A must read if you want to start a Sleepover Business

This is the first question we will ask you before you buy a tent because it will determine what size play tent will fit in your vehicle. Play tents start at 110cm high and 110cm wide although we now do a slimline version. The width is variable and the play tents fold almost flat for storage or transport. But we can make them much bigger, up to 160cm tall. You need to decide if you are A) happy to take the play tent and canopies to the venue and set them up there and take them back down afterwards (takes longer) or B) would you like to be able to build the play tents just once, pop the canopies on and off you go in your vehicle (takes less time). 60% of my customers build and dismantle the play tents at the venue and with the help of a decent rechargeable screwdriver and the right drill bit this process can be speeded up significantly. It also means you have more flexibility re the size of the frame. But remember our new slimline tents give you great flexibility! 

Once you have determined your mode of transport you can start thinking about what size play tent would suit your business. 

All sizes of frames we make have exactly the same construction although the bigger tents have thicker timber and are much heavier. Our usual frames range from 110cm high to 160cm high. 

We create by hand 5 sizes of A-Frames so you have lots of choice for your business whether you are starting out, or expanding your business to include older children or even adults. 

The Best Friend - Standing at 160cm high, The Best Friend tent is one of our most popular tents as you can pop a double mattress inside up to 140cms wide and two friends can sleep under canvas. Unlike other manufacturers, we use thicker timber measuring 44mm x 35mm for our A-Frame legs to give it both strength and stability, a requirement of the Toy (Safety) Regulations UK 2011. 

The Majestic - Standing at 140cm high, The Majestic is one of our most versatile tents! This is your ideal tent if you want to start a business and include older children or adults as sleepover clients. There is plenty of head height for grown ups to sit up and you can comfortably fit in a mattress up to 70cms width. Unlike other manufacturers, we use thicker timber measuring 44mm x 35mm for our A-Frame legs to give it both strength and stability, a requirement of the Toy (Safety) Regulations UK 2011.

The Standard - Standing at 120cm high The Standard is our most popular A-Frame to start your business with. The frame will easily accommodate children up to the age of 12 years (subject to the odd taller one!). The timber is 44mm x 20mm and enjoys both strength and stability along with our super strong joints and rubber feet.

The Starter - exactly the same as The Standard minus the little criss cross at the top. Popular with customers who may have smaller than average transport and need that little bit more room to fit the frame in their vehicle. We also do a slimline version of this tent.

The Mini - At 50cm high, we couldn't resist adding this little gem to our range for teddy bear picnics or a bit of Elf naughtiness at Christmas! 

This is a hot topic! Most of you will want lavish themed or patterned fabrics and why wouldn’t you, they look amazing and add an incredible ambience to the party. However when we start looking at the fact each fabric style will need to be independently tested for chemical migration and flammability (approx £200 - £500 per fabric) depending on how many colours it has in it, it becomes very expensive! We tried testing several fabrics to give our customers choice but as you can imagine everyone has different tastes and the patterned fabrics were slow to sell but expensive to test......and lots of them failed the tests! On a side issue, you cannot put fire retardant fabric on your tents because the chemicals in the coating are toxic to children if they ingest them and they would likely fail chemical testing. 

So having gone through numerous options we have made the decision to only offer a choice of 75 plain colours in 100% cotton for the A – Frames and 10 colours in 100% cotton heavyweight panama for the Wigwams. If you have any doubt that plain fabrics are boring and uninspiring, pop over to our gallery and see what folk are doing to accessorize and stylize their venues with plain covers.

 Let us share some logic with you. Lets say you start with 6 play tents and six canopies. Most people want to offer themed parties and why not? So that’s 6 unicorn canopies, 6 mermaid canopies, 6 wizard canopies so on and so forth. That’s a lot of canopies and you are tied to that theme. There are more smart alternatives. About 75% of our customers start with neutral colours either white or ivory which can be accessorised for boys or girls parties and then gradually introduce more themes with accessories or coloured canopies. Another option; imagine buying a set of covers for girls consisting for example 2 teal green, 2 bright pink and two sky blue, you could do unicorns, mermaids, flamingos, boho, after prom and many other themes just from 6 covers. Boys, 2 black, 2 green, 2 navy blue, you could theme these as armies, football, wizard, super heros, Halloween ...now that is a smart way to save money on canopies and spend your money on accessories. Remember themes come and go but your canopies are the little black dress of the canopy world, they can go with anything if you choose wisely.

Our canopies are professionally made with Velcro fastenings so you don’t have to dismantle your frame to change the colour or wash them. The Velcro is also chemical and flammability tested! 

On that note all canopies are preshrunk before being made so they won't shrink when you wash them and not fit your frame ever again! The fabrics are machine washable up to 30 degrees and dry very quickly when hung to dry naturally. They are beautiful to iron, we know, as we have to iron each and every one before we send them to you! 

Please note that if after buying your play tents from us you make your own canopies for your play tents, your status as a distributor of play tents turns to a manufacturer of a toy play tent and you will need to ensure every component of your canopy is UKCA compliant including all fabrics, decorations, threads and any Velcro. They will need to be tested for chemical migration and flammability and you hold the test certificates. You will also need to produce a technical file and a UKCA Declaration of Conformity. These are our current responsibilities as a manufacturer and this is the reassurance you get when you buy your canopies from us. We take that hard work away and I’m sure you will understand these measures are in place to stop a child being badly burned if the play tent canopy caught fire. 

We are always being asked what mattress should I get? Our first answer is quite truthful, what can you afford? This is our experience and theory. 

When Ness started out she purchased 6 single blow up mattresses from Tesco’s. They were mid range at £15 each (some were just £5!). She brought a foot pump. It took her about 5-10 minutes to inflate each bed and in all honesty, she wasn’t born patient. Invariably she would return to collect them the following day and most were almost deflated. They were regularly punctured because kids like to jump on things as well as Fido the dog and Lucky the cat. Ness got fed up of repairing them and they were a pain to store. They would slide around and were slippy to lay on as well as noisy and were a pain to clean if there were any spillages.

She then tried some fold out travel mattresses 120cm long, 60cm wide 5cm depth. They were great to set up and put away, easier to transport and store but they were not much use for the older bigger children and or adults. They were more comfortable for the younger lighter ones but the bigger kids didn’t like them.

Ness explored other kinds of mattresses. She liked the foam mattresses with wipeable PVC covers but they were too, heavy big and bulky to transport, so she opted for the pillow mattress. 

This is a mattress with 4 or 5 envelope openings into which a pillow is inserted. She tried some from Ebay but the openings were too big for the pillows and the pillows soon became flat. She then made her own and made the envelope openings smaller so when the bigger pillow was put inside it provided a very comfortable but more bulky mattress which to sleep on. Both Ness and her husband slept on them for a night. 

So this is our choice and we make these mattresses to sell in two sizes the 4 section pillow mattress is £40 and is 180cm long and 60 cm wide.. The 5 section ones are £45 each for the cover that measures just over 200cm long and 60cm wide. They have double stitched reinforcement points and are made from heavy but soft panama fabric. They come in several colours. You can add your own pillows. Ness brought a pack of 4 Silentnight Bounce Back pillows from B&M for £14.99 to fill hers and they were anti – allergy, washable, so ideal for children. Ness also put waterproof, terry fabric pillow protectors on them so if there were any little accidents, the pillows would be protected. Our pillow mattresses are also pre shrunk and fully machine washable.

As for our theory – if you make your guests a comfortable space to sleep in and on, they will get a better nights sleep which is good for the guests and better for the parents. 

So the mattress choice is yours – just experiment and find what works for you and your guests. 

You need to take out Public Liability Insurance. You are a business like any other business and you are responsible for the services and goods you provide. If something goes wrong and you get sued, at least your insurance will cover you. £5 million is the minimum we would recommend. Also if you employ someone or even if you take your friend along to help you and they have an accident they can sue you. It is an offence to employ someone (any age, for money or other gain, or just as work experience) and not have Employee Liability Insurance minimum £5 million in place. If in doubt make enquiries. If you collaborate with another business, make sure they also have insurance. 

You may also want to consider insurance for your equipment or any other products you offer such as food, or other party supplies in case they get damaged or stolen.