Congratulations, a wise choice.But where to begin?

Research: You need to look into who you’re targeting, what competition you face and the quality of marquees you want to buy.

Target Market: Weddings, parties, country fairs or maybe all 3. Weddings require a better quality finish (interior linings, flooring etc) than country fairs who generally just need a cover out of the rain.

Your competition: Check online, check yellow pages, get your competitors brochures or any literature you can to see what they offer -don’t introduce yourself yet, you may want them to come and do a site visit for you (I’ll expand on this later).

Quality of marquees: The quality of marquees varies greatly, though mostly it comes down to the thickness and type of material used in the roof (walls are less important). You should also consider upgrades -if you want to expand into the wedding market you MUST be able to offer linings.

Finally you need to consider what your budget is likely to be. Put together all the costs, how much you can charge per hire (slightly less than your competitors I’d suggest) so that you’re aware of how many hires are required until you’re in profit.

We believe our DIY Marquees are the ideal entry level into marquee hire. They offer excellent returns on investment whilst being suitable for any event – unlined marquees for fairs & fetes or add a lining for parties and wedding marquees.

Thanks for reading

When we ran a marquee hire business my dream was always to have a large yard with everything loaded by forklifts. It strikes me as the most efficient way of running the business and we were probably a year or two away from accomplishing it when I had to ‘retire hurt’.

So is this what you should aim for in the long term? Well now I’m not so convinced – if you save up for a commercial property the costs don’t stop there, you have to pay council tax at 40% of the estimated rental income. To give you some idea if you’re paying £15k rent for a commercial unit you then need to find another £6k for council tax (even if you actually own the unit and don’t rent you still have to pay council tax).

So what’s the solution? Well it depends on where you are on the size scale for a marquee hire business.

If you’re just starting out or you’ve only got a handful of marquees then I’d always recommend using your garage, shed or a trailer for storage. Make sure you don’t upset your neighbours so they don’t compain about you running a business from home.

If you’ve outgrown your garage/shed then you need to find somewhere else to store your equipment. If you’re offering furniture and dance floors it won’t take long before you need to find more storage.

My advice is to approach local farms and see if you can rent one of their buildings. Rent is generally cheap, they probably won’t have planning permission for commercial use so again you want to keep a low profile but it does mean you won’t have to pay council tax. Make sure you use your own padlocks -barns will never be as secure as commercial property or even your garage.

Thanks for reading

Spencer

My original title for this was ‘how to think when running a marquee hire business’ but I thought two things

- I don’t want to tell anyone how to think
- If anyone told me how to think they wouldn’t get a very good reception!

I’m talking about what stock to buy and how to use it. My suggested approach is simply to look at every factor when you consider buying something.

Sound obvious? Well there’s a lot of hire businesses out there that don’t so I figured it was worth mentioning. Here are the main things I’d consider:

• Initial price
• Storage space (both in store and in transit)
• Labour time and number of people (setting furniture up, connecting up electrics etc)
• Life expectancy

Initial price

Pretty self explanatary, this is how much it costs (include delivery etc).

Be careful – a lot of salesman think you operate on a 100% profit basis. I remember someone selling me advertising once said ‘if you’re getting £1000 per hire then all you need is two bookings to make this £1600 advert worth it’. I then had to explain about labour. transport, insurance and every other cost you encounter when running a business. But then I can’t talk as even we do it! We advertise our marquees saying you’ll be in profit in 2 hires but realistically with the other costs involved it’ll actually be 3 or 4 hires (which I still think is quite impressive).

Storage space

It’s no good earning £20,000 a year if storage and transport costs you £25,000. It’s for this reason that if Iwas starting again I’d think twice about stocking furniture. It takes up a lot of room in storage, it can fill a van up on it’s own and isn’t that lucrative – if there’s a good furniture hire company nearby I’d negotiate a discount with them and get them to do all my furniture.

Labour time & number of people

Again pretty self explanatory and probably the easiest thing to dimiss when costing out a new product as it’s ‘only’ your own time. Take chandeliers as an example – our double chandelier package costs £280 + VAT currently and most hire companies will charge £100 to £150 per hire for them. Put in the fact that they take up very little space in storage and they seem a no-brainer BUT they take at least 30mins to set up (longer the first time or if the power source is awkward). If you’re putting marquees up in evenings then this could add on time you don’t have.

You also need to think about the number of people needed for anything. It doesn’t matter how organised you are at some point you’ll be out on site with only one other person -this is actually why we make our marquee frames out of 38mm pipe, if we made it out of the next size up (50mm) then 2 people just couldn’t put it up on their own, you’d need 3 or 4 people at least. Besides 38mm is very strong and we use vertical and horizontal roof braces to strengthen the structure so there’s no need to use 50mm -the best of both worlds
Life expectancy

What’s the thing going to be worth in a few years time? How many years/hires are you likely to get out of it? Going back to chandeliers we had chandeliers that were 10 years old and still worked and looked fine (make sure they’re not knocking about in the van). Something like carpet however you’ll only get a few hires out of.

I hope this is of interest to you guys, I realise it all sounds like common sense but it’s very easy to get carried away in any hire business thinking you must buy everything straight away or you must buy the strongest possible.

If you wanted the best possible finish for a wedding then you’d build something out of brick with bespoke furniture inside. Marquees are by their nature a compromise, it’s creating the inside outside in a way that looks great but can be packed up in a van and put up again for the following weekend.

Thanks for reading

Spencer.

This is a question I get asked often and my response is nearly always the same – don’t throw a large amount of money at it to start with.

Now this might be a little surprising considering my position, surely it’s in our interest to sell someone as much equipment as possible? Well yes, but we take a longer term view -if we look after you then when you expand or need to replace stock you’ll come back to us for more. If you turn tound afte a year with a lot of stock that you’ve never used then you won’t think much of my recommendations!
Basically I’d suggest something around £3000 to start with if you’re starting it up on a part-time basis:

Our silver package for marquees (£2000)
A Website (£180)
Local advertising (£300)*
Vehicle/trailer/transport (£500)*
* Depending in what you choose and have available this may be more/less

This is based on someone starting a business slowly and buying more marquees as needed – when our delivery time is generally 2-3 days from stock it makes life a lot easier to expand!

If you need a large return straight away and you’re doing this full time then obviously you’ll need more marquees to start with (this is what our gold package is aimed at).

Thanks for reading

Spencer

For those who have already started up a business you can read smugly or skip this and wait for next weeks read

As the saying goes if you want to be a self-made man (or woman) don’t leave out the working parts. There’s no doubt that working for yourself can be bloody hard work, but it’s enjoyable and a hell of a lot more satisfying than working for someone else. So what’s stopping you?

Attitude? We all know someone who talks a good game. When applied to business they’re always ‘just about to make it big’ or have an idea that’ll make them a millioniaire. In reality these kinds of people will do too much research and the fire will fizzle out before they start up another dream, this is repeated several times until all they’re left with is looking in hindsight about how it was just bad luck they didn’t make it big.

Don’t make this mistake! To start up a marquee hire business (or any business) you need to be a doer not a talker. I’m all for doing research but structure it sensibly, work backwards. Say to yourself:

• I want to be in business by ….. (say 6 months time-could be much less, shouldn’t be much more unless you’ve got a VERY good reason)
• I need to make a decision on what marquees I want to buy and how I’m going to approach it by … (say 3 months time -this leaves enough time to buy equipment, set up a website and do other advertising before launch)
• That leaves me with … (3 months) to do research. During which time you spend every spare minute doing research, speaking to as many people as possible in the industry finding out useful information.
• Make decisions, do it, go for it.

Being your own boss is incredibly satisfying, but it rewards people who get out there and make things happen for themselves, not (at least very rarely) those who sit back wanting it all to be handed to them.

Intimidated?
It can be a little scary. But there’s lots of people out there who’ll help you. Small business advisers in banks are okay but can be biased towards their products (as they work on commission), places like Business Link are there to help people like you.

It doesn’t help when you get idiots/car salesman contestants on programs like The Apprentice who talk about ‘being in business’ as being members of some closed-shop religion or sect. Absolute rubbish. They don’t know all about business. I don’t know all about business. Peter Jones might know all about business.

My point is that you don’t need to know a damn thing about business as long as you’re willing to learn and put some hours in anyone can do it. And that includes you

To follow on from last week – we used large ifor williams trailers to transport equipment. Rack the back out to take long poles and have compartments at the front to take the canvas. Don’t buy triple axle trailers, they can take the same gross weight as double axle ones but you’ve taken some of that weight up with another axle. So a triple axle trailer actually takes LESS weight than a double axle one!

Thanks for reading

Spencer