I was out to dinner the other night with a few friends, one of whom was new to the group. When he asked what I did for a living I advised that I was in the equipment leasing business. One of his immediate responses was – “who would lease? It’s expensive and only for those that don’t have the resources to purchase or borrow from conventional sources such as a bank.”
His comments reminded me of one of my first experiences in the leasing business. Much to my surprise, I was approached by a charter bank to lease a fax machine for a particular branch in downtown Halifax. It seemed the bank’s head office had mandated that there should be no capital expenditures of any dollar-amount for the next nine months. Unfortunately, the branch had a broken fax machine and the poor manager was under siege from his employees to replace the unit in order to increase productivity. Meanwhile, his superiors were demanding more efficiency and therefore greater branch profitability. Even though it was for a small dollar amount, Econolease came to the rescue by tailoring a 24-month lease for the required piece of equipment. This allowed the branch to make monthly payments out of their petty cash without undertaking a capital purchase. Problem solved.
Over the years I’ve had other financial institutions lease equipment from us – coffee machines for their cafeteria, fitness equipment for their call centers, and furniture for their boardrooms. So, when confronted with the comment that leasing is for those that “don’t have enough resources to purchase”, I often ask if they have more money than their bank, and then tell them the story of the bank that leased a fax machine. Leasing is not dependent upon the size of your bank account, it’s how you choose to use it. This was a true measure of how Econolease thought outside the bank.
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