August 23, 2023
Aurelio Sierra
Aurelio Sierra, 26, grew up helping his parents at Yennis Party Rentals, his family’s small event rental business in Anaheim, Calif., but he didn’t think about making it into a career until he was working in another industry that wasn’t feeding his entrepreneurial spirit. “I was working in the financial industry and still helping my parents on the weekends to deliver tables, chairs and jumpers. I was becoming distracted at work and was praying for guidance. That is when I had the vision of building on what my parents had started. I saw what other rental operators were doing. Those companies inspired and motivated me,” he says.
With the encouragement of his boss at the financial institution, he left that job in 2018 to focus on his family’s rental business. With a lot of hard work and the assistance of his wife, Arlenia, his parents, his younger brother and his team that now numbers 25, he has expanded the company’s services to where it caters to weddings, corporate events, nonprofits and trade shows. The vision to make the business bigger and better included expanding their inventory and focusing on relationships. “We have been building strong relationships with our partner catering companies, wedding coordinators and such where they can recommend us and have us be a preferred provider. Simultaneously, we have worked at ensuring we give our customers amazing rental experiences, from the reservation process to the teardown. That goes hand-in-hand with building relationships and providing that ‘wow’ experience for our customers,” says Sierra, who now serves as president of the company.
That vision also resulted in the need for a bigger facility. This June, the company moved from its 4,800-sq.-ft. warehouse in Anaheim to a 10,500-sq.-ft. warehouse in Orange, Calif. The timing of the move wasn’t the best. “We just finished graduations and were in the middle of our wedding season, but as soon as we got the green light, we moved. The new location has space for a showroom, offices and our warehouse. It also has a fenced yard, which is what we were praying for as we had three catalytic converters stolen from our trucks at our old location,” he says.
The American Rental Association (ARA) has played a key role in this transition. “I found the ARA website when I was doing my research on the event rental industry. I learned about The ARA Show™, so my wife and I went to it in Las Vegas in 2021. We got to see what ARA has to offer,” he says. That convinced him to become more involved, so he reached out to ARA of California President Jared Medaris, CERP, to see how he could help. That led to him joining the
board earlier this year. While all this change and growth is exciting, Sierra says he is most proud of “building a great team and providing a place where my team can have a good place to work and help achieve their life goals.” With a strong and cohesive team, Sierra can reach his ultimate goal of “better serving our customers with their events,” he says.
