We get asked this question at least once a week, so I thought I'd arnwser it for everyone who wanted to know.
We buy from the best in the business as we need our equipment to last due to wear and tear of daily use in our hire company, you may be able to find cheaper alternatives but we wouldn't recommend this.
The breakdown is for a complete set up of a small bouncy castle:
- 10ft x 12ft Bouncy castle £895 + Vat
- Bouncy castle fan / blower £120 + Vat
- Bouncy castle anchor pegs £30 + Vat
- 4 x Safety Mats £160
- Heavy duty ground sheet £49
- Waterproof extension lead £50
- Sack barrow trolley £95
- Public liability insurance £80
- Pipa or competent person test £65
Total: £1777
If you was to hire the bouncy castle out with a return of £50 per hire, you wouldn't start to get a return until your 37 hire and this doesn't even include time, fuel, veichel expenses so lets round it up to 50 hires, that's around a year before you see a return. The reason being is Saturday is the main day you receive hires where Sunday's and week day's are more like bonus bookings when they come in, there is also no guarantee you will get the bouncy castle booked out every weekend especially if your just starting out, competition in this business is high just like all trades people see it as good way to earn extra cash and normally turn up overnight.
We have built our business from the bottom up due to many year's of hard work and dedication working every weekend with another full time job in the week to able to now operate our business as a full time job.
We really enjoy our business as it really is family business we all get stuck in and help out, like cleaning and maintaining everything to my kids helping me deliver bouncy castles for party's and events, to the hub of our business my wife who takes and manages all the bookings. I was brought up in this industry so working weekend's and unsociable hours is nothing new to me and I've made it work to suit our family lifestyle.
If you can work every single weekned and change your weekend to 2 day's in the week, handle collecting wet bouncy castles and spending 3 day's in the week cleaning them ready for the next weekend it may be the perfect job for you. I'm not writing this blog to give you tips more the reality of the job - I enjoy my job and wouldn't change it for anything, but it's not for everyone as I personally know people who have started in this business and stopped trading within less then a year or 2 and this is mainly due to hidden side, like maintaining equipment, working late day's, storage costs etc etc.
Pros:
- Good living wage
- Being your own boss
- Job satisfaction
- Working outdoors
- Free entainment for your children
Cons:
- Working every weekend
- Working evenings
- Collecting wet bouncy castles
- Cleaning wet bouncy castles
- Collecting muddy bouncy castles
- Cleaning muddy bouncy castles
- Impact on social life
- Planning finances (for winter months)
- Working 7 days a week managing bookings
- Working on your own
- Holidaying in October
Hope you enjoyed the read, just wanted to let everyone know the reality of hiring bouncy castles ( the worst part of this business is mantaining and cleaning which no one ever see's)
That's why we always have our fingers crossed for sunshine 👌😆🌞
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