Small Bouncy Castle Business

paulwf

Mwesty wrote: »

We're over the moon with the Toy Story one. Designed it ourselves infact

Has the company that makes them got a licensing deal for you to use it?

If you haven't then I would ensure you are on the correct legal footing going forward. Sure you might remain under the radar now but by next year you might have a dozen castles and the year after 2 dozen...then it all gets messy when you get a letter from Disney telling you all your castles have to be shredded

Maybe I'm getting carried away but the large companies do protect their copyright and it is worth being 100% legal...as I say if you want to expand or sell the business it is doing things right now rather than having to incur massive costs when backtracking later on.

liz_uk

Hi there,

Advertise on the Netmums.co.uk Noticeboard too...

At £40, the mums will be eating your hand off !!

paulwf

Could I make some marketing suggestions?

It is really important you can track the success of each marketing campaign so you know where to focus your efforts. This is because what you'll probably find is that for example £100 spent with Yellow Pages might result in 1 booking and £100 spent with the local newspaper may get 20 bookings...or the other way round, but if you don't track them you might be throwing money away in future campaigns.

The most basic way to track is to have a box on the booking form so when a customer calls up you ask them how they heard about you. You should be able to get more accurate though, such as having a basic voucher code that you change over time or put different email addresses in adverts (if you own the domain name you can create loads of addresses e.g. hire@bouncycastle, info@bouncycastle, hello@bouncycastle - point them all to the same mailbox).

You said you weren't sure if leafletting door to door would be effective - well with simple tracking now you can find out

Don't forget Horace's suggestions, wedding fairs and networking could really be effective.

Long term you need to establish a marketing budget, if you do things on an ad hoc basis (newspapers always phone up with a last minute bargain) it is easy to look at the books at the end of the year and realise all your profit has disappeared on advertising.

Try and get a deal with wacky warehouse and the like to swap leaflets or something, someone advertising a service in the same sector outside my business would be told where to go unless they asked first. I would also take advice before leafletting outside schools, is it really the done thing? Perhaps arrange a deal with the PTA first?

I think your castles are going to be the best form of advertising so give each customer a pile of business cards if you can, you could even do a referral scheme although that might get too complicated. Also try and give each parent at the party a leaflet, perhaps even offer a discount for booking on the day.

Savvy_Sue

If you offer a mega discount rate at the summer fair, most schools would be more than happy to let you leaflet via satchel post. Also you may be able to advertise in their programme, if they have one, for the said fair.

Mwesty

paulwf wrote: »

Has the company that makes them got a licensing deal for you to use it?

Hi - I wern't aware we needed permission and a licencing deal? There's a couple huge bouncy castle hire companies here in Liverpool, and by huge, I mean 100-150 castles each company.. and almost every castle is themed in either Disney or other cartoon characters. Pretty sure they haven't got permission?

liz_uk wrote: »

Hi there,

Advertise on the Netmums.co.uk Noticeboard too...

At £40, the mums will be eating your hand off !!

Thanks for that. We are actually doing £10 off your 1st hire, therefore making our cheapest the Peppa Pig one at £30. I've took your advice and stuck it on the local listings and also paid to have the sponsored link on the right hand side for a couple months. Hopefully that'll go well!

paulwf wrote: »

Could I make some marketing suggestions?

On your advice, I have just added a box onto the Booking Form on my website with 'How did you find us?'. Hopefully that will help me know what marketing methods are working and what isn't. I've also linked the site upto Google Analytics so I can track where each visitor is coming from.

There was a fairly large fair today close by, so me and the othe half went with a stack of flyers and handed a couple hundred out to all the parents. We didn't spot any on the floor so that can only be a good thing!

Regarding loyalty.. We are doing £10 off your 1st hire for everyone at the minute.. But I've also ordered several hundred loyalty cards and stamp. I'm going to stamp each card when a customer hires a castle each time and once they get upto 5 stamps they get there next castle free for the day. This is going to take a little hit to our profits but I think it'll be worth it.

Savvy_Sue

Mwesty wrote: »

Hi - I wern't aware we needed permission and a licencing deal? There's a couple huge bouncy castle hire companies here in Liverpool, and by huge, I mean 100-150 castles each company.. and almost every castle is themed in either Disney or other cartoon characters. Pretty sure they haven't got permission?

I'll save Paul the trouble of saying that claiming you didn't know or that some other company is in the same position as you is not going to get you anywhere as a defence, and it would be worth checking this out. Even if there are huge companies hiring out Disney castles, doesn't mean you can. I don't know, but in your position I'd want to be sure. Also remember that large companies may decide it's easier to go after a small company than a large one in this kind of position.

Mwesty wrote: »

On your advice, I have just added a box onto the Booking Form on my website with 'How did you find us?'. Hopefully that will help me know what marketing methods are working and what isn't.

Be prepared for this to say "website" rather than anything more useful. Next time you redesign, may be worth listing the websites you actually advertise on, as well as other places you advertise, leaflet etc, and allow people to tick more than one.

paulwf

I'm 99.9% sure you'll need to license every character you use. It's a big business and people don't realise that all this stuff is licensed...even in something as obscure as the cycle industry if we purchased a bicycle bell with something like Barbie on it it would cost us 50p more at wholesale.

Big companies do employ staff and use search tools to find infringements and now you are advertising - especially on the web - your risk is increasing. Sure the risk is small but think of the risks as you grow. You might be lucky and get a cease and desist letter so you'll instantly have to take all your castles out of circulation and rebrand or destroy them. OTOH you might get a request for fees at £100 a castle per year backdated for however long you've been trading or something like that.

There are probably castle branding companies that do have licensing deals so if the large competitor used them they could well be legal. If not one letter and you can remove your competitor overnight.

Perhaps call Business Link for some informal advice.

jexygirl

Just to re inforce (as usual!)

I have a local lady that embroiders my staff tee shirts. She purchased a sewing machine with a variety of "disney" and other cartoon logos pre programmed - and as well as doing the embroidery, she makes all sorts of bags / trinkets / keyrings/ tee shirts etc.

To cut the story short, she was fined by trading standards for using Winnie the pooh on one of the items she makes as she was not licenced to use it.

The item was a small purse, with winnie on it, that was amongst a selection of her products, in a cabinet display at a local hotel. A trading standards person was there on holiday and spotted it. What are the odds...

Despite the logo being pre programmed into the machine she purchased, she had no defence, was not aware that she wasnt allowed to use it, and had to pay a fine. Apparently, even though it is an industrial machine and winnie was pre programmed, certain things are for "personal use only" and not allowed to be used commercially.

As Paul said, please check it out.
Jex

Mwesty

Thanks all, I'll definately get some advice from Business Link to see how to go about getting a licence for each character and the cost. It's a shame because I know every single one of my competitors haven't got licences and use a different disney theme for almost every single castle. It's an extra expense I could have done without, but it's better being safe than sorry.

PS.. Liz_uk.. Thanks once again for the Netmums tip. We have already secured a booking for £30 for the Peppa Pig Castle from someone at Netmums.. so that's almost paid for 2 months advertising with them already! :j

paulwf

Mwesty wrote: »

Thanks all, I'll definately get some advice from Business Link to see how to go about getting a licence for each character and the cost. It's a shame because I know every single one of my competitors haven't got licences and use a different disney theme for almost every single castle. It's an extra expense I could have done without, but it's better being safe than sorry.

It's not a shame...it's just made your business! With a few carefully placed letters/emails/phonecalls you've just got rid of the competition. Seriously, I have no problem with competition if there is a level playing field i.e. if they are legal. However I would have no qualms about leveling that playing field so to speak...just must sure you cover yourself first

I checked a few sellers of inflatables (a random selection from Google) and they all avoid brands in their range. Some are getting close to passing off well known characters, this is quite a standard trick to stay legal at low cost.

Licensing is just one of the many expenses you will come across and is why everyone on here is saying you need to put your prices up. A lot of your net income is going to be spent on expenses so you need to charge sensible prices.