No blog for a couple of weeks due to the bank holidays. Poor health was also a factor – can someone older and wiser than me let me know if a family of 4 can ever be completely illness free? You just seem to take turns. Anyway, back to marquees.

Cleaning marquees is a regular thing (or at least it should be!). It might only be a quick wipe on site or a full on scrub down in the yard as part of general maintenance. You need a decent cleaner to use.

We always used a generic Traffic Film Remover (TFR). It’s like concentrated washing up liquid that you water down in a spray or power washer.

UnoChem now produce a specific marquee cleaner which might be worth a try. I haven’t used it myself, I don’t know if it produces heaven in a jay cloth or adds nothing to your elbow grease. But it’s aimed at marquee people. We are marquee people. I thought it might be worth a try.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

First off don’t worry. It’s incredibly rare to have any problem and even then they’re generally minor things.

If you’re starting up a marquee hire business you’re probably worrying about:

• The marquees blowing away – make sure they’re always well anchored down. We never had this happen to us and I don’t know any hire business this has happened to.
• Not being paid for the job. If you take a small deposit but then have the balance payable when the marquees up but before it’s used then you never have any bad debts (don’t allow any exceptions). It’s easy getting payment when you can still take the marquee down, if you leave it until after the event you have no leverage.

Realistically the only problem we really encountered (and to be honest it did happen a couple of times a year) is the customer complaining that the marquee roofs are dirty. If you put a marquee up under a tree when it rains all the dirt drips down off the leaves on to your marquee, this is the main cause of dirt building up. If it’s in your busiest time of year and it’s going straight back up you just don’t get time to clean it.
The solution? We’d give the customer a roof lining for free.This covered the dirty roof and the customer’s also happy because they’re getting a higher spec marquee than they’re paying for.

I was always reluctant to knock money off to solve any problem, you end up haggling and compromising so neither of you are happy and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Are people going to recommend you afterwards?

At the end of the day a happy customer has always got to be your goal, you need to do whatever you need (within reason) to make sure every customer is happy. You’d be amazed, some of our best recommendations came from people who’d originally complained but we’d sorted it out for them.

I’m a firm believer that you see the true side of a business (and a person) when things go wrong, make sure you react well and your reputation will only benefit from it.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

With most parts of the country suffering ‘a bit of rain’ recently cleaning your marquees suddenly shoots up your to-do list. And rightly so, storing your marquees away when wet ages them very quickly, especially windows.

Firstly, there are two types of dirt you get on marquees

1. There’s dirt that gets splashed on: Mud splattered on the sides,food thrown against the walls and leaves blown down on to the roof are all like this. This kind of dirt is relatively easy to wash off.
2. A grey film builds up on to marquee covers over time. This makes the marquee look old and ‘tired’ and is a bit harder to clean off.

For splashed on mud you need to get hold of a power washer and a big tub of traffic film remover (TFR – basically concentrated washing up liquid, available from auto factors and used for cleaning lorry sides). Steam cleaners make life a bit easier compared to power washers but they’re a lot more expensive and a lot more problematic (I speak from experience).

So just power wash the dirt off using diluted TFR. For stubborn marks pour some undiluted TFR on and leave it for 5/10mins, then wash off.

Easy huh? Remember to always take a small tub of TFR in a plant spray with a cloth or sponge to every job just in case you tread on a wall or something when putting it up (it also looks good to the customer to see you ensuring their marquee is clean for them).

Then we come on to the grey film that builds up (a lot of people think this is just the material aging like canvas but it’s not and can be cleaned off to look like near-new).

To clean this off you need to spray the TFR quite strongly over the area and leave it for 5 mins. When you come back you need to ‘irritate’ the grey film to lift it off the surface for which you need a stiff brush or broom. If you’ve got a lot to do we used to use an electric floor cleaner (like you see cleaning supermarkets etc). Once you’ve gone over the whole area just wash it all off with your power washer and hey presto -back to (nearly) new!

There are a couple of exceptions to this second part.

• window material shows scratches so don’t go over any transparent section with a brush or floor cleaner, just wipe it as thoroughly as possible by hand.
• if your marquee uses ‘pvc backed’ material rather than ‘pvc laminate’ (which is what we use) then only use the brush/floor cleaner on the non-pvc backed side. PVC backing as a product is fine but if you start attacking it with a brush or floor cleaner it might start to flake away. That would be bad.

Basically the better you look after your equipment the longer it will be before you come back to us for replacements so the more money you make. It’s also offering your customers a better service, which is never a bad thing.

Thanks for reading

Spencer