When this post first went up in January 2020, we'd just come off two years of heavy spending on the fleet - more than £100,000 invested in 2017, and over £60,000 of documented new stock through 2019 - and the direction the business has taken since is the same one: buy the kit, own it, and keep it busy. Here's what that investment actually bought, and where DB Entertainment went from there.
Where the money went
The core of it is simple. Around 95% of the equipment on this website is owned by us, kept in the 25,000 sq ft Rotherham warehouse and delivered on vans we own, by the team that looks after the kit. That only works if you keep buying stock, because hired-out equipment takes a hammering and customers notice the difference between a tired unit and a fresh one. The 2019 spend went on replacing popular inflatables and adding interactive games; the 2017 spend went on the fleet itself, so the vans and the logistics side kept pace with the warehouse.
The new arrivals
A few of the additions since the turn of the year are worth naming. The AI Photo Booth generates custom images from 180-plus templates using facial recognition, which has made it a regular on corporate nights and wedding receptions. Spider Mountain is a nine-metre climb-and-slide unit with a thirty-foot death-drop slide that took the top slot at school fun days almost immediately. We've also added the Instagrid 2.1 kWh Battery Generator, which powers games and PA kit on sites with no mains supply and no diesel fumes, and a mobile trailer stage with a line array PA for events that need a proper stage without a proper stage's rigging time.
The games side of the business
2019 also saw a UK-wide tour with two of our most popular interactive games, the Batak Pro Reaction Game and The Vault, and both are still the backbone of our exhibition work. When a client wants several units at several locations on the same day, we carry the stock to cover it - I've built these two on enough Saturday-morning exhibition stands to lose count, as it goes. Alongside the hardware we brought our branding service in-house, with our own graphic designer producing artwork for back panels, target buttons and full wraps, so a game lands on site already carrying the client's logo.
Where that leaves things
It's worth saying plainly: this post is a few years old now, and the fleet has kept growing since it went up - the investment hasn't stopped, it's just become routine. The range now runs to more than 600 products across 68 categories - bouncy castles for back gardens in Barnsley and Worksop, funfair rides for council events in Sheffield, Doncaster and Chesterfield - and we cover the whole of the UK for larger bookings. Exhibition work has taken the games into the NEC in Birmingham, ExCeL London and Manchester Central over the years, and the Google score has held at 5/5 across more than 209 reviews, plenty of them from repeat clients who book the same kit every year. We've been doing this since 1999, and the plan behind the spending hasn't changed: own the kit, maintain it ourselves, and turn quotes around quickly.
What investing doesn't fix
The limits are worth naming too. Buying kit doesn't make the calendar bottomless - a Batak Pro and The Vault are our two most-requested exhibition games, so summer Saturdays go first and midweek dates are the easier booking. Custom branding needs artwork approval before the transfer gets produced, so a same-week event can't always carry a full wrap. And the big units have real footprints: Spider Mountain needs its nine metres of height clear of overhead lines, and the funfair rides need vehicle access to the site. If your space or date is tight, tell us the constraints first and we'll suggest what actually fits.
Planning something for this year
If you're putting an event together and want to know what's new in the fleet since you last hired, try us on 0114 345 0135 or start a quote online - prices for your date normally come back the same day - and if the kit you remember has been replaced by something better, we'll say so.
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