Artistic Wedding Backdrop Offers Updated Photo Alternative

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

There are all kinds of needs and opportunities in the world of weddings. And we've examined many of them on the show, and I think we have done so without ever repeating a topic. Lots of different side hustle ideas, opportunities. And the key point here, at least the key point for many of these ideas, is that not everybody who wants a wedding wants a traditional one. So nothing wrong with tradition, and within traditional weddings, of course, there are lots of needs and opportunities as well.

But for our purposes, we're talking about all kinds of different and often unexpected ways to make money. Some previous episodes of the show have featured an elopement consultant, a copywriting duo that will ghost-write your wedding vows or toasts, people who specialize in same-sex weddings or other non-conforming weddings, and what I believe was episode 195, the competitive world of dove releasing. If you've ever wondered how that works, you can learn all about it in an episode. I remember learning about that many days ago. Oh, and lest we forget the Craigslist photographer, Oliver Asis, a California state government employee who makes several thousand dollars a month on the side, he has inspired, at least to my knowledge, three other people since we featured him in the first week of side hustle school and also in the side hustle book.

So in a transition, in a segue to today's story, let's say you want something snazzy, sassy, or just different for the photos in your wedding. And let's say, for this example, you live in or near Melbourne, Australia. A beautiful city in a wonderful country. Now those people, people who want something snazzy, sassy, or just different for their photos, those are the ideal customers for the two side hustlers we'll talk about today. They have created a mobile art installation that serves as something different from your average wedding photo booth.

In fact, their motto is making you look damn awesome and raising your grandma's eyebrow. So I'll tell you about their business in this episode, but it's highly visual. So if you're curious about it, you want to take a look at the photos that we'll link up on the notes page. Anyway, stay tuned for the story. [Music]

Ollie Sansom describes himself as a photographer and international lecturer on creative thinking.

From what I can see on his website, he does a lot of different things. Among others, last year he was selected to document and create a film on the world's largest female only science voyage to Antarctica. But today we're looking at something quite different, which requires another introduction. Ollie's friend and business partner, Matt Hedrich, works as an industrial electrician. He also creates pieces of lighting using found objects such as old kerosene lamps and parts of sunken ships.

Working together, their side hustle is called the arborists. The arborists design and rent out the world's first day and night arbors. I'll define that for you in just a second. And they serve an industry steeped in tradition that's slow changing. This is the wedding industry.

So before we go on, what is an arbor? Okay, I mentioned this is highly visual. It's great to see a picture of it, but since you can't see a picture at the moment, just imagine this. An arbor is a centerpiece behind a couple getting married. It's a mobile art installation.

And these arbors are able to be moved to anywhere in a reception or a ceremony, either indoors or outdoors. And they can also make for a wonderful selfie backdrop for the guests. Now the service they provide includes setup, location moving, like from the ceremony to the reception and teardown. Now from his background as a photographer, Ollie has photographed over 150 weddings worldwide. He travels all over the world and he points to three observations that led him to start this project.

First observation, people are more and more wanting to inject more of themselves into their wedding. This can take on many different forms. There's a lot of tradition in wedding ceremonies, and there's also a range in how people are aligning with tradition or incorporating it or sometimes completely rejecting it. Now second observation, the wedding industry is full of waste, both in materials and labor. So their arbor, as they call it, a token centerpiece that can give a little stylistic personality is beautifully set up and then deconstructed and packed away, can be used over and over.

Now third observation was he believes that night weddings and alternate ceremony times are going to be the next big thing, at least the next big thing in weddings, I suppose. So why not party first and then have the ceremony at midnight? A number of couples are choosing options like that and this arbor installation can be a good fit in those cases. All right, so let's talk about the money. Startup costs were $1,800 and all the costs were for materials and labor associated with fabrication.

So they had to get things like aluminum links, lighting strips and powder coating. They divided the labor between them with Matt focusing on production and Ollie on photography, writing and web design. In the first season, they booked about 10 clients. Once they had some clients, they chose to invest more in the business with the money coming from the revenue they received. Clients pay 50% upfront and bookings appear largely around at two peak wedding times.

Lastly, they began by charging $800, but once they had some rave reviews, they raised the rate to $1,100, all inclusive of setup and teardown. So this part-time seasonal project is working well, but they do have some challenges ahead. Neither of them want to become a full event hire company. They just wanna have fun with this one thing, this one specialized thing. So at some point, they're gonna have to decide about outsourcing, creating relationships with stylists or switching to a sale only model where they are a bit more detached from the finished product.

Alternatively, they could build the brand to even more of an exclusive item, making it so incredible that the market is happy to pay a premium rental fee. There's no stress, no pressure, and they're open to either option. [Music]

All right, I think that last part is key. No stress, no pressure. They don't wanna become a full-on wedding rental company.

They just wanna do this one thing. They're not trying to make it their full-time gig. So it's something meaningful, it's something profitable, and at least for now, it's fun. And hopefully they will continue to make it fun, whatever iteration or direction they go in. I like this quote that I had from Ollie here who gave me some wonderful notes for this episode, by the way.

And Ollie said, "The wedding styling world is a slow-moving beast. We just wanted to come in and add a tiny little bit of sass." I think that's great because as mentioned, there's all kinds of couples who don't want the same traditional ceremony, perhaps that their parents or grandparents had. And also there are all kinds of different couples. So good for them in providing this unique installation, the Arbor. As I said, if you're interested, if you're like, "What is an Arbor?" I'm still not sure after hearing this episode.

Well, come and take a look. You can do that at sidehustleschool.com/773. They also do a great job on their Instagram, so we will link it up on that page as well. And that's it for me. I'll be back again tomorrow.

I hope you will join me once more. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.