Deciding how much anchoring a marquee needs is not an exact science, generally it comes from experience and obviously you should always be on the cautious side when deciding how many anchoring points to put on a marquee.

Our tie down kits allow for one tie down per leg but there are many other factors to consider:

• The quality of the ground, if the ground is very soft you will need more (or larger) anchoring points than usual
• The area immediately around the marquee, if it is surrounded by high wind-breaking obstacles then you can use less anchoring points than usual
• The surrounding area, being in the middle of a field on top of a hill will require more anchoring points than usual
• How the marquee is to be used, a marquee without sides (effectively a large umbrella) will require a lot more anchoring than usual
• The weather forecast will also influence your decision

This information is supposed to help not intimidate any one starting up, for nearly every marquee job you take on our standard tie down kit will be more than enough. But for those odd occasions these are things you need to be aware of, if you turn up to a job on a beach or sand-school or if the weather is very bad consider adding additional anchoring points. If the weather is good and the marquee is secluded then you can probably allow less.

Out tie down kits use larger stakes than the industry average, they have better quality and stronger ratchet straps and also include a figure of eight strap for secure fixing to the marquee.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

There were a number of ways people would try to negotiate down the price of a marquee:

1. Negotiating for a much larger order than they will ever place

This is where a customer will ask you to quote for a lot of equipment and negotiate for a discount based on the large quantity. They then only book a small portion of it based on the same percentage discount (say an unlined marquee with flooring rather than several marquees with linings, lighting and furniture).

This can be a difficult one to handle as once you’ve got a deposit for a marquee booking in you don’t necessarily want to turn it away. As a precaution if you do decide to offer any discount on an order then always add the caveat ‘discount is based on the complete order’ to give yourself room to manoeuvre at a later stage.

2. The promise of a bigger order to follow

“If this goes well there’s a really big booking in 4 months time that we’ll need” -this one is used a LOT in the marquee hire industry. The promise of one or more bookings to come and how you should offer a discount based on all those future bookings.

This was used so often I just ignored it and treated each booking on it’s own merits. If people are going to book you again in the future then just say that you will then offer a discount off that one.

3. Staying silent

This is a standard tactic they teach on negotiating courses, when discussing figures and trying to agree on a price  they will suddenly just keep silent. This creates an awkward silence that a decent and polite person (that’s you) will fill using lower numbers than previously offered.

The solution? Also stay silent -trust me it’s fun! Yes it can feel awkward but eventually one of you will start talking again and you can carry on without such nonsense.

4. Keeping you waiting for an appointment.

This is a power thing as much as a negotiating trick and is very popular in large companies. They will make a fixed appointment but when you turn up to their reception you’re left waiting around. It’s a show of power that they’re in control and you’ve got to wait for them to be ready.

Again this is a difficult one to handle. I always used to stick it out but refuse to do any kind of discount when it came to negotiating. If someone did it these days then I would be out the door muttering and swearing under my breath after 10 minutes!

With the marquee hire industry discounts out of season are the norm, discounts during peak season are very rare.

I hope this helps, thanks for reading.

Spencer