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| African Americans: Voices of Triumph A Heritage of African Leadership |
| Time Life Books, April 1994 |
| An Excerpt from the "The Power of Enterprise" Section: Sandra Williams Bate The year was 1973, and the Arab oil embargo had put a quietus on motor-home sales. Sandra wanted to sell her recreation vehicle (RV) – a luxurious Laguna 250 – but found no takers. Then 20-year-old Sandra had one of those blindingly brilliant flashes: Why not rent it out? She put an advertisement in the Los Angeles papers – and the phone rang off the hook until the whole summer was booked by people who wanted the Laguna just for a week or two. It was a first in the field. Yet Sandra Bate might have let it pass. However, her parents had always pushed their children to be, as she puts it, "more than average – to be better than we thought we were." Within a year, Sandra Bate was coordinating the rental of 60 privately owned motor homes and hired four people to help. Costs were low; rates were reasonable; and at a 40/60 split with owners, the money came rolling in. Then she made a mistake that almost sank her. Bate decided to acquire a lot and service rentals. That labor-intensive job gobbled up the profits; worse, vandals kept breaking into the vehicles. She went back to being a broker and started refining her idea. Quality control remained critical, naturally. It was no easy matter to line up reliable independent service centers that would check out motor homes offered for lease, then keep them road worthy. Bate offered 10 percent of her fee, plus the cost of repairs to be borne by the owners. After considerable trial and error, she assembled a first-rate team. To broaden her market, she hooked her company up with the airlines and travel industry. Inclusion in the industry's Consolidated Tour Manual meant that she was listed with 22,000 travel agents in 125 countries. Today, Bates Motor Home Rental Network is a multi-million-dollar enterprise headquartered in Las Vegas. Its computers hold all the details on 4,000 RVs in a hundred U.S. cities and 18 foreign countries. The rentals start at around $500 a week for a 23-footer and climb to $1,200 for a 32-footer that sleeps six. Bate's customer list includes movie stars and the U.S. Secret Service, but the bulk of here clients are tourists. Europeans in particular enjoy taking along the comforts – and cuisine – of home as they travel around. Sandra Bate thinks she might build her brainstorm into a $20 million business eventually. "Set your goals," she advises others. "Make the commitments, and stick with them until they become a reality." |
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