A telephone is pretty vital yes? I think we can all agree on that.

The problem you have when running a marquee hire business is most of the time (hopefully) you’re out putting marquees up. So who answers the phone? If you’re large enough to afford office staff then well done (and pretty much stop reading now!)

Option 1. Getting a standard landline

Pros:
Having your local area code will help attract local business.

Cons:
Someone’s got to answer it or they’re expensive to redirect to a mobile. You can ask someone at home to take all calls (if it’s a full-time mum remember that a. they’ll be working harder than you most of the time! and b. screaming kids in the backround isn’t good for either side). I’m not sure what they’re called but you can have your number put through to a company that act as an office – I knew someone who used to do this and got on very well with the service. Finally I’d avoid using an answering machine, you’ll lose a lot of business.

Option 2: Use a mobile number

Pros:
Convenient, it means you can go anywhere in signal and act as an office from your car/van whilst on site.

Cons:
Companies that advertise mobiles are one-man bands, this might stop you getting larger work and growing your business

Option 3: Use an online redirectable number

Pros:
The number can follow you anywhere, easily redirected through to your mobile, landline or a messaging service (if you have to). It’s worth having two mobiles on separate networks to increase your coverage if you use this.

Cons:
You lose the local presence a local area code gives

If I was starting up again I would use an internet redirectable number and wherever I advertised the number  (website, leaflets etc) I would always put the area we covered.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

Employing people can be stressful but a necessary evil if you want to build up your large marquee hire business. When you start you can call on family and friends for a while but the novelty soon wears off for both sides.

It’s a lot easier if the people working for you are self employed, you don’t need to worry about PAYE etc but the downside is they decide the hours/days they work, they can turn round and say no to you. I think technically they should supply their own tools and shouldn’t be constantly under your direct supervision but I’m not an expert in these matters.

When you’ve got a lot of bookings and you take time to train up some staff so they don’t need you there all the time your main worry is they’ll leave halfway through the season leaving you in trouble. Our solution, and it worked very well all round, was to offer a substantial bonus to key staff. They received the bonus at the end of the season (mid September) provided they still worked for us.

A few extra points with offering a bonus:
-we deducted the cost of any tools broken by them or their team (this reduced breakages immensely!)
-although we didn’t, I know a lot of companies offer bonuses for months in which no sick days were used.  If it becomes a problem then it’s certainly something to consider.

University students are ideal labour to recruit as their holidays generally coincide with peak wedding/party marquee season and if you get a 1st year student it means he’ll come back for the following season or two.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

James from JF Marquees posted last week a link to 40 mistakes every start up makes. And it makes interesting reading:

• Point 3: “Resist diversifying too early” is an appropriate one. Don’t try and take on every job of every size initially. Specifically don’t spend a lot of your time quoting for jobs that have 500-1000 guests if you don’t have the equipment to do it. By all means sub-hire it to someone else if that’s what you want to do but make sure you concentrate your energies on your target market.
• Point 18: ‘Agonise over minutiae’ In my job I see this time and time again, people going over so many minor points with if this happened or if that happens, there comes a point when you’ve just got to take the plunge and go for it. You’ll always find a reason not to do something.
• Point 21 is very interesting as it’s basically contrary to what I’ve written on price. It’s  saying you shouldn’t beat your competition on price, you should offer better service and a more personal touch than the competition. This is certainly one approach and it’s perfectly valid, I know several people who have targeted the higher end more personalised marquee weddings and are doing very well. My argument is it’s higher risk. If you know you can undercut larger companies due to your lower costs then you can pretty much guarantee work. If you offer better personalised service then you’ll soon find you can increase your prices and still keep the work coming in as your reputation grows.
• Point 27: Also leads on to some advice Mal at Premier Party Tent offered the other day. Get a good accountant on board, they’re well worth the money. Be a little careful, some accountants believe they’re Gods gift to business (I should know, enough of my mates became accountants and preach to me about what I should be doing). Just remember this – if accountants were so good at running their own business why aren’t they doing it themselves? A bit like my articles on here -listen to the advice and pick and choose what you want . Accountants are also mentioned in points 33 & 34.
• The best quote I remember is ‘if you want to be a self-made man don’t leave out the working parts’. By all means some businesses fail and it’s not your fault but don’t let it be as a result of lack of effort, drive or hard work.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

If you’re starting up a marquee hire business you need to do your research.

The first thing to research is the competition. If your local area is swamped with small-medium marquee companies then you might need to think twice about your venture. If there’s hardly any firms or (just as good) only large companies then it’s worth setting up.

When you first start up in any business you have no reputation, the safest way to make people come to you is to undercut the competition so you need to find out their prices. This is where you’ll see if it’s worth starting up ot not, can you make a living hiring out a 6mx12m marquee (for example) for 15% less than the lowest current supplier? Remember if they’re VAT registered and you’re not then you’ll automatically be 17.5% lower than them anyway

Go through the yellow pages, thompson local and trawl online for all your local marquee hirers then sit on the phone and find out their hire charges for a particular weekend during the summer (winter will be cheaper and harder to compare like for like). I’ve mentioned before that it would be worth getting a couple of companies round pretending to be a prospective hirer to hear their sales pitch but I know a lot of people aren’t keen on this idea. When you’re successful this will happen to you (I know from experience) so my view is you might as well while you can!

The other thing to research is obviously the marquees themselves. Obviously I’m going to say all you need is available from DIY Marquees but go out and have a  good luck round at what’s out there. Then when you learn that we’re better and cheaper come back to us

Thanks for reading

Spencer

It may not be the first thing on your list but it’s one of the more interesting: -choosing a name for your new start up marquee business.

There’s lots of general information about registering your name here.

If you read about marketing you’ll hear a lot about ‘promoting your brand’ and similar ‘brand awareness’ stuff. To me that’s not too relevant to a marquee hire company but if you want to apply it go ahead.

My main focus is choosing a name, you can either go for a descriptive name (Dorking marquee hire, Sussex marquees etc), a funny/clever name (in-tents, undercover, impressive erections!) or just a name you like the sound of.

Personally I’d go for a descriptive name every time, this is purely to help you in the internet searches. Someone isn’t going to search for ‘Spencers tents’ or ‘Spencers got you covered’. They could well search for ‘Dorking marquee hire’ or ‘marquees in Surrey’ though.  That could make the difference between you succeeding or failing in your new venture.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

I’m very conscious of the fact that I describe this blog as helping people set up a marquee hire business but for most visitors it’s like coming along half way through a conversation -most articles are written assuming you’re already in business.

So what I plan to do is to write a guide on what I’d do if I was starting up a marquee hire business now, maybe split in to two angles – full-time or part-time start ups.

I’ll try to post the guide in a step by step process here then at the end I’ll put it together in a down-loadable guide.

If any experienced marquee erectors out there have suggestions of what to put in drop me a line, all suggestions welcome

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year to all of our customers, thank you for your business and I hope we  can continue helping you to be successful in 2010.

Thanks for reading

Spencer