather than somebody like doesn't pick it up. We've had that happen where we had it booked and then they just don't pick up the load.

or where you're going, you're able to get it there, but then no one's willing to pick up the load coming back. So it's hard. And then it's way more expensive going to certain places if it's not on a direct route across the country because of where the truckers are. It's a complicated thing, and we're just not a big enough company. We don't give anyone enough business to get better service. They're just like, who are you? We do this four times a year. We don't care.

Anne McGinty
I feel like maybe I might have a connection for you.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Great.

Anne McGinty
We can talk about that afterwards. OK, so how are your events divided up throughout the calendar year?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Our peak season really starts in April and goes through October is when we're busiest. And it's interesting. Social weddings and birthday parties are really chunked into the summer, June, July, August. Corporate is really.

April, May, and then September, October, because I think a lot of companies don't want to plan things during summer because people's kids are out of school and they're on vacation and that sort of thing. Music festivals are more shoulder season, usually as well, April, May, for whatever reason. But then we go other places in the off season. We did a big event last January out in Utah, and we were in the desert, which was cold, but we brought heat. We do a lot of stuff in Joshua Tree and Palm Springs

(21:42.258)
our off season. So we stay fairly busy. We usually do a lot of holiday, which is more just decor and event tents. We don't really do sleeping tents during the holidays.

Anne McGinty
So how do you handle your full-time employees and seasonal workers?

Kelsey Sheofsky
For all of the planning and sales staff, they're really busy in the off season because that's when you're planning everything that's going to be happening in the summer. So that all kind of makes a lot of sense.

Usually when we come back from the holidays, like January is when we get nuts out, especially for weddings, everyone's been home for the holidays and people are like, when are you getting married? What's happening? And so then January, people kick it into gear, starting to plan things. For our labor staff, we spend most of November and December just getting stuff processed from the year, resetting the warehouse, deep cleaning everything that doesn't get as much attention when we're super busy and doing back-to-back events. And then January, February, March

the slowest time where some of my labor guys will pick up other work because we slow down. It's because we take everyone down three days a week.

Anne McGinty
How do you incentivize them to come back?

Kelsey Sheofsky
We have a very fun work environment. Everyone gets along really well, and we go fun places. And it is a labor force. It's not people that are going to make sure we're shelter-co people. But a lot of my staff has been with me, even on the labor side, for five or more years. In our salaried staff, I've got one who hit 10 years this year. And I've got

one that's hitting 10 years next year, and then I've got two hitting 10 the year after. So we've been really lucky to have retention, even though it does ebb and flow, but we try and really make it a fun place to be and a place that people wanna come back to.

Anne McGinty
Do you do the hiring yourself?

Kelsey Sheofsky
I don't anymore.

Anne McGinty
I was gonna ask what criteria you look for when you're building your team.

Kelsey Sheofsky
It is really important to us because we are a small company that everyone gets along and is a culture fit.

probably more so than a lot of other companies because you're not only in the warehouse together, especially on the labor side, but oftentimes sharing hotel rooms, sleeping at a random Boy Scout camp and cooking meals together. We can't have somebody who doesn't jive with the rest of the crew in there because it makes it really difficult on these travel jobs. So culture fit across the board is really important. And then obviously hard worker and people that are

 (24:05.474)
flexible and chill because it isn't a normal nine to five job. It's weird. The hours are weird. The locations are weird. Sometimes you're in like a super bougie hotel and sometimes you're sleeping in a tent. And sometimes you're eating a really amazing catered meal and sometimes you're eating Del Taco. And you have to kind of be able to roll with the punches.

Anne McGinty
Just be flexible.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Exactly.

Anne McGinty
So what would you say has been the most complex situation you have faced as a boss and owner of the company?

Kelsey Sheofsky
One time we were.

doing an event on the East Coast. This is so funny. Now it's funny to me, but at the time it was horrific. That's how it always is. This is before we decided that driving our own trucks was always the right move. We had hired a trucking company to pick up the load, but they were picking it up in a Penske. It wasn't like a big rig. It was a smaller 24 foot box truck. They picked up the load, and then they had brought the truck to California from...

some other state but had not told the owner of the trucking company that it was going out of state and then the truck didn't get returned and then they geo tracked it and then they found it and they impounded it with all our stuff in it.

Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh.

Kelsey Sheofsky
So they had found the truck and impounded it in like Oakland. So it hadn't even gotten out of California. It was going to Connecticut and

The trucking company didn't tell us that this had happened for like three days, which was almost the entirety of the time they should have been driving it across the country. So we didn't know that it hadn't left California. And then it was a whole other, it was like, oh, the girlfriend of the trucking guy is the one that rented it. And so they couldn't even get it out of impound. It was just this whole thing. So I'm like, this will be the first time we don't actually do an event. Like, what do we do? This is horrible. What do we do? We have to call the client. So I started calling around to other

glamping outfitters around the country just to be like, do you have any tents and inventory that you could get out to Connecticut? And long story short, they got out of Impound and then the owner of this trucking company flew out to California with his buddy and they took turns driving, not stopping 24 hours a day to get it out there in time and made it just in time to meet our crew to set everything up. I really thought we weren't gonna be able to actually install.

(26:21.346)
which is just like your worst nightmare. But we've, yeah, we've never had a total disaster. Knock on wood. And I'm knocking for you right now.

Anne McGinty
How do you navigate and obtain the permits that you need for events in these various regions? And it sounds like public spaces sometimes.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Thankfully, California is the most difficult place to work. So our knowledge base and the way that we have

everything constructed meets California standards. So then it meets all standards. And that's really specific to fire code. But in terms of like event permits, that is different county by county. But again, California is the most stringent. So there's a square footage minimum where you have to pull a tent permit, which always is changing. I think when we started, it was only 200 square feet and it's gone up from there. If you're on a private property and you're not pulling a special event permit, you generally don't have to pull a...

a tenting permit, but if you're on any kind of public space or commercial space, you do need to pull up a permit. But it's really just going down to the fire department and saying I need a pull up tent permit. And they sometimes come out and inspect it, sometimes don't. There's way more difficult counties to work with than others. San Francisco County is a notoriously horrible one to work with. They have a lot of rules that we have never dealt with anywhere else in the country.

Anne McGinty
So when you have, let's say you have somebody that calls you from Missouri.
And they have a site, they want you to check it out.
Can you lead us through what your protocol is?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, so generally speaking, we don't go and do a site visit till we're in contract, just because we'd just be traveling all over the place for things that don't end up booking. So we'll get the address, we'll look at it on Google Earth, and then we'll get video and photos from the clients just to make sure it is viable. And then once we're in contract, we'll go and do a site visit. And depending on.

how big the scope is, I'll send out a producer and a lead installer and potentially our creative director depending on everything we're doing. For instance, we booked a big wedding that we did last year in Colorado on a family's ranch, and there was nothing, there was no infrastructure. So I think I did the first site visit just to make sure it was viable and figure out where we were doing things. And then on the next site visit, I brought out a team of five, because not only are we looking to see where are we setting these things up,

(28:44.054)
but it's who are we working with for bathrooms? Who are we bringing in for power? Do we need to build a road? Do we need to bring in wifi? There's all those other logistics that we do research on while we're there because the best connections you can get is in person talking to someone at the local bar, talking to someone at the coffee shop. We're looking for somebody who can bring us fresh seafood. Know anyone? Oh yeah, my brother has a business out of this other town and they drive through here every week. I mean, there's...

so much more information you get doing things in person rather than doing online research. So we try and knock that out pretty heavily on those first site visits. And then, depending on where it is, if we need to do permitting and that sort of thing, we'll do it. You'll try to just take care of it all while you're there. Yep, and we'll usually do two to three site visits for something of that scale.

Anne McGinty
How do you convince potential clients to sign a contract with you when they've never even met you face to face?

Kelsey Sheofsky
We'll do Zoom calls and...

do a bunch of meetings that way. And we'll put together an initial budget and connect them with our past clients and that sort of thing. So yeah, we're usually pretty well vetted by that point.

Anne McGinty
So speaking to just planning for and pricing these events, can you give us an idea of your philosophy behind pricing? You don't need to give us exact figures, but just how do you go about figuring it out?

Kelsey Sheofsky
It's a great question. It's a lot.

A lot of trial and error, honestly, because I mean, so many things come up with our events that are unforeseen circumstances. But our rentals, we've really dialed based on what can the market bear here locally? What are other people charging for the different furniture pieces? The sleeping tents are less expensive than they really should be, but it's kind of like our cornerstone of the company. You're also competing with hotel rooms, right? So.

Those are priced in a different way than any of our rentals are, because our rentals are based on what everyone else is charging and what will the market bear. We double our rentals if it's going out of state far because it's in transit for so long. It's really out for two full weeks rather than just a weekend. And then our labor and delivery, we play with that depending on the event of what is reasonable. If it's a massive event, you can afford to charge a little bit less per item on your labor and delivery.

 (31:05.942)
because you have so much more rental income coming in. And we kind of have to just play with that, with what makes sense. Where else are we doing events that weekend? How far is it? What are the logistics once we're there? Is everyone having to eat out every meal for the entire 10 days they're there? Are we getting an Airbnb? I mean, there's like all these other factors that go into how we charge for delivery. But in terms of the actual rentals, that's a flat rate that we increase every couple of years. And I guess it probably depends too on just how complex the site is to navigate.

Anne McGinty
Setting up in a cow patty in the middle of nowhere sounds logistically a bit challenging for trucks.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Well, it is, but it's actually way easier than setting up in a forest, because you can literally just line everything up in rows and then just drive a truck down the middle and just drop things as you go, versus being somewhere where five tenths are going here and eight are going here and then six are going here, where you have to be really spread out. So those are actually less labor intensive, being just in a field than being. Somewhere where you can't drive.

Anne McGinty
Yeah.

Kelsey Sheofsky
or where you have like nine locations. There's a really cool property up in Mendocino County called Camp Navarro. It's an old boy scout camp. And we work there a lot to bring extra accommodations for large events there, but it's all super spread out and it's in 15 different locations where everything's going. So it's a really challenging install, even though it's close to home and we work there all the time, we just have to send like double labor for that property just because of the logistics.

Anne McGinty
What measures do you take to ensure that your clients are satisfied and to increase your chances of repaid business?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Well, we try and do an amazing job every time. Because we are a production company that does rentals, almost all of our staff is way higher trained than your normal rental delivery guy, because they've worked events. Every single one of our guys and women as well.

who are on the delivery team also will sometimes work on the production side. So we've installed it a whole event, but now we need staff during the event and they double. So we oftentimes are helping out on things that have nothing to do with us when we're doing an event because we have the know-how and our staff is just really well-trained. So that reflects really well on us.

 (33:25.138)
across the board like, oh, your staff was so amazing. They helped us move this thing. They hitched this thing up to their truck because the bathroom was put in the wrong spot. We have a very can-do attitude for events and I think that keeps planners coming back to us over and over again. And then a lot of our repeat clients, we have quite a long list of events that we do year after year. Just making sure that we're going above and beyond and doing as good of a job as the previous year and then some. And then we do go back after every event and get feedback.

How was it? What could we do differently? We always take notes while we're there of like, OK, this was stupid to deliver the plants this day because we couldn't get the truck close enough. Next year, let's have the plants on this day, trying to always better our schedule, better our team, better what we're doing to make sure that we're always bringing our A game.

Anne McGinty
And efficiency, too.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Exactly.

Anne McGinty
So how do you ensure that the quality and condition of your tents and furnishings is going to be up to par with what the client is expecting given that these are being rented out regularly?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Well, we take quality control very seriously. The tents, because we have them manufactured to our specs and we get them for a good price, we're able to retire them every year if we need to. And we do, we do a big mid-season check-in of how things are looking. We're constantly cleaning stuff anyway, but we do a mid-season, does anything need to be pulled out of inventory? And then we do a big one at the end of the year and do our warehouse sale. So we sell off.

anything that isn't up to snuff for us rental wise. And it's really funny because so many other hospitality companies will buy our stuff that we're saying is good enough to put out on the rental market. And they're like, this is great. And then they go set it up at their hotel or whatever. But we have really high standards because I don't think it's worth it to send something out.

if I can sell it and have something new starting the next year. And that's really how we operate is get rid of it, sell it off. Our warehouse sale is a huge hit every year. People love getting this stuff because it is still in good condition, but then it allows us to start with a super fresh inventory every year. Every year, you replenish. We sold off probably 60% of our tents at this warehouse sale and are replacing all of them so that we're just fresh out the gates. Yeah. And same with rugs.

(35:42.158)
Things that are getting a lot of wear and tear, we try and replace very often. And our staff is very good at identifying problems. Like if a tent or a rug or whatever looks gross when it's being taken down at the end of an event, it gets wrapped in red tape. So when it comes back to the warehouse, even though everything does get gone through, it's very obvious, like this needs special attention and make sure it doesn't go back out.

Anne McGinty
What do you do about rain and your canvas tents getting wet? Because I assume if you pack them up, they would mold.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, so we've come up with a very innovative solution for drying out tents, which is we attach those blowers for bouncy houses to the door of the tent and zip it. And then it just blows it up like a cream puff and it dries it from the inside out. So, best case scenario, if they get wet, we're allowed to leave them up till they dry. And usually that's the case, because usually if we have a ton of tents up, it's on a private property. And so if we do get rain, we can say,

let's wait till tomorrow because we're going to have some sunshine, let these have a minute to dry out and then we'll take everything down. That's not always the case and when we do have to pull them down when they're wet they come back to the warehouse immediately and they get unpacked and they get blown up and they get dried out. It's not ideal. Yeah, it sounds labor intensive. It's very labor intensive and it's annoying and it takes a lot of space especially if it's still raining. We have to do it inside the warehouse which like clear everything out and then blow up the tents like six at a time and get them dry.

Anne McGinty
How big is your warehouse?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Our main warehouse is 18,000 square feet. And then we've got a second warehouse, I think that's like 4,000. And then it has room to expand, which we haven't taken over yet, but we're probably going to take it over this spring.

Anne McGinty
So is there anything else that you think sets your business apart from competitors in the industry? I know you mentioned that your team is well-experienced, and I can completely understand how that would be desirable for a client. But is there anything beyond that?

that you think sets you apart?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah, we are a weird business in that we have this massive rental inventory, but we also have a team of producers and designers. So we are able to do a full event from start to finish, but we don't necessarily always do that. It's great because it really allows us to be flexible. So if someone's already working with a planner, we love that. We don't need to plan your event. Someone needs a planner, we can do that.

(38:07.382)
someone needs a designer, we can do that. So we're really nimble and we're able to kind of fill the holes of an event as needed. None of the other glamping companies in the United States do production. They're all just rental companies.

Anne McGinty
So who in the United States would you say is your biggest competitor?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Way back when Under Canvas was doing events, and they've shuttered that because they got bought. They're a hotel chain as well. They do like they have like glamping hotels.

bought and closed the rental arm, I think, when that happened, because it got pulled into a larger conglomerate. But we used to bid against them a lot. I mean, there's some outfitters on the East Coast that do a lot more like East Coast festivals, which we just can't compete price-wise with them, because it's so expensive for us to get out there. So they're competitors, but we don't actually ever really bid against them, because it doesn't even make sense. Right. Yeah, they have their foothold over there, and you're over here. It's a huge country. It's really funny when we look at.

The markets in England and Australia are two countries that have a pretty big glamping presence and culture of doing this. In Australia, there's like 50 companies that do what we do. There's only like 14 million people. It's so weird. And in England, too. We're like, how do they all stay in business?

Anne McGinty
I know. The American economy is such a beast.

Kelsey Sheofsky
I know.

Anne McGinty
There's enough room for everybody.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Totally.

Anne McGinty
I actually think it's really funny when you come across somebody who's so hyperprotective of

their business and it's like, there's really enough.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Oh, for sure. And one of, there's a company in Colorado under the sky and they don't do glamping rentals, but they do the larger format teepee tents that we have. And we hire them all the time. Cause sometimes we're like, oh, we're sold out or we're going to Colorado and it's cheaper for us just to hire them than bring our own stuff out. And they've brought their labor out to help us with events. Like we work in tandem.

And it's a win-win. If we were to be protective about it or not want to work together, we probably would have lost out on some of those jobs. And Patrick, the owner has been really great to work with over the years. And it's been like a really nice partnership. But I think working like that is always beneficial.

Anne McGinty (40:28.91)
Yeah, collaboration. So your business, being so design-centric, who is the one that is designing how your tents look and how your furniture looks?

Kelsey Sheofsky
So I designed the initial tents, like the interiors of what was in them way back when, and it hasn't really strayed very far from that original vision. Maggie, who has worked for us for it'll be 10 years this year and is our creative director and is also a good friend, really took us to the next level when she came on board. She's an amazing design eye and is really creative and kind of thinks outside the box on a lot of levels. And so...

she helped take us to that next level of design in all of our rentals. So, you know, let's make something, let's make a custom bench, let's source this custom fabric from India and let's do this, that and the other. She pushes the boundary of like, we really need to spend the money on this, where I as a business owner, I'm like, oh, can't we just get something off the shelf that's cheaper? But that's really good to have both sides of that, if someone who's really pushing the envelope, she's right.

that to stay fresh and to stay current and to have the best stuff in our inventory, we do need to continuously be reinventing. So it's good to have that partnership because I'm obviously always worried about the bottom line, but to have somebody who is really tied to the creative, I think is really important.

Anne McGinty
So what together would you say is your vision for the future of the company?

Kelsey Sheofsky
So we are building our first permanent location in Guerneville, California, called River Electric.

It's under construction right now and will be opening in spring 2025. And that's really exciting. It's a very long standing goal of ours was to have our own location. Kind of for multiple reasons. Number one, what we do is very expensive for a party. It just is expensive to set up a hotel from scratch. There's no way around that. It just costs a lot of money. And so a lot of people cannot, who want the Shelter Co.

feel for an event or just for an overnight, can't afford to work with us. And putting something in permanently where you can just go for the night as a guest or a hotel guest, or you can rent out part of it for your corporate group or whatever, it's going to just really lower the barrier to entry, which I'm very excited about. And I think that the two companies having the permanent location plus having shelter code doing

(42:46.178)
design and rentals are going to work really well together when we need to expand the hotel, make it bigger. We can bring in tents when we need to bring in, event furnishings, we have kind of the two sides of those event needs, which I think is going to be really exciting.

Anne McGinty
So I'm super curious to know, and you can skip this if you don't want to answer, but what has been your most lucrative job?

Kelsey Sheofsky
We did a semi-permanent build for Google during the pandemic.

Lucrative in a few ways. Number one, they booked this with us in fall of 2020 when we were in the deep depths of COVID despair. Every single one of our events had canceled for the year. We were battling the government trying to get EIDL payments. And we were contacted by the team at Google. And they said, we want to figure out a way to build an outdoor meeting space so that we can start bringing people back to the office next year in a way that feels safe and airy.

So that was really amazing, number one, because it put us back to work. I'd furloughed all my staff because we had nothing to do. I was able to bring people back. And it was also like creatively super fun and exciting because we were just building this thing from scratch. We basically designed an entire event space in a parking lot and built decking, lighting, sound, tents, meeting spaces, all these different little pods for gathering. It was really cool. And then they kept it up. It is still up.

This first one is still up. It's coming down in January 24.

Anne McGinty
Wow, so it's still a rental?

Kelsey Sheofsky
Well, no. They ended up buying everything. But we've replaced tents. We've replaced the skins on tents. We've replaced furniture. So it's just been this kind of ongoing thing for the last three years that's been really great. And then that led to two other projects with them. So we did a total of three campuses doing these outdoor meeting spaces, which was amazing. And the first one, Camp Charleston,

is the most booked meeting space globally for Alphabet.

Anne McGinty
Sweet.

Kelsey Sheofsky
And the only reason it's coming down is because they're going to put it up permanently, with building permits. Because the city is like, you cannot renew this event permit anymore. It's like three years. You're not supposed to be able to leave it 10 up for more than six months, and it's been up for three years. So they're all done. But they're working internally right now to basically take that design with architects and build it.

(45:14.318)
as a permanent space.

Anne McGinty
Rad.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
So I have two more questions for you. What advice do you have for others interested in becoming event producers or who want to venture into the glamping rental business?

Kelsey Sheofsky
For event producers, my advice would be work with as many different people as you can and just get experience. There's really no way to learn the business without being in the trenches. And different companies and different producers have different philosophies on how

and how things should go. I think contacting a rental company and asking them who they like working with is a really good way to figure out who you should work with and try and get a job with because there's really bad producers out there that ride on the coattails of all the specialists they bring in. And then there's really amazing producers out there and the rental companies know exactly who is who. So I would highly recommend that if you're trying to get experience.

In terms of getting into a rental company or a camping company, it's a moving and storage company at the end of the day if you're just doing the rentals. And so you really need to have people that understand palletization, racking, moving trucks, cleaning. It's not glamorous, that side of the business. And people are always like, oh, so cool. Like, you started a camping company. No, I started a moving company. And it's a lot of work. And most of what my staff is doing

taking care of inventory, nobody's camping. So just know that that's not what you're getting into. You're getting into a moving and storage business. It's not what I was expecting.

Anne McGinty
OK, so last question here. Looking back to yourself when you were in your 20s, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Kelsey Sheofsky
If I were to be able to go back and get myself advice, it would have been to take more business classes.

I always knew I wanted to get into a creative industry, but it's business that you need to know. The creative gets layered on top of that. And so I've really learned just from trial and error over the last 12 years of business on how to run a business, but I think I would have benefited greatly from learning more of the basics of just general business had I been more exposed to it earlier on. And also just put more money into...

(47:38.238)
investments earlier, like when I was 12.

Anne McGinty (47:55.194)
Well, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your knowledge with all of us.

Kelsey Sheofsky
Thanks for having me.

Anne McGinty (47:55.194)
If you've made it this far, thanks for being here. 

Today's key takeaways. 

Where is the void? Look for the void. Kelsey noticed that events always relied on being within 30 minutes of accommodation. So she thought, what if we bring the hotel to the event and ShelterCo was born? 

Event rental supply businesses aim to make back the cost of the item within two to three rentals. 

Consider your company culture when hiring so that you can build a team that gets along well and thrives together in a work environment. For production companies, flexibility in your staff is a very helpful personal trait. 

Instead of seeing other companies as competition, look at win-win opportunities for collaboration. 

There's more information you can get in person versus just doing online research. So if you need advice, find someone to ask in person. 

Go above and beyond and always aim to do the best job possible and improve with each opportunity to increase your chances of getting repeat business. 

If you're interested in starting an event production business, contact an event rental company and ask them which event producers they prefer working with. Then try and get a job with those ones to learn by working in the trenches.

Don't burn bridges. Don't become your employer's direct competition because that can sour the relationship. Find a way to maintain the relationship while exploring opportunity in a win-win way. 

Take more business classes earlier. Other skills can be layered on top, but business is what you need to know. 

And for our younger listeners, start investing early, like when you're 12. 

I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you did, please leave me a five star review and share it with a friend. I'll be releasing episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.