Website success story

Recently I have noticed several cases where my decision to have actual costume photos on my costume hire website was really useful to various people in the area and even outside the city. Many people also told me that they make decisions based on the photos shown. A film company rented my cosutmes for an advert after looking at my products and even people in neighbouring towns and cities used my products based on those. None of my competitors do this and hence their actual customer area is much smaller.

Seven new realistic foam latex masks ordered

Last night I finally ordered seven mostly realistic looking foam latex masks from Greyland Film in Europe. One of them is a replacement for another one that got torn, the other six are new faces to use for costumes or just simply for some parties. I am very much looking forward to trying them all on.

Halloween requests

Finally some Halloween requests are showing up. I was expecting them a little bit sooner. There are still some masks and costumes that I want to get as well and hopefully find out about some Halloween party that I can go to.

The annual crazy "40 days" season

As every year, the matriculants have their annual "40 days" event. Just like last year, a lot of them are coming for costumes, which keeps me rather busy.

Website success story

On Tuesday this week I expected a few people to arrive at 8PM to try on costumes. It turned out to be a group of eleven people from a school in the town of Paarl. They had to drive 45 minutes to get to me and 45 minutes to get back with a speed limit of 120km/h.

The fact that they came and managed to fit on everything that they had on their list was due to the booking system on my website. A few costumes had to be swapped for others due to sizes of the person who were supposed to wear them. My website bascially gave me an advantage over my competitors because it allowed me to widen my potential clients to other cities in a normally very region specific market.

New superhero costumes ordered

Several new superhero costumes have been ordered yesterday for my costume renting business. Most of these costumes are due to popular demand like Hulk and different Supergirl sizes. Some women require large sizes and I normally never have those, especially for superheroes the same issue is with some smaller sizes. Captain America is also on the list, hopefully it will not be stolen a third time.

Getting more Zentai suits

The time has finally come to get more Zentai suits over eBay as I did last time. The choice came down to three vendors where I now have to check specifically which one has what I am looking for. This time I also need to get Zentai sutis in different sizes, especially of those for females. If I get lucky, I can also get replacements for a black Spiderman mask and gloves that went missing, as well as black eye masks for my Incredibles costumes which also went missing. My local suppliers are causing too many delays or just ignore requests.

India costumes

This last weekend I got confirmation about the start of getting some indian costumes for a Western theme made. I also found a huge toy shop in Voortrekker road in Parow which has got some very nice indian wigs that I can use. I bought one to see what they are like. Since the costumes will most likely be male and female, I will have to get a second wig. The wig also includes a red headband and a red feather.

Getting costumes back after vacation

My vacation was from 21 December 2008 until 3 January 2009. Several people rented costumes from me before I left to go to Namibia. Some are also still on vacation and some simply have forgotten to return my costumes due to the long time period.

The dilemma of getting new costumes for other people

The recent change in the Rand (ZAR) / Dollar (USD) exchange rate has made getting licensed costumes a really expensive thing. The shipping in particular is also expensive. The problem is that the licensed costumes are usually much better looking than the locally made ones and to some extend cheaper. I was planning to get some more costumes, but so far haven't gotten around to it.