I charge a rental fee for anything that I would like returned (pillars, plates, wooden cake boards, etc). This fee is refundable when they bring it back to me within 7 days. It's all in my contract. Lately, my customers don't care about returning anything back to me. My rental fee is high enough to where I thought that customers would want their money back. My problem is this, I do not live in the US, I live in Japan and it takes a while for me to get these supplies restocked. The wooden cake boards, I can get at the local hardware store, no problem, just a pain to have to go out and buy one ever week as of late and have it cut to the size I need. Any suggestions to what else I can do, or should I just suck it up and keep replacing my supplies? Thanks.

Wow that's terrible! I guess you should raise your rental fee/refund to a price where they will not want to lose the money and you will have enough to restock plus a profit.... make it ridiculous if you have to....

Or just call it a rental fee but look at it as a sale. Just make sure you charge as if it were a sale. And you may just have to stock up on a few cake boards.

Rental fee is the cost of them being allowed to use the item.

A deposit is money held to insure the item is returned to the baker.

So if all you are charging is a rental fee that is returned then you are letting them use your equipment for nothing. Is that your intent? This is like buying a prom dress, wearing it to the prom and returning it the next day for a full refund. They got to wear the dress for free.

If that is NOT your intent, then what should be happening is a rental fee should be charged for use USE of the equipment PLUS a deposit to insure the return of the equipment being used.