This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, Side Hustle School listeners. Guess what? It's Chris Guillebeau. Get ready for a remarkable story. First of all, imagine a friend of yours comes to you with an idea.
Your friend's like, "I got a business idea. "Wanna run this past you, what do you think?" It's an underserved market, a product that people enjoy, and a high profit margin. We could make a lot of money here. And you think, "Okay, awesome. "Like, what kind of app is this?" It has to be an app, right?
Or wait, first of all, what industry is this? Is it like the personal finance industry? Is it about mortgages? Did you start a blog about hedge funds? Or maybe even something in the wellness world, like diet or weight loss?
These are some industries where there can be some real money. And your friend is like, "No, here's the secret. "And don't tell anyone because "I don't want anyone to steal my idea." Here's how we're gonna get rich. Two words, bouncy castles, or bouncy houses, if you prefer. Or imagine this on Shark Tank or Dragon's Den, one of these kind of reality TV shows where people go and make their pitch to investors.
And the dude is like, "Hey, I'm seeking half a million dollars "in exchange for 7% bouncy castle ownership "and one free air pump." Now, neither of these scenarios seem fairly likely, right? Well, my friends, this is why you listen to Sidus with School. Because one guy in Cedar Park, Texas decided to follow his bouncy passion to the bank in that world of bouncers, as they're called. And he doesn't have a big warehouse. He doesn't have a ton of bouncy houses and castles in his garage.
He actually does this for the most part without inventory. So there is no bounce in his life at all. Or at least, you know, no products. Now, how much money are we talking about? Well, if you saw the headline, you know already.
But I'm gonna tell you now because I know you're not gonna stop listening. This is in fact the $300,000 bouncy castle drop shipping hustle with no inventory. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how this came to be. [Music]
Are you ready for this? Here we go.
During the day, Renee Delgado works in operations and supply chain management for a large consumer electronics company. In the evenings, he runs an e-commerce site dedicated to selling bounce houses to residential and commercial customers. That is correct. Bounce houses, bouncy houses, bouncy castles, or the technical term apparently, which I learned in the research for this episode, bouncers. Now, Renee didn't decide to sell these bouncers because it was his lifelong dream.
And when he was a kid, he aspired to grow up and sell bouncy castles to the world. He decided to sell them after some careful consideration. This all began last year when Renee wanted a side hustle. He thought about doing Fulfilled by Amazon. We've talked about it in some other episodes.
He thought about reselling items on eBay, and even thought about things like real estate and investing in the stock market. Ultimately, he decided on drop shipping for a couple of reasons. First, because of the low barrier of entry, he didn't have to invest in producing or purchasing inventory and he wouldn't even have to carry inventory or ship the product. Plus, his success wasn't dependent on external factors outside his control, and it also wouldn't require him to take a lot of risk or have a lot of capital, like those options for the stock market or real estate. So once he decided to drop ship, where he would create a website selling a product, connect with manufacturers, and make a profit on the difference in price, the next decision he had to make was critical.
He had to decide what to actually sell. Renee was a great brainstormer. He made a list of over 100 options and then narrowed the list based on the following criteria. I want you to pay attention to this because it's actually really important. The criteria included the products were hard to locate in a brick and mortar store, the average price point was over $400, there were more than five manufacturers or suppliers, and the level of competition in the space was low.
Each of these factors is really important. I'll talk about them at the end of the episode, but for now, this comprehensive criteria, this little filtering exercise he went through, eventually led him to settle on bounce houses. After doing a bit more research, he realized he could sell two ways. First of all, to residential customers. You know all those people on HGTV who are like, for my dream house, the number one amenity I want is a bouncy castle in the backyard.
But not only to residential customers, also to commercial businesses, who are in the business of renting bouncy houses and castles around the country. While he was figuring out what to sell, he was also taking an online drop shipping course that taught him the basics of the business. This course is called Drop Ship Lifestyle. We don't have any affiliation with it here on the show, but I'll link it up because he says it was a helpful resource for him. He was also able to connect with a community forum and Facebook group where he could ask questions.
Before launching the Bounce Empire, Rene spent about $400 setting up the business entity, he created an LLC, he went out and got his domain, fortunately bouncehousestore.com was available, and from there he used Shopify to build out the website. He called around to establish relationships with as many bouncehouse manufacturers as he could. There are a surprisingly decent number of them. And once that manufacturer approved him as a reseller, he uploaded their product images and descriptions to his website, and then moved on to another manufacturer. Rene officially launched the site in December 2016, once he had products from multiple manufacturers online.
He focused on creating useful content on this website. Fortunately, there wasn't a ton of competition that helped a lot. And in doing so, he was able to get some great rankings for various bouncehouse, bouncy castle, et cetera, search terms, which translated into a lot of people coming to his site who were ready to buy. Because most people who search for those terms are already in the position of wanting to buy one, or rent one, or at least acquire it somehow. He spent a few months getting going, experimented with Google Shopping, he did Facebook ads, he learned about email marketing.
And he also noticed that it wasn't just about marketing, the bouncehouse hustle is very seasonal. The first three months of the year, Rene had some of those good search engine rankings, but he didn't have a lot of people coming to the site. And he thought, maybe I just picked the wrong product. Like when I thought this is probably a silly idea, maybe it actually was. But then sales started to pick up and he realized it was just the low bounce season.
'Cause it's cold in January. By April, things began to really pick up, he hit his peak in June, and then once again by September, as the leaves began to fall, the bounce went out of people's lives and sales have declined a bit. But let's not talk about month to month, let's talk about sales this year. So far in 2017, Rene has had just over $300,000 in sales. There is money in that bounce.
All along the way, he has been continually adding suppliers and new products. I mentioned he sells to both residential customers and business customers. At some point along the way, he partnered with a financial company that allowed him to provide financing to business customers. So he can now sell to new businesses that want to get started in the booming bounce business, but don't have the capital to buy without financing. With some of these profits, Rene recently hired a virtual assistant to run the day-to-day operations of the business.
It's freed up his time so much that he's actually starting another dropship store. He's not ready to say what it is just yet, so we'll have to cycle back at some point and feature his next success. But luckily, this new hustle is also seasonal and it complements the bounce house store because peak season is fall and winter. Like I said, Rene wasn't particularly passionate about the world of bouncers. He just wanted a side hustle.
He wanted more of this freedom for himself than he'd heard other people talk about. He also did a lot of research. From his background in supply chain management, he was good at operations. So this notion of dropshipping was attractive to him. He learned a bit more about how it worked.
He understood what he would need to do to get it set up. He made his list of ideas. He narrowed it down to that playful, profitable product. And from there, well, he just followed his bounce to the bank. [Music]
Well, my friends, don't jump to conclusions.
Put a little bounce in your step today. Don't worry, that won't become the new side hustle school tagline. But seriously, is this not an amazing story? Stories like this one are such a great illustration and example of the side hustle world of how so many things are possible. And if you can think of something that is for sale in some way or that is used by people in some way, there is probably at least one way to make money from it.
You know, that's why I highlight these kinds of markets from instruction inspector exam preparation, to coffee pods, to saddles for pet chickens, to all the other crazy stuff we've had on the show. Because historically, when people talked about having a side hustle, whether they use that term or not, it talked about creating multiple streams of income. They always talked about real estate, like go and buy rental properties. Nothing wrong with that, but most people can't do that. They don't have the capital.
There is a lot of risk involved with that. There's also a lot of other people doing it. Whereas in this story, as you see, there's not a lot of people competing in the bounce house space. Maybe there will be now after this episode, but I think René is pretty safe because he's built that site. He's got those search engine rankings.
He continues to improve and work with different manufacturers. So there's a paragraph in this story that I actually want to read to you again because I think it's so important. If you're trying to figure out how did he know this was gonna be a good idea, how did he stumble on this? Again, he did some research. He made this long list of over 100 options.
I'm not actually sure how he came up with 100 different ideas. So we might follow up with him on that point and come back to you. But once he had this huge list, he thought about these criteria. Once again, the criteria were the products are hard to locate in a brick and mortar store. There's not a ton of places you can go in most cities to look at different bouncy castles or houses.
The average price point was over $400. So it was relatively expensive. There were more than five manufacturers or suppliers, meaning that he wouldn't be dependent on one company. And also again, the level of competition in this space was low. And then after he got that far, he realized he could have two sets of customers, residential customers, as well as commercial businesses.
Also great. So if you want to do this kind of hustle, that's what you want to be looking for. Nobody starts out and says like, I want to go into the world of bounce houses. They start by saying, I want to find something that's unique where I know I can have a good profit margin where there's more than one company I can get it from. And because it's something that's unique and perhaps hard for other people to get, there's not going to be a ton of competition for it.
Like that's what you're looking for if you want to succeed in this particular hustle category. All right, well, I hope this story lived up to expectations. You'll have to let me know if it was just me, but personally, I thought it was pretty amazing that this guy has done so well with this creative idea. And if you're out there and you've tried something before and it hasn't worked out, or you've been disappointed in some way, maybe you should try something else. Maybe you just need to bounce back.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at www.sidehustleschool.com/324. I'll be back tomorrow, but first I have to bounce. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]
