This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Texas Marimba Rentals hit noteworthy demand. I've got a great throwback story for you today. I throwback Thursday update, I should say, Texas Marimba Rentals. It's one of these classic side hustle school stories along with the woman who gets paid to make decisions for people or blogging about fish tanks or many other things. That's just such a cool business idea I never would have known about or heard of or even imagined until I started working on the show nine years ago.
So this is one I continue to kind of mention to people when people are like, "Tell me about some of your favorite stories." I'm like, "Oh, there's this guy in Texas who rents marimbas, you know, to students and musicians, and I guess anybody who has the need for a marimba. You would think it's a small market, but he's doing okay." So if you want to hear the original story about this guy, sidehustleschool.com/752, episode 752. Here we are, what? I don't know, 2,500 plus episodes later. The demand for his marimba rentals has in fact struck a chord.
It hits a high harmonious note. All right, I'll stop for now, but you want to hear directly from Cassidy. He's got a great update. I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up. [Music]
I'm Cassidy Lackey from South Lake, Texas, and my side hustle is Texas Marimbas, featured originally on episode 752.
We rent marimbas, which are percussion instruments, similar to a xylophone. Primarily, we rent to middle and high school students so they can practice at home. My son was accepted into sixth grade percussion in 2017, and I knew that I would need to purchase drumsticks and books and practice pads and all that, but I was surprised to find out that I needed to rent a marimba for him to practice at home. So I did the research and I wasn't really thrilled with the rental options out there. They seemed like they were extensive and inconvenient.
They had long contracts and hidden charges, plus trips to the music store to haul this big monster marimba back and forth. So I started looking at used marimbas on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, and noticed there were quite a few used marimbas for sale out there. So I just purchased five of 'em and thought, I'm gonna try and see if I can rent these. So I set up a website and connected it with an online subscription billing system, and then started running AdWords ads to generate some interest, and decided I would charge a bit less than the competitors and make it much more convenient with free delivery and pickup and really focus on just making it a no-brainer type of decision. Within a couple weeks, those five marimbas rented, and I purchased 10 more and did it again and did it again and did it again.
And it was really just really a perfect niche 'cause there was already a market that had been created. There were already percussion instructors who were requiring their kids to rent these, but it was really underserved market. The music schools that were doing it felt like they were kind of old music stores, right? And they were doing it in an old archaic way, and yet I can order cookies and have them delivered to my house in 15 minutes. I don't know why this has to be so difficult.
So our business was growing steadily since we launched in 2017, but we were particularly well positioned when COVID hit. More students were practicing from home and parents were looking for more convenient options and safer options such as having their marimbas delivered, contact-free if they choose. So during that period, our business really doubled over the last year or so, and we now have over 350 marimbas delivered and rented. So right now, our biggest challenge is just finding enough marimbas to support the demand. I mean, we've been purchasing everything used up until now.
So we've basically purchased everything we can find in Texas and we still have customers on a waiting list. So we've started working with manufacturers to purchase new marimbas, but that can bring its own set of challenges. They don't have warehouses full of the marimbas that we need. So they essentially build marimbas as you order them, which can take months to get just 10 marimbas sometimes. So we're working with them to make longer-term commitments to them so they can order the necessary parts and get ahead of it a little bit to help speed up the process so we can get more marimbas a little bit faster.
But I know that there's a few people that do similar stuff in other parts of the country. And I think those areas, the market just hasn't been established yet. So they're out there having to convince people that they need to rent a marimba, which is a much more difficult proposition. We were fortunate that percussion instructors were already requiring their students to rent marimbas in many of the high schools around here. So we didn't need to convince anybody of the need.
We just had to create a more convenient and cost-effective solution for a need that already existed. [Music]
Some really great advice from Casti there in that update. I really love this whole idea of like, you wanna make sure that the market already exists for your idea, but it is underserved. That is the sweet spot. There is a market for your idea, but it is underserved.
And by the way, texasmarimba.com, still going strong all these years later, it states the benefit really clearly. It's like you get to rent this practice marimba. Here's how much it costs a month. Here's how much you would pay to rent it elsewhere, which is a good bit more. So he's really helping people save money.
And he is, I don't know if he's like owning this niche now, but he's definitely done a great job. So Casti, thanks for helping us out with that segment. Listeners, thank you for listening as well. There's something you can do. Remember, it could be marimba rental.
Well, maybe Casti's got that at least in the geographic region of Texas, but it could be something else. I hope you'll figure it out. I hope you'll take a step today to get closer to a goal that is important to you. Of course, new episodes of the podcast come out every day, always free seven days a week. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
You are listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
