Inflatable business has expanded from the backyard business and is a highly competitive industry. So how should you choose what’s suitable for you?

For a better understanding, the inflatable industry can be categorised into four segments.

1. The backyard rental companies
These generally operate in the backyard of the customer and handle smaller events like birthday parties. It can be understood as a side weekend business and the profits aren’t exactly big. The purchases include small, easy to go bouncers and combos.

2. The interactive inflatable rental companie
These companies venture into bigger markets and rent out inflatables for corporate, schools, churches, picnics and other events. The purchases have to be larger inflatables such as obstacle courses and inflatable water slides.

3. Pay-on-play event companie
These companies choose the regional or local events to conduct business. They set up large attractive inflatables that people can enjoy by purchasing tickets.

4. Indoor inflatable play centres
In this structure, inflatables are set up in large indoor spaces. The business owner schedules parties or opens them for the public for a fixed time period during the day.

Which one is ideal for you?
The decision will be majorly influenced by your intention and purpose of starting an inflatable rental business. Are you looking to make just some extra money on the side or is this going to be a primary source of income? Or do you wish to expand an already existing backyard business?

In addition to that, you must consider the investment you intend to make. Smaller businesses do not pose an excessive cost of operation. Also, the setup is generally pretty hassle free. A larger business, however, is a different story.

Operating to serve the schools, corporates and other events of a larger scale is a full-time job and demands that kind of effort and involvement. The cost is also higher. You must acquire new equipment, more staff and spend considerably on marketing, advertising and promotion. With this will come all the responsibilities of running a business of this scale which ultimately makes way for you to earn more money.

Doing carnivals and fairs is significantly more and quick money. One successful season and you can cover the entire cost. As an added benefit, no expenditure is needed for advertising but it does have a higher fixed cost. You will have to buy high quality commercial grade products like inflatable water slides, obstacle courses and combos and appoint more staff to operate the assets.

Yet another consideration should be the risk involved. While most inflatable business structures aren’t abnormally risky (other than the risks any business has), the companies operating outdoors in events, parties, carnivals and fairs find themselves in the hands of chance from time to time. Unforeseeable and uncontrollable macro environments like bad weather conditions can severely affect the business. An indoors operating business structure would be at an advantage especially in places that are known to have regular ‘bad weather’ days.

Answers to these questions and careful analysis of the above discussion will help you decide what kind of business structure is best suitable for you.