A purchase earns its place on the DB Entertainment fleet by clearing three hurdles: people have to ask for it, we want to see it working, and it has to be something we can maintain and store properly at the warehouse. That is roughly how the buying has always run, and the back end of winter is when most of the decisions get made, because the indoor season shows plainly what the range is missing.
What the bookings say
The loudest signal comes from the booking sheet. Our bouncy castle and slide package bouncy castle and slide deal has been one of the most popular packages we do for years, so castles and slides get renewed before anything exotic. Toddler groups keep the toddler entertainment range busy right through the colder months, and our delivery team leader Liam has been running from venue to venue every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then fitting weekday toddler parties in around them. When something books itself week after week with no advertising behind it, the sensible response is to buy more of that sort of thing.
What clients and venues keep asking for
The second signal is the phone. The Magic Selfie Mirror went to Leicester and Doncaster in a single week, and the cash grabber went to Birmingham and Manchester in the same stretch mostly for corporate bookings that want something a trade stand crowd can play in two minutes. When the same few games keep coming up in enquiries, they go on the shopping list. That is how the electronic side of the range grew out of a handful of units into a proper section: The Vault, the retro arcade machines and the Batak Lite all started as repeated requests from exhibition and party clients before they became stock.
Where the money went this time
Year on year the investment level keeps rising, and 2018 is shaping up as one of the biggest spend years we have had. Two racing simulators came in from Preston and an electronic wheel of fortune came from Leeds, and both were bought after they kept appearing in corporate enquiries we could only half serve. The two surf simulators got replaced with newer models carrying blue and white themed beds and padded surfboards, because the old ones had done their seasons and it showed. And the newest rodeo bull in the rodeo bulls and multi rides range is Billy the Bull, a children's version built for roughly three to ten year olds, which fills the gap between the toddler stuff and the full-size bull that adults get thrown off. The full-size bulls have been earning their keep for years, as Tracy, who hired one for a Wild West themed birthday party, reported: "Tom and Kane were excellent. Arrived in plenty of time and were really friendly. Highly recommend this company."
From the trade show floor to the website
Buying trips do the rest. The leisure industry trade shows are where we walk a show floor, have a go on anything that looks like it would survive a school fun day in Rotherham or a scout camp near Worksop, and then argue about it on the drive home. Not everything we like gets bought, which is the point of the process. A unit that needs a spare part nobody stocks in the UK, or that eats power a village hall cannot supply, fails the test no matter how good it looked under the exhibition lighting.
There is a gap worth knowing about between the purchase and the booking form. Every new unit goes through inspection, testing and its own photo session before it appears on the site, so a game spotted on a trade stand in February can take a couple of months to become something you can put in a quote, and we hold a booking back before we send kit out untested. The what's new category is where the finished ones land first.
If you want first refusal on a new arrival, call 0114 345 0135 with your date and we will tell you what is on the way and whether it suits your event. Local runs cover Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster daily, and the bigger corporate bookings go out nationwide.
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