Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM APRIL 2021 52 I t began with TVs – mostly 19-inch portables and some 25-inch consoles. No remotes – not yet. Then VCRs came along and bam! Rent-to-own – which wasn't yet even officially called that – had found its first dream product. VCRs were the perfect rental item. They were complicated enough to require delivery and installation, but compact enough to fit into a customer's car trunk in a bind. The machines went out, they came back, they went out, came back ... the cycle continued, and America's rental-dealer pioneers were in business. That's how the illustrious business called RTO began more than four decades ago. It's also where the idea of a real trade association for the business took root. Rent-to-own started to look like an enterprise with a future. And then came Ed Winn III. Winn's entrée into rent-to-own began almost exactly 40 years ago in October 1980 with a simple talk about government regulations to a small group of rental dealers, who then decided it was time to launch their trade association and hired Winn on the spot. And that is how the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations – APRO – and its General Counsel Ed Winn became intimately entangled for the next two-score years. Winn has claimed he probably wouldn't have made it as an attorney without RTO; it's all but definite that rent-to-own wouldn't have made it as an industry without Winn. In the 1980s APRO was established and faced the definition of its members' transactions: was it a lease or sale? On this issue, they all agreed they wanted to be defined and regulated as a lease transaction. Almost as soon as the association was official, APRO representatives went directly to Washington, D.C. to seek a satisfactory resolution to their top-priority lease-versus-sales issue. They met with the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve Board, and by 1983 a federal bill regulating rent-to-own transactions – with just six disclosures and definition as a lease under federal law – passed the U.S. Senate with a vote of 94-0. And then it died a silent death in the U.S. House. Without the relatively quick hoped-for fix from Capitol Hill, APRO turned to the states to pass favorable RTO measures. Today rental dealers in 47 U.S. states enjoy the type of safe legal environment that allows them and their bankers to sleep peacefully at night. With the great lease-versus-sale wars pretty well settled for the past decade-plus, relative newcomers to the RTO industry might think the association's main role nowadays is as a sort of insurance – with minimum maintenance, it's there if you need it. But challenges to the industry continue, and today APRO is helping its members navigate a shapeshifting rent-to-own terrain, thanks to the influx of online everything. A significant "changing of the guard" at APRO has also happened since the association's latest big anniversary: Jill McClure took over as Executive Director in 2017, following the previous director's 28-year leadership run. "Jill has built her own team and is a true association executive – it's clear in the way she manages the organization. Jill came with a skillset and a philosophy about how a trade association should function and how it should be run. So APRO is a much tighter ship than it ever has been, and it's making for smoother sailing for everyone," Winn says. That's a good thing, considering how 2020 has come at us. The COVID-19 crisis blindsided rental dealers the same way it did the rest of the business world, but a clear issue quickly emerged, requiring clear-cut clarification: Do rent-to-own companies qualify as "essential businesses"? APRO went to work. "Regulations regarding shutdowns were coming out all over the map," recalls Winn. "There were federal recommendations, state recommendations, recommendations from county health departments and city leaders. They were coming fast and furious, and looking at the language, we concluded RTO must be essential." So APRO responded to every single regulatory effort it came across, issuing dozens of alerts and helping individual dealers establish exactly why rent-to-own companies should be considered and treated as essential. "I think the rent-to-own industry is bigger, better, and more ethical than it would have been had APRO not helped lead the way toward making this an authentically respectable business," concludes Winn. "APRO members have shared both common goals and common nemeses, and have come together as few other industries, ever. This is a vital and progressive organization that began with the industry's best interests at heart, and it continues today with those very same interests in the very same place." And what wisdom does rent-to-own's favorite soothsayer have to impart about the future prospects of the business we call RTO? "Well, we're thriving during a global pandemic," Winn quips. "So, yep, business is good, and I see no reason for that to change." APRO AT 40 Kristen Card has been a contributing writer for APRO for more than 15 years. RO Kristen Card Rent-to-Own Trends

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