After spending 13 years working in the banking sector, Kureshin Reddy jumped at the opportunity to open the first indoor trampoline park in Port Elizabeth.
Reddy, who owns Gravity Indoor Trampoline Park in Framesby, said a family trip to a similar business in Durban a couple of years back, sparked the idea to bring it to the Eastern Cape.
The park consists of a foam pit, basketball arena, interconnected trampolines and a dodgeball arena.
Can you give me some background on yourself and how you started the business?
I worked in corporate for about 13 years where I dealt mostly with business banking clients. After visiting the trampoline park in Durban, my child nagged me to go there every day of that week.
The more I went there, the more I thought to myself that this would work in PE – especially with our weather.
I did my homework and visited many trampoline parks around South Africa and abroad.
We officially opened in December 2016.
Where was business the idea born?
This definitely isn’t a local idea – it is something that was started oversees.
So I was inspired by what was being done elsewhere around the world.
What do you think makes your business unique?
It’s all about the experience. We interact with our clients and we strive to offer the best service. We cater for both adults and kids.
We offer kids something different than playing on their cell phones or watching TV. It’s a family venue and we encourage parents to bounce with their kids.
And it’s actually also a form of exercise.
If someone wanted to take one key lesson from your business model, what would it be?
Nothing is achieved without hard work.
This looks all lovely and fun, but in the background there is so much work that needs to be done to keep the business running and sustainable.
People say you can work smart and not hard, and yes to an extent you can. But you need to put in the time and be hands on.
What were some of the biggest inhibitors your business faced before even getting off the ground?
This business didn’t come cheap.
Everything [equipment and supplies] comes from abroad.
It’s difficult to manufacture what we need inside the park locally and the rand isn’t in our favour.
What are some of your biggest challenges in day-to-day business operations and your particular industry?
We get quite busy and sometimes it becomes difficult to interact with all our clients. Economic times have also impacted people’s spending.
What is the best advice anyone ever gave you about success?
You need to keep pushing. Just because it’s full here today, that’s not to say it will be the same tomorrow.
Keeping the business going means you have to offer your clients and exceptional experience and you cannot keep things the same.
Even if that just means you change a wall colour here and there or offer different types of events.
How do you measure or define success in your business?
If a client comes back again and again.
This means they had a memorable experience.
What kind of advertising do you do?
In this type of business advertising is everything.
We advertise on social media.
We hand out flyers at various robots.
We get involved in different charity events.
We go all out to get our name out there.
What are some of your highlights in running your business?
When we see the smiles on the kids’ faces when they come into the park.
We started off very small and we grew the business into what it is now.
We’ve grown our park to be on the same level - in terms of size - to the ones you will find in Joburg.
How many people do you employ?
We employ a number of temporary workers so it depends on the day.
But on one day we could have between eight to 10 people.
How do you motivate staff? We try to promote the youth by employing students.
We show them how to interact with customers so that when they do go into the real working world, they already have that experience.
How did you acquire funding for the business?
I used a bit of my savings.
But ABSA helped me through their enterprise development fund.
The fund helps to fund small businesses so that they can grow.
Once you had funding, what was the first step in actually launching the business?
1. Paying my suppliers
2. Securing the premises
3. Planning the design and layout
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your business journey so far?
It hasn’t always been easy running my own business.
You need to understand that you are dealing with people so you need to make sure that you are hands on.
You also need to ensure that your staff stay aligned with your business model.
What have been the greatest challenges and advantages of running your business in a city like Port Elizabeth?
The challenge is that we are based in one of the poorest provinces.
People don’t have too much extra money to spend on luxuries so it’s just bad economic times at the moment.
But I have realised that once people experience Gravity they see the value and feel that it is money well spent.
The main advantage is that it is something new in the city.
People here are fitness driven so we get a wide range of clients.
What do you think are the three key traits of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Being hands on in your business;
2. Understanding your market and your clients and
3. Investing back into your business.