Chris’ beast of a business plan inspired by prank video
AS inspirations for a new business go, a prank video on YouTube is a bit unusual. But then, so is Chris Roberts’ company and his journey to starting Dino4Hire took a few turns.
Mr Roberts, 37, has always had an interest in dinosaurs but it wasn’t until three years ago that he decided to make them his livelihood.
“My previous work had been far from a dinosaur ranger as you could possibly get,” said Mr Roberts.
“I left school with little qualifications and spent a few years training to be a Royal Marine.
“Unfortunately, due to medical issues I had to medically discharge myself back in 1999. I then worked in a few bars, factories and also as a home improvement window-fitter.
“In 2013 I started my own home improvement company in Swansea and unfortunately this didn’t prove very successful, and I lost a lot of personal money and came very close to going bankrupt, but with family support and also some bank funding we managed to close the company down cleanly in 2015.”
As many successful businesspeople have found after a failure, you have to dust yourself off and try again. And that is what Mr Roberts did.
Dino4Hire does exactly as the name suggests – they rent out dinosaurs, mainly to schools and children’s parties.
“I wanted to do something a little different in the entertainment industry and something that would stand out from the crowd,” Mr Roberts explained.
“I have always had a love of the dinosaur subject and it’s something I knew a lot about, so thought that the two would go hand in hand.
“I had seen a prank online on YouTube of a dinosaur running after office workers in China or Japan and loved the look of the suit they used, so started to investigate on how to get one into the UK. After a lot of research and some funding help from my father-in-law, I made the leap and purchased my first dinosaur from China.”
From there, the business has grown.
Mr Roberts could see there was more potential for the business than just for fun and parties, and started to look into putting together workshops for schools.
“I wanted to use the dinosaurs as an engaging way to help children learn about this fascinating subject,” he said.
“I soon realised that they proved a massive hit with both teachers and pupils. I wanted to really inspire the children to learn and have fun, as I find this the best way to remember the subject. I started to purchase replica items such as eggs, teeth and created a full hourlong keynote presentation using pictures, videos and the large dinosaur.”
To ensure the company could go into schools, Mr Roberts had to make sure all its staff had full DBS checks, that it had insurance and that the equipment had undergone portable appliance testing (PAT).
Then, through references from schools and using social media, Mr Roberts started to build up a great following.
“At present, during term-time, we are in schools every day and have done over 400 primary and nursery schools in England and Wales,” he explained.
“The success of the schools has allowed us to purchase two large walking dinosaurs, three smaller hand puppets, ride-on dinosaurs, animatronic dinosaurs, real and replica fossils.”
It has also meant Mr Roberts