Rent Out Party Kit: Buy Once, Earn Every Weekend

What you actually do

A family is having a birthday party for a five-year-old. They need eight small chairs and two low tables for two hours on a Saturday, and then they need them gone. Buying them makes no sense for one afternoon.

So you own the tables and chairs. You drop them off on the Saturday morning, pick them up on the Sunday, wipe everything down, and stack it in your garage until next weekend. The family pays you $40 and never has to think about where to store eight small chairs.

The same works for a cake stand, a set of matching plates, bunting, a balloon arch frame, a folding backdrop. Party decor gets used once, photographed a hundred times, and then sits in a cupboard for a year. That is the definition of something worth renting rather than owning.

What it costs to start, and when it pays back

This is the one idea here with real money up front, and it is the whole lesson.

• A set of eight small folding chairs and two low tables, second-hand, about $80 to $150.
• Or a good cake stand and a set of serving plates, about $40 to $60.
• Storage bins so the kit survives your garage, about $25.

So $80 to $200 to start, depending on which kit you choose.

Now the number that matters. If your kit cost $120 and you hire it out at $40, you have your money back after three rentals. Rental four onwards is nearly all profit, because your only ongoing cost is a few dollars of cleaning supplies and replacing the odd broken thing.

That is called the payback period, and it changes how you decide. A $300 bouncy castle at $40 a hire needs eight rentals before you have broken even, and it needs a car to move. A $50 cake stand at $15 a hire pays back in four and fits on a bicycle. Start with the second kind and let the money it makes buy the first kind.

Find your first hire this month

1. Buy one small kit, second-hand. Marketplace listings, garage sales, a family who has grown out of theirs.
2. Photograph it set up nicely, in daylight, as if it were a party. That photo is your whole shop.
3. Offer it to the families you already know who have small children, through a parent: "Aisha has kids' tables and chairs for hire, $40 for the weekend, she drops off and collects."
4. Ask each family who hires it to mention you to the next one. Birthday parties are a word-of-mouth business, because every parent at the party is planning one of their own.

Community centres, places of worship and a school's parent group are worth asking too, with a parent, because they hear about every party in the neighbourhood.

What to charge

Rent by the weekend, not the hour. Nobody wants to negotiate hours, and you cannot hire the kit twice on the same Saturday anyway.

• Kids' tables and chairs, a weekend: $35 to $50.
• Cake stand and serving set: $15 to $20.
• Decor bundle, bunting and a backdrop frame: $25 to $40.

Take a deposit. Something like $20, given back when the kit comes home undamaged, is normal in rentals and it changes how carefully people treat your things. Say the deposit and the damage rule out loud before they take anything, and write it down in a message so you both have it.

Ask two parents what they would expect to pay before you set your prices. It varies a lot between a big city and a small town.

Rules and staying safe

Read this section with a parent, because you are lending things to households and taking money against damage.

• Balloons are the serious one. Health Canada says balloons should be used for decoration only and not for play, and that they should be inflated by adults only. It also says uninflated balloons and broken pieces have to be kept away from children, because they can block an airway. So hire out the frame and the decor, let the adults do the inflating, and never leave loose balloons where a small child can reach them.
• Nothing that a child climbs, bounces on or hides inside. No bouncy castles, no play structures, no tents. If a child can be hurt by your kit while you are not there, you should not be renting it.
• Check every item back in before you return the deposit, and take a photo of the kit clean before it goes out. That photo settles arguments.
• Hire only to families a parent of yours knows, or families a community centre or school has put you in touch with, and do drop-offs with a parent.
• Wash and wipe everything between hires. Small children put their hands on all of it.
• Take payment and deposit before the kit leaves, in cash or by e-transfer to a parent's account.
• You are lending equipment, not running the party. Say that plainly. You are not the babysitter, you are not responsible for the children, and you should not agree to stay and supervise.

Ask a parent to check whether your home insurance has anything to say about lending equipment out. Most family policies will not care about eight small chairs, but it is a five-minute question and worth asking before you buy anything larger.

What Aisha would do

Aisha is 14 and lives in Ottawa, in a family and a community where there is a party most months and always somebody hosting forty people in a house built for six. She would not have to find demand. She would have to keep up with it.

She'd start with the cake stand and the serving plates, not the tables, because they cost the least, pay back in four hires and fit in the back of her mum's car. With permission, she'd photograph her own family's next party and use those pictures to advertise. They cost her nothing and look better than anything staged.

Once the small kit had paid for itself twice over, she'd use its earnings to buy the tables and chairs. That way the expensive thing is bought with the business's money rather than her savings, which is a decision she'd have learned in Module 6.

When it stops being fun

A chair comes back with a leg snapped and the family says it was already like that. Two families want the same Saturday in June. Somebody returns the plates unwashed with cake dried onto them. You have to say no to a bouncy castle request for the fourth time.

Also this: your kit lives in your family's garage, and they have to agree to that before you buy anything. Sort out where it goes, and who moves it when the car needs to come in, on the day you start rather than in month three.

The photo and the written deposit rule solve most of the arguments. The June clash you solve by taking the booking that asked first, and saying so kindly.