Fashion Contrast

Reddit has been in the news recently with a user posting pictures of himself engaged in some kind of heroin raddled encounter with a silly girl living of the back of her Dad’s music career and her mothers overdose. You probably know who I’m talking about. Reddit is however probably one of my favorite sites on the internet presently. Filled to the brim with juicy morsels of ‘web goodness’ and indeed badness.

Every so often there is a fairly interesting “Ask Me Anything” section, usually a member of the community higher up in a company than others or maybe even a UFC cage fighter who answers questions on how easy it to break someones leg – you should get the gist.

An interesting “AMA” was from a “Co-owner of an exotic car rental company“. Some of the more interesting points or should I say questions answered are listed below.

• You could be a massive executive with lots of money, but without the correct experience you can’t hire a car.
• Once you start a rental company you start hating your own countries attempt at car creation and tend to enjoy other brands more.
• Having old ‘exotic’ cars is not a good idea. The market suggests that people want modern fancy over old fashioned, sophisticated.
• Insurance doesn’t always pay out. Hense why this company does credit checks up to $100,000 just in case…
• Strange rental requests include : Car being at a certain temperature when pick up occurs.
• Cars are sold when the cost of upkeep gets close to how much they make of a rental. Depreciation can also be a factor. Cars are apparently then sold onto smaller car hire brokers or, ‘blokes who want a sports car but can’t afford new’

He has a car in his hand.

For some companies rising fuel costs might trigger and increase in prices for the products offered. This however does not seem to be the case for China’s wedding car rental firms.

Thanks in part to a 40% drop in demand for wedding car rental vehicles a survey from the (wait for the long title) Committee of Wedding Service Industries of China Association of Social Workers is suggesting that the price of hiring a wedding car has dropped by 15% even though the price of oil in China has risen to just over 480 Yuan per ton last month. The survey also informs that the demand as previously stated has dropped by 40%.

He Jing a manager for the Xijiaxi Wedding Company has said she has been forced simply to drop her prices. One of the cars of choice for a couples ‘big day’ has always been the Lincoln Town Car, which I have never heard of. Usually rented for 7,000 Yuan a day the maximum she can now ask for the car is 4,000 Yuan a day.

We used to rent out more than 100 cars in one day last year, but there have been no more than 30 cars requested at a time even during the wedding season this year. The market demand for rental cars has been shrinking a lot this year, so we put our business focus on other wedding services such as performance and wedding photography. If customers ask for cars, sometimes we rent them out lower than they really cost.

According to the formerly mentioned, ridiculously long titled committee – the market is shrinking because there are too many car rental firms and couples were taking their business to the car clubs which they where members of, as they can apparently provide many more cars in more models. An equally interesing point made by the committee was that couples “prefer to have more interesting activities in the wedding ceremony, rather than the pre-wedding motorcade

Li Xiaobel a 27 year old HR officer, made this also fairly obvious but nonetheless interesting point:

At the most recent ceremony I attended the couple did not splash out on a fancy motorcade instead opted to spend more money on the actual ceremony, which was held like a movie in a fancy Western restaurant – I think it is a great idea to save money on the wedding ceremony. Usually I can remember what the bride and groom did in the wedding ceremony rather than what car they drove

I personally believe this to be a sign of the times and how as generations pass on, less emphasis is put on driving the streets in a flashy car, more concerned with providing the guests of the wedding a ‘flashy/tacky’ experience. My mind has not been made up, but one thing I’m certain of is that when that dreaded day comes where I finally have to settle down, I for one, will definitely have the car that I want transporting me around my city!

Refs

• China Daily – Wedding Motorcades fall out of fashion

I recently wrote about eco cars which are outside my office. For the Post please visit here.

As of today I can definately say that on weekdays I have never seen these cars in action! car rental seems not to be working right now, or could it be that there is little in the way of publicity for excellent schemes such as this – I might right a letter of complaint to the local council.

Come on local council PYFO