5 Tips We Wish We Knew When Starting Our Yard Sign Rental Business
With the pandemic upon us, many people found themselves unable to celebrate birthdays in regular fashion and thus turned to yard cards to make an impact. But did you know that yard card greetings have been around for years? You might not have heard of them until recent months but now they have exploded as more and more people turn to yard cards to make their birthdays and graduations as special as possible.With that being said, maybe you've been thinking of starting a yard card rental business to capitalize on this new explosion in trends.
Here are some tips for how to start a yard card rental business and what running a yard card business entails:
If you're looking for some quick easy cash, don't go into Yard Cards Rentals!
You just said this trend has exploded so why shouldn't you go into the yard card rental business to make some extra cash, you wonder? Well it's true that you'll drum up some good business with a little advertising and hustle at this point in time but what you might not know is that running a yard card rental business is HARD WORK!
When we first started our Love At First Signs Yard Greeting Business we didn't realize the amount of work that went into it. Not just in the business side of things (forming an LLC, starting a website, advertising, invoicing, collecting money, etc) but in the actual staking side of things.
It might seem like a breeze to take some yard signs and stake them into a lawn but the truth is...it ain't always easy. Dry grass, hard dirt, pebbles, tree stumps, roots, walkways, sprinkler systems and everything else under the sun can make staking a yard into a nightmare...or at least require much more elbow grease than you think! So not only do you have to be physically fit, you must also have patience as sometimes staking a lawn takes much longer than you think. You’ll also know more about weather conditions than you’d probably like including wind speeds and ground temperatures!
The other thing is that you most likely have a full-time or part-time job already. So this yard card business would be side money for you. It also means that after your long day at work you are going out at night to stake signs in someone’s yard. For us, that also means designing a sign ahead of time, as we don’t just pick and go. We actually setup a sign in our own yard or storage facility which takes time.
Don't be a fly-by business. Do it the right way.
This means forming an actual business (LLC, sole proprietorship, etc), filing the proper tax documents and paperwork for required licenses, getting insurance (yes, you need it!), and everything else that comes with running a "real" business. Sure, you'll find plenty of yard greeting rental businesses in your area that just collect payment in exchange for staking the words “Happy Birthday” and a cupcake or balloon or two. But the majority are not legitimate - aka they are not licensed and insured. Don't take that route if you really want to start a yard card rental business. Do it the right way.
Be proactive about how much time you want to devote to yard greeting rentals and stick to it.
This business has the ability to suck the life out of you. Not because it isn't fun and fulfilling but because it requires late night or early morning hours every single day of the week. But if you set limits to how many yard signs you want to rent per day/week and block out days off in your calendar where you take no rentals, then you can keep your yard sign rental business on your terms.
In the beginning, you might say yes to every job because you are happy to make a sale. But once you start staking night after night you'll realize that the lack of sleep takes its toll and can really affect the way you feel about your yard card rental business. From the beginning, be proactive about days off and blocking off time in the calendar ahead of time.
Also, if you have a rule (no more than X number of signs per night) don’t be persuaded to deviate from that rule if a friend or local patron asks you to do a sign for them on an evening when you’re already booked. This still happens to us and while we hate saying no, especially to our locals, sometimes we just have to.
Don't copy other yard card designs in your area. Find your own style.
It's easy to see yard card designs from other yard sign rental companies in your area (or online) and think you need to copy them. We found early on that we liked to add more signs to our bottom row than the other sign companies in our neighborhood and so we developed a style unique to us that we stick to.
While what we do takes much more work than most of the other sign rental business competitors in our area, it's something we stand by because it fits our style and because people now recognize our signs. Don't be a copy cat. Find your own style and stick to it.
Less is more at first. Start with the basics.
When we first started our business we got so excited that we started ordering as many signs as we could. One day we realized we had an entire room filled with signs and our "big" order still hadn't shipped! We couldn't believe how quickly our signs had accumulated. Don't do what we did. Instead, start with the basics.
Order a few Happy Birthday sets and a good black alphabet set or two. Add a few flair pieces such as cakes, presents, balloons, and stars and then build from there...but only after you do some signs and see what extras you need. If you get too much at once you will be overwhelmed and spend all your capital on way more signs than you need.
In the beginning we spent massive amounts of signs from our local sign shop trying to get personalized signs for every request at last minute’s notice. It was only after we ended up with duplicate “croquet” signs and ended up not even using them (they are still sitting there untouched) did we realize that we couldn’t offer every customer every one of their choices. We ended up breaking even on many of the signs we did at the beginning and sometimes still to this day!
Don't set your prices on what your competitors charge. Set them based on how much you think your time and effort are worth.
This is probably the most important advice we can offer! When we first started, we tried to get business by setting our prices slightly lower than our competitor’s prices until we realized that we were worth WAY more than what they were charging. Quickly we raised our prices to reflect what felt fair to us based on the effort and service we were providing our customers.
So just make sure you don’t low-ball yourself in the beginning. You’ll regret it later. You can always start high and then decide to lower your prices later or offer discounts to local customers.
Wondering where we get our lawn signs from? Check out this post we just did giving you most of our yard card sign companies that we buy from.
If you have any questions, let us know in the comments below.
And check out our Gallery to see how we do our yard card rentals. If you are on Long Island and want to book us for your next special celebration, fill out our booking form.
