DIY Marquees is part of C & D King Ltd, a company that has been manufacturing for over 30 years. Originally the manufacturing of clothing was bigger than marquees but over the years the balance has reversed.

Over Xmas I found some photographs from the early years..

This is c 1983 and we think the first marquee built by us. A lot of work for a 3x6m!

This is c 1984. The marquee in the background is likely to have been the 3rd or 4th one we built/sold (a bit different to the thousands we have sold since!).

Circled top left is Mary who had just joined after leaving school. Mary is now head of production and responsible for much of the smooth running of the company. Bottom right is lil’ ol me. Also featured are my brother, mother & grandparents. Quite the family company!

Thanks for reading – we’ll be back to normal marquee hire advice shortly!

Spencer

To the sound of a single party popper, the hurried scoffing of a jam doughnut and cries of ‘get back to work!’ we’re celebrating our anniversary.

Although I’d written about marquees in a few other places previously it was 5 years ago that we decided to put everything in one place and add this blog to our website. It was hoped that amongst all of the marquee drivel that spouted forth people may sieve their own nugget of useful information. It has generally proved very successful and as a result of this and our other advice there are now hundreds more members of the marquee hire community.

30 years ago my parents (the ‘C’ and ‘D’) decided they had best formalise the business they’d been running for the last few years in to a limited company before it grew completely out of control. To give you an idea of my status at this point I knew the ‘D’ stood for Dad but couldn’t work out what the ‘C’ stood for..

Thank you to all of our customers over that time, thank you to all of the staff we’ve had the pleasure of working alongside and especially thank you to the ladies who have been with us throughout the life of the business. These are the ladies who were in charge of me as a kid but who (technically if not practically) I’m in charge of now in one of those strange relationships you get in a second generation family business.

As always thank you for reading, my suggested solution to the previous post will be next week at which point normal service will be resumed.

Spencer

Where to begin?

I’ve been involved with marquees all my working life -I started a hire company at 18, building it up into one of the leading hire companies in the South East. A few years ago I suffered a bad back injury which meant retiring from putting marquees up – I have since taken over the family manufacturing firm so I’m now involved with making marquees and linings.

It also means I’m in charge of people who have seen me grow up since childhood -very odd!

The aim of this blog is to help people setting up a hire company avoid the mistakes I made. I’m not arrogant enough to think I know everything and I always appreciate peoples thoughts and opinions especially if they’re contrary to mine. I just want to help people out -oh, and if you want to buy a DIY Marquee that’d be good too 🙂
Spencer