September A Busy Month For RTO Pros; Upcoming Rent to Own Industry Events

September will be a busy month for RTO pros. The 2007 Midwest RTO Training Expo will be held in Columbus, Ohio September 11-12, 2007 at the Concourse Hotel on the Columbus International Airport property. See RTO Online's photo galleries of past Midwest RTO Expos; 2004, 2005, 2006.

RTO Online will provide coverage of both events. Please check www.rtoonline.com for updates.

In 2004, the Ohio Rental Dealers Association created the country's first regional rent to own industry tradeshow - the Midwest RTO Expo. The event focuses on training and provides participating vendors a unique opportunity to spend quality time with front line Store Managers.

The Midwest RTO Expo updated its name in 2006 to the Midwest RTO Training Expo. ORDA officials say the focus of the Expo is training, not buying. By moving away from the "convention" formula, the Training Expo has taken on a new personality - one that embraces learning, enhances relationships and provides Store Managers valuable product knowledge.

Bestway VP Benny Cheek says that teams will always outperform individuals. "Without exception, teams make better decisions," Cheek told RTO Online in a previous interview. "If you have happy employees working together in the same direction, business prospers."

Bestway's annual managers meeting is designed to reinforce the team concept. Spend more than a few minutes with Bestway president and CEO David Kraemer and you'll quickly learn his feelings on a well trained, well motivated and well compensated team.

Building strong teams has been Kraemer's focus since being named Bestway's President and CEO in 2002 after serving as executive vice president of Rent-A-Center. Kraemer's first decision as CEO was to improve employee compensation. "At the time, Bestway was not paying managers a competitive wage. People and product have been my focus since that day," he said.

Kraemer believes most of the really good ideas come from the field. His job is to bring those ideas back and spread them around. "Rent to Own is a simple business model that is difficult to execute. If co-workers on our team have the 'want-to', we're going to have the teamwork behind them to help them be successful."

Kraemer began his RTO career in 1983 as a delivery driver for 3 store operation called Leastown. The biggest change he's seen in the RTO industry in the last 23 years is professionalism driven by customer demands. "Increased competition and an ever evolving, ever more demanding consumer have forced a step-change improvement in rent to own operations."

What's in Bestway's future? "Realistically," said Kraemer in a 2006 interview with RTO Online, "we can grow Bestway to 300 locations in the next ten years."

About RTO Online
Founded in 1996, it is RTO Online's mission to keep you informed. RTO Online, Inc. is the world's leading source of rent-to-own industry trade news, editorial and business information. Our publications, both online and in print, are read by virtually every Rent to Own industry executive and owner in North America and around the world.

In addition to being the only independent source of rent-to-own industry news, RTO Online subscribers include researchers, journalists, investors and vendors who trust RTO Online to report industry events and trends accurately and in a timely fashion with honesty, integrity and passion.

RTO Online, Inc. publishes trade news, editorial and other original content on www.rtoonline.com. RTO Online, Inc. also publishes the rent-to-own industry's leading trade magazine - RTO MAGAZINE (www.rtomagazine.com), the most widely distributed print publication in the rental purchase/leasing sector.

RTO Online is the official channel for Rent-to-Own Industry News and the only independent source of news for the rent-to-own, rental-purchase, lease-purchase trade. RTO Online (Rent to Own Online) represents the choice of the entire RTO Industry for trusted information, as it happens.

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