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First off don’t worry. It’s incredibly rare to have any problem and even then they’re generally minor things. If you’re starting up a marquee hire business you’re probably worrying about: The marquees blowing away – make sure they’re always well anchored down. We never had this happen to us and I don’t know any hire […]

Early post as I’m away next week: Once you’ve decided to go into marquee hire don’t just sit on your backside expecting the bookings to come rolling in. Get out there making contacts (networking seems to be the popular phrase for this). This is the bread & butter of marquee hire companies. When organising an […]

We used to limit ourselves to putting up marquees within an hours drive of our yard with a few exceptions – one was a wedding in St Albans (about 3 hours drive) which the bride insisted we do as we did such a good job for her sister local to us the previous year. Imagine […]

Be confident. Sounds a little over the top to call it the most important thing about marquee hire? Not really. People are putting their trust in you for their event. What are they basing this on? In the case of weddings or large events 90% it’s about you (and your reputation). Festivals, places where all […]

Obviously we got most of our work by being charming, witty and handsome chaps when visiting customers. Unbelievably some people weren’t bowled over by a flash of our pearly whites and actually wanted some substance to our lavish promises. I talked before (and undoubtedly will again) about site visits so won’t cover that now, just […]

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, […]

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 […]

In the world of road sweeping the motto is “look after your broom”. In the world of marquees it’s “look after your back” (anyone who hasn’t heard Trigger’s quote before do yourself a favour and put off starting up a marquee hire business until you’ve gone and watched every episode of only fools and horses!). […]

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 […]

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 […]