Tom’s Talking
Holiday for Hire

Why the combination of frivolous festivities and low budgets make Halloween and Christmas the ultimate holidays to hire out your audio equipment.

Have you considered hiring out your audio equipment for the holidays? It’s a fast and simple way to make a few bucks during the Halloween and Christmas holidays – leaving you more free time to spend with your family and friends. You could ask yourself, ‘Why would anyone want to hire out my audio equipment, though?’ Well, there are a few reasons.

Christmas is a time for celebration; a time to enjoy the company of the people we’re closest to. That could be family, work colleagues, school peers, friends from a club, society or sports team, etc. Everybody is getting together for parties. But while we’re more than aware of how important the DJ is, many people will be on tight budgets during the holidays – having blown their pay checks on expensive gifts and stocking the cupboards with festive food – and will therefore be reluctant to fork out for one. This is where hiring out your audio equipment becomes a seriously smart move.

With a low budget looming over them, party planners may be looking to ‘do it themselves’ when it comes to music and lighting, and at a lower cost than booking a DJ you can easily offer them a package consisting of speakers, a controller and some simple lighting. Thinking back to my last NewsWave piece on the range of Bluetooth speakers from our American Audio subsidiary, these speakers could make a great addition to the ‘hire package’ you offer – you could even charge more for them, due to the simplicity and convenience (as well as the technological swagger) associated with Bluetooth. The lightweight ELS-15BT is a good example; featuring a built-in MP3 player, it couldn’t be easier for your customers to play music from their smart phone, laptop or tablet via Bluetooth, with the player automatically searching for devices on start-up. SD cards or USB sticks can also be connected, giving customers three options for delivering the party music themselves.

Lighting is another issue that is easily solved: simple-to-use fixtures such as the Flashback 4, a set of two 4-bank LED fixtures that fold up into a convenient hard case, offer cool old-school color effects and can be easily mounted onto stands for a professional-looking lightshow in minutes. With no complicated DMX-control, even the most amateur of user can select the Auto Run or Sound Active mode to achieve an incredible display of color lighting.

For some additional punch, you could even add a fog machine to the hire package. The most compact machine in our range, the Fog Fury 1000, is simple to setup and operate: its in-tank LED heating indicator shows red while heating and green when ready to use, and with a warm-up time of just four minutes your customers could be blasting out fog at a rate of 3500 cubic-feet per minute in no time.

Another great rental item is your LED Pars. Chances are if you are already doing uplighting, you probably have a couple dozen LED Pars in your garage or storage facility. While you’re not using your Pars during the holidays, why not rent them out to event companies, party planners or mobile entertainers? The ADJ Mega Flat TRI Pak (TRI LED 4-pack with padded case) and the brand new VPAR Pak (Quad LED 2-pack with padded case) are ready to rent and provide the perfect uplighting solution at an affordable price.

While renting out your equipment is all well and good, it’s vital to remember that you are still providing a service; it isn’t just a case of chucking your equipment into the customer’s van and being done with it. There are a number of ways to provide a professional rental service – and remember, being professional doesn’t just make a good impression, it also ensures that your equipment remains protected and organized. Flight cases or bags are essential for storing hardware, ensuring that your gear is protected while in transit and kept together in one place. Meanwhile, speakers should be stored in their cases or handed over in protective covers; the same with controllers. When it comes to the smaller pieces of hardware, such as microphones, XLR leads, power cables and stands, you should label them or tag them with colored tape to indicate where in the flight case or into which bags they go. You should also ensure that all the equipment is clean and in full working order when you hire it out – that way you know if something has been damaged by a customer or during transit when it comes back.

Not only does all of this keep things simple for the user, who in many cases we can assume is a novice with limited knowledge of audio equipment, but it looks and feels professional. It also ensures that the equipment comes back to you in a relatively organized fashion (and hopefully in one piece!) so that you can conduct a quick inventory check for any missing or damaged items.

Of course, it’s not only Christmas parties that may need your sound system services. You could also hire out your audio gear to provide spooky background music and creepy sound effects for Halloween Haunted Houses. Likewise, stores who put on festive displays may require a temporary sound system to add extra festive cheer playing recorded carols or other Christmas songs. There are loads of potential opportunities – all you need to do is seek out the people who need the gear you already own.

Have I talked you round yet? It really is as simple as it sounds. The equipment doesn’t have to be expensive (ADJ offers plenty of quality products at reasonable prices) but it does have to reliable. So, if you’ve got some basic equipment lying dormant for the holidays, why not hire it out? After all, you’ll not only be meeting a need but also earning some extra money for yourself…

- Tom Freret is the National Sales Manager of American Audio  

For more information Contact ADJ:
U.S. Office - Tel: 800-322-6337/+1-323-582-2650 • Web: www.adj.com