It's Party Time!
Pacific Party Canopies
Works Hard at Having Fun

by Michael Barrett

In the spring of 1989, Jim Baker and Greg Greenfield erected a tent along the highway in Oak Harbor with a sign reading: “Rent Me.” Along the way, they acquired lots of customers, larger tents, more equipment and plenty of business savvy. Today, Pacific Party Canopies is one of the largest companies north of Seattle that rents party equipment of all kinds.

That, too, could change soon, since the biggest push they’ve made since those lean, mercenary days — a move into the Seattle area — is about to commence.

“We’re setting our sights on the Seattle market, hitting our competition more head on,” Baker says. “There may be some problems with the economy, but we’re acting like things are going to smooth right out.”

Pacific Party Canopies (PPC) is a million-dollar-plus business that employs 20 full-time workers — a number that goes up in the summer season to more than 40 — and a fleet of seven trucks and vans. It’s now located in the old SKAT bus barn at 380 Pease Road in Burlington. None of this was true just 10 years ago — or even five.

“(In the early ’90s,) we had our stuff stored in an unheated garage with one calendar on the wall, a desk in the corner and an answering machine,” notes Baker. “Customers didn’t see us. But our trucks (by then a panel truck and an old Ryder rental Ford F700) looked good.”

 

Company’s steady growth

PPC could write the primer on “slow and steady growth” for small companies. Its chart line is as straight and upward as a tent’s guyline.

Greenfield grew up in the family business that supplied rental equipment — Island Rentals in Anacortes and Oak Harbor — and teamed up with Baker, a Navy man from Olean, N.Y., who also worked at Island Rentals. Baker had had experience with tents, setting them up for his sister’s auctioneer/husband on the East Coast. The brother-in-law was repeatedly asked to loan out his tent, and Baker “saw it as an opportunity to be in the rental business.” But it wasn’t until his partnership with Greenfield that PPC got its start.

“Both Greg and I kept our day jobs and put up the tents at night,” recalls Baker, who later also worked at ABC Yachts in Anacortes. “We put up the tent along the road in Oak Harbor with two signs, one saying ‘Rent Me’ and the other with the phone number. That was effective advertising. Our first customer was the grand opening of Old Salt’s Deli and Market at Skyline and after that we did weddings, backyard parties and more store openings.”

They charged $150 — a cheap price in those early days.

Next came a challenging job for the Rotary Club of Anacortes in which special provisions had to be made to anchor the pegs into the street’s 18 inches of concrete. Right on the heels was a bigger assignment for the Waterfront Festival’s Taste of Anacortes, followed by scores of other jobs.

“We had a can-do attitude,” Baker observes. “People would ask us if we can do it, and we’d say, ‘Yes, we can pull that off.’ Sometimes it would mean working well into the middle of the night to get it done.”

By 1992, the company was sound enough for them to go it full time. They’d been acquiring tents and equipment — a larger size for each bigger job — until they had nowhere to store it all.

“Sometimes we’d have to keep the tents in an old Ford Courier we’d restored to haul things around in,” Baker recalls.

To save money, they’d buy materials to make their own tent poles, and when necessary, they would combine tents to enlarge the venue. One time, “we bought a 60x60 tent to do a job at Texaco but needed one 60x90, which we could do using another tent. When it was over, we didn’t have a place to store everything. We were desperate for space.”

They moved to 1658C Old Highway 99 South, next to Prime West, in 1994, but outgrew that location in just a few years. When they heard the bus barn was moving to its new home north of Burlington, Baker and Greenfield decided to take that space. A walk-through there indicates Pacific Party Canopies is fast growing and short of space again.

 

Expanding the business

While Jim and Greg were in south Mount Vernon, they decided they’d expand the business beyond the one-tent-at-a-time growth they’d enjoyed and started their own espresso stand. It didn’t last.

“We even went to barista school,” Baker recalls. “One thing we learned, though: Do one thing and do it well.”

They have stuck to the tent-rental business ever since, although they’ve expanded to include other rental equipment used at various events, including chairs, tables, dance floor, etc.

The company grew enough to bring aboard new people. Jeff Watts joined in April 1995 and is now field services manager. Laura Stewart also joined the team that year and is still there. More seasonal and full-time workers were necessary to help in setups and warehousing. They even invested in their first computer.

“When we moved to Burlington, we brought everything together under one room,” Baker states. “We were told we were undercapitalized. I didn’t even know what undercapitalized was! I was the primary salesperson and Greg was the nuts-and-bolts guy. It was a crazy time.”

They since have expanded their fleet again, bought a commercial sewing machine to repair tent damage, purchased an 8,000-square-foot tent for $30,000 to bolster their inventory, and they don’t go to the woods to cut their poles much any more but buy them ready-made.

The latest venture will be to enter the lucrative but competitive Seattle market.

“We’ve grown up,” Baker declares. “Our vision is not to stand still or have a glass ceiling but to continue to grow. We’ve been looking at the figures for the last two years and it’s started to flatten out.

“We make our leaps incrementally, although the move from Mount Vernon to Burlington was herky-jerky. But I want people who work here to be comfortable. We’re healthy right now — financially, we’re healthy. We’re going to be fine through next season. The economy will come around and we’ll roll with the punches.”