This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
The $300,000 bouncy castle drop shipping hustle with no inventory. I'm so excited to bring you this story. If you have not heard this story, you're gonna love it. It's one of our classics, our favorites, one of my personal favorites at least of all time. And in 2025, I wanna bring you some remixes of some of these best stories over the years, especially the early years, which was a very long time ago, starting back in 2017.
So if you weren't listening back then, these stories are completely new. If you were, can you even remember them? Well, this one actually is pretty memorable, but nevertheless, lots of interesting details. And for a lot of these stories, we'll include some new updates as well. So as I said, I'm not gonna spend much preamble on it because this is remarkable.
Just imagine somebody comes to you with this pitch and they're like, "Hey, I've got this great business idea. "It's an underserved market, a product that people enjoy. "It has a high profit margin. "We can make a lot of money." And so you're like, "Wow, this is cool. "What kind of app is this?" Or is this in like the personal finance industry, diet or weight loss?
Like those are some industries where there could be real money or maybe you're like AI. But of course we weren't thinking about AI seven years ago. Your friend is like, "No, here's the secret. "And don't tell anyone. "I don't want anyone to steal my idea.
"Here's how we're gonna get rich, bouncy castles." You know, bounce castles or bounce houses. It seems like a really unlikely scenario, okay? But this guy in Cedar Park, Texas decided to follow his bouncy passion to the bank in the world of playhouse rentals. He also does it without inventory. He doesn't keep these bounce castles, bounce houses.
In fact, there's no bounce in his life. And I gave some of the concept away in the headline, like how he actually does this. But I know you're gonna listen to the rest of the story anyway, right? Because you're thinking, how in the world? What a wild idea.
Here's a shout out to our sponsor and then the story. [Music]
During the day, Rene Delgado works in operations and supply chain management for a consumer electronics company. In the evenings, he runs an e-commerce site dedicated to selling bounce houses to residential and commercial customers. Rene didn't decide to sell bounce houses because he has a secret passion for them. He decided to sell them after careful analysis in consideration of his best options.
That consideration began in August 2016 when he started exploring side hustle ideas. He was looking at fulfilled by Amazon stock trading, drop shipping high ticket items, which we're gonna come back to and reselling items on eBay. Those are some of the things he was thinking about. And ultimately he decided on drop shipping due to the low barrier of entry. He didn't have to invest in producing or purchasing inventory.
He didn't even have to carry this inventory or ship out products. Plus his success wasn't dependent on external factors outside his control, like his stock market idea. Now to choose what to sell, he made a list of over a hundred ideas and narrowed them down based on specific criteria. He wanted to find products that are hard to locate in brick and mortar stores, had an average price point over $400, had more than five manufacturers or suppliers, had pay-per-click ad spin below $2. In other words, the ad cost was low and low competition.
These criteria led him to bounce houses, which he could sell to both residential customers and commercial businesses. And when deciding on his product, he took an online course that taught him some business basics and gave him the confidence to start. He spent about $400 setting up an LLC. He bought the domain bouncehousestore.com and filed his DBA. He used Shopify to build the website and began establishing relationships with bounce house manufacturers, gradually adding their products to his site.
In December, 2016, he started with Google Shopping as his primary advertising channel. After a few months, he expanded into email marketing and Facebook ads. Then he started creating useful content, which has improved his organic ranking and website traffic. The bounce house business is highly seasonal. The first three months of the year bring almost no revenue because it's just too cold, but things pick up in April for summer, peaking in June before dropping off again in September.
Now I told you the number in the headline, but it really is incredible. In 2017, Renee earned over $300,000 selling bounce castles. He credits this success to continuously adding suppliers and new products. He also partnered with QuickSpark Financial to provide financing to business customers, which allowed him to work with new businesses wanting to enter the bounce house industry. After a while, Renee hired a virtual assistant to handle daily operations, bring up his time to start another seasonal dropship store that complements the bounce house store with peak seasons in fall and winter.
Now here's a tip for Renee about hiring BAs. I actually have a question from a listener coming up in two days about this. But for now, Renee says, make sure you provide very detailed step-by-step standard operating procedures. I use a combination of written guides and screen grabs. Everything from how to process an order, how to update inventory, how to respond to customers.
It's critical that they get clear and in-depth instructions because their success and the success of your business depends on the information you provide them. Now, like I said, Renee wasn't passionate about the world of bounce houses. He just wanted a side hustle. He worked in supply chain management by day, so he was good at operations. And from there, he followed his bounce to the bank.
[Music]
Well, there's so much we could learn from this story. It's one of my favorites, also just because of the fun market, right? Bounce houses, bounce castles. You see these for kids' parties and other events and such. And very few people ever think, oh, this would be a great business opportunity or a great market for me to go in.
But Renee took his skills, you know, again, his skills in supply chain management and operations, and then he also looked at markets where there was a high price point, so he could earn a good profit margin. There was more than one supplier, so he wasn't just dependent on one company, and then not very much other advertising. And those points were key. And that's why I try to highlight markets like these in the first year. Like, I'm going back through the archives now and I'm seeing episodes about coffee pods to contractor inspection exam preparation, you know, just all kinds of stuff that people don't think about.
That's where your first or your next side hustle may be, or at least maybe one of your most profitable ones. So I leave you with that encouragement today. My friends, don't jump to conclusions. Put a little bounce in your step. It's time for me to bounce as well.
I'm gonna take off. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. We have a new episode for you every single day. It is always completely free. You can follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
