Still child’s play after thirty years
THE Gold Coast is Australia’s holiday playground, so it’s fitting that a company which rents out baby and toddler equipment to visiting tourists has had a long and successful life.
Jack & Jill Hire was established 50 years ago, but its current owner Ken Viggars has just celebrated 30 years at the helm.
“The business had been going for 20 years before I bought it and I’ve actually talked to the children of the original owners, they are my age and their names are Jack and Jill,” he said.
Mr Viggars moved from his native New Zealand in the late 1980s after visiting family and attending Expo ’88 in Brisbane.
“You could say Expo ’88 was the turning point for me,” he said. “I already had family here, my parents and my sister were living on the Gold Coast.”
He said when he returned to Auckland after his Aussie holiday, the people who had been looking after his business there, offered to buy it from me.
Mr Viggars had operated that business, an oil and fats waste recycling business for 17 years, before making the move
across the ditch. He arrived back on the Gold Coast and found an ad for Jack & Jill in the Bulletin.
“I saw the ad and it was at a price I could afford, so the rest is history.”
Mr Viggars said they had moved three times over the past three decades, starting out in an old landmark building in Scarborough St, Southport.
“It was a rundown and ramshackle place, but it was quite well-known in the day,” he said.
Jack & Jill Hire Services provides equipment including prams, baby capsules, cots, nursery needs, electrical equipment and invalid equipment such as wheelchairs.
The company’s main clientele are hotels, motels and holiday apartments rather than dealing direct with the public.
“Most of our work, our bread and butter, is for our account clients, which are the housekeeping departments in hotels or the management of highrise apartments,” he said.
“The bulk of the work comes from there and then we might get some inquiry from grandparents who live here and have family coming to visit.”
Mr Viggars said he had kept the business relatively small over his ownership, with a few staff helping with deliveries and his sister in the office.
“I’ve got no intentions to grow it and become a multimillionaire,” he said.
But with annual revenue around $350,000, he said it had offered him a comfortable lifestyle over the years.
Mr Viggars is the grandfather of three, and now in his second marriage, a stepfather to a 10-year-old boy.
“I’m 68, but I’ve still got another couple of years to go before I’m ready to retire,” he said.
“There is a fair bit of lifting involved with this job, so if I find I’m having trouble with that side of it, it might be the trigger for me.”
For now, new generations of Gold Coast holiday-makers can be safe in the knowledge their baby hire needs will be taken care of.