Stunning range of party tents from DIY Marquees

DIY Marquees leaders in marquees offer the most informative advice to anyone who wants to purchase a marquee. They really want their clients to achieve and will often give you advice that you do not want to hear, however, this will save you money and time in the long run. Their straight forward approach is what makes them leaders in the marquee industry and a company that strives to put their customers first.

Read what DIY Marquees have to say about starting your own business:

This is a conversation I have regularly, you’re interested in starting a marquee hire business and don’t know where to start. This is what I suggest:

Research
Find out who your local competitors are, what marquees they offer and how much they charge for the sort of marquees you’re likely to offer.
If there are hardly any competitors or the local companies all offer much larger marquees then this is a good thing. There’s space in the market for you to exploit.
If there are a lot of companies in your local area that offer similar size marquees to ours/yours then you might need to think twice about starting up. It’s not impossible but it is much harder to get going in a saturated market.

Stock
The most popular marquees for hiring are 6x12m, 6x6m and 4x8m. If you’re based in a city then it’s more likely to be the smaller, 4m wide marquees that are popular.

What marquees should I buy?
I would recommend starting on a smaller scale initially. All of our marquees are designed along a similar, easy to erect style. If you’ve put one up then you won’t have a problem erecting a different size without practice.
Because of the large stock we carry and swift delivery you can just buy more marquees when you have the bookings for them – to me that makes good business sense, you only buy further marquees when you know you’re getting a return on your investment.

when do you need to insure a marquee?
If you’re hiring out marquees then you should be covered for public liability insurance. When you buy a DIY Marquee we pass on 3 companies details who specialise in marquee hire cover. We also pass on a copy of the terms and conditions of hire we used to use as a hire company and we can provide some photos to get your website and advertising started.

We always enjoy helping people start up their own marquee hire businesses and will happily chat through any ideas you may have. The above is just a collection of ideas to start you off.

Click here to find out more about DIY marquees for sale in Kent.

DIY Marquees have some great advice for new businesses

I meet a lot of people looking to start up a marquee hire business, it is one of the best parts of my job. A lot of people who come in to see me have never worked for themselves and see it as quite an aspiration position. Often the decision has been made to work for themselves long before the idea of marquees came around. And to be honest working for yourself is great, you do have to go in to it with your eyes wide open though and this is something else I often find myself discussing with potential marquee customers.

The first, most important point when starting a new business is having your close family on-board. Getting a business off the ground takes a lot of time, energy and work which would only be rewarded in the medium-long term. It is very difficult to do without the support of those around you. The last thing you want is for your start-up business to seriously affect your relationship (especially if you’ve married in to a family of solicitors and QC’s!).

The pro’s and cons of starting up your own marquee DIY Party Tents for sale or Pop up Marquees for sale for example  (or other) business:

Pros:

• Greater flexibility
• Greater job-satisfaction. Not just because the work you’re doing is for yourself rather than some else or an organisation but because most marquee work is making people happy
• Potentially greater financial reward (it depends on what job you’re giving up of course)
• Greater involvement in all parts of the business. You may have had a job in marketing but in a start-up you’ll be involved/responsible for every different part of the business.

Cons:

• Greater responsibility
• Less financial security (the rewards are potentially greater but there is always the risk of the business not taking off).

And in-between both is a certain blurring of your work/life hours. You can often do non-work things during work time but then you’ll often have to do work related out of hours.

Working for yourself or working in a small business can be a culture shock but ultimately a move most people view well worth it.

A good friend of mine went from working in a huge multinational to a small start-up business. On the second day he was shocked to be told to drop everything as a photocopier had arrived downstairs (they were on the 5th floor) and everyone had to go down and lift it up the stairs. But this is what happens in a small business, everyone has to be prepared to be involved in any part of the business (manual handling or otherwise).

We are always happy to discuss any ideas you may have in starting up your own marquee hire business (or even helping an existing one), we have a lot of experience both in having done it ourselves and in helping many many others over the years.