You have to own the glorified Gala Tent - £40k is madness. Send it out on marquee hire if you want - I might have a contact in Southampton in this field and they do dry and wet hire, like planes but they are far more wet hire now as they can control it end to end. Same with the ice rink. You cannot foresee a day when you don't have one and it would flip over to a roller rink in summer on the same surface or a petting zoo of course. Loads of cross purposing. Machinery is a pain int eh proverbial. The best advice there is to bring the maintenance in house of you are large enough. Great video, looking forward to the next one.
I am always learning something new from your videos James so thank you. As you are a master of in house. Have you considered doing your own waste management. You must spend a considerable amount on waste management across all of your businesses already. Waste bins collected weekly on a monthly invoice B2B for the bulk of the turn over and skips B2B and B2C paid up front for regular cash flow
Insightful video as ever James. Seeing the hotel room refurb at 8:20 I just wanted to check that the shower area walls were lined with a tile backer board system before being tiled? It looked like a moisture resistant plasterboard might have been used, which isn't waterproof, and if that's been tiled onto directly, the shower inevitably leaks and you'll have water leaks/rot problems and tiles falling off the wall - a very expensive maintenance issue with no revenue on the affected rooms. Hopefully Gary has done this already otherwise I highly recommend you look into this before refurbing the remaining rooms
Build a proper ice rink with a small stand of seats down one side, you could use it all year round then and rent it out to ice hockey tournaments and figure skating during off seasons. Real lack of decent ice rink in Essex. Love to work with you one day :)
With an increasing amount of events being hosted at your leisure attractions I really think an in-house equipment 'hire' team would allow investment instead of spending. Equipment such as marquees, big-tops, staging, etc is used for Halloween and Christmas events and then can be hired out to external companies for weddings, festivals, etc during its 'down time' in the summer when you don't need it.
Hi James, Great video, prefer these over the sat in the chair talking to camera ones. I saw in the back of the Lema enclosure a Bee Hive. Do you do your own honey, wax, candles, nucs etc?? We have 8 on our land, and its a great talking point for the guests. Love the stationary. At first, I thought it said Wee on the case, then realised its sweet, but the wee stands out more than the s and t. With the £170k expenditure for the ice rink, what are you hoping the income would be? How many guests does it take to break even?
Hey, love watching the videos. Never knew how the running of farm parks could be so interesting, but I think that's because of the vision and ambition. However I'd like to ask, how come in the Visitor Attractions industry there's been such an uptick in CapEx since the COVID pandemic?
Hello, your business depends on the climatic situation, why not develop a reception room, it would allow you to develop a related activity and you could use it for your conferences. Also, as a parent, it's very difficult to find activities for my children, over 12 years old, on weekends
Have you thought of adding a wildflower area(s). Very few of those type of places use them or bother with them even though more people than ever want to see more enviromental changes. Also sculpted Topiary, trees, flowers etc for added interest. All rose garden for seated area? Giant Anaconda snakes to chase and eat rude or annoying customers? Okay that maybe going to far so think carefully about the rose garden idea! 😀
hey love the content as always, maybe an idea for your more open air businesses here in the winter times, maybe host a german style winter fair every weekend last two months of the year, they are immensely popular here in Europe. Make the park free entry , build some winter looking stalls , rent out the stall space, provide some entertainment ,give it a Christmas feel ( trees, lights, bonfire etc) and make a killing selling gluwein , hot choc other Christmas treats, and make the ice rink an hourly charge , make some money on skate rentals also ( 8-10 pounds a person for the ice rink 2hours ) and a rental fee of 3-5 pounds you already have the marketing department in place and the personel and food en bev options to do so , maybe first year just rent some winter stalls to see if it works at all. Also it gives people/familys who never visited one of your outdoor business a taste and feel of what they can expect , basically free of charge , making it also a marketing tool for the park(s) in the future thanks again for al the content!
Hello James, great vid again. Question! You like buying businesses, would you ever consider selling one? Either for the right money or one that's to difficult to manage/loss making. Hope that makes sense, cheers.
Have you ever thought of buying a construction business as you can make money from it but it can also make the construction parts of your other business a lot cheaper and easier to do
E + M = S Entrepreneurship plus management equals success The secret is about having amazing managers around you. I don’t operate our companies. You are either growing or operating if you end up doing both- you’ll burn out.
Yikes didn't know a modest playground and crazy golf course were so expensive. Children and parents do have high expectations these days though it's hard to get them in numbers if the product offering is lackluster.
Need to build a big building to do that. That’s a big job that will take a lot of planning. If you don’t have 15k sqft with 400 chairs I don’t think it’s viable.
@@andrewsouth1696 I know it very well, we have one at Marsh Farm at my other park plus a chain of 10 stand alone centres ( Partyman world ) we just feel indoor soft play at an outdoor attraction should not be first on the list.
Looks like you make your money from fools going to see you talk. All so you need to take a close look at who ever is doing your building the cost you listed are way over the top for the work you outlined.
Nope; I absolutely do not make my money from talks. My personal brand generates circa 500k of revenue. My trading businesses and commercial property holdings do circa 40m of revenue.
