Which Provider - Hurleys, Snack-a-can, tubz vending or Sweetfix

[FlintVending]

Cheers Smudge.
I will obtain some feedback on these myself!

Nigel

[FlintVending]

I eventually went with Hurleys with their honesty box "Childline" package. I too have used their site finding service to help me get established with 200 sites. I only started 2 weeks before Christmas and now have 130 sites up and running, just done my first collection for 60 of them in the last two days and the figures have been pretty much spot on what I was led to believe. Yes I have problems with some sites as I believe Paul and Rob outsource their site finding service and to be fair the telesales person cannot see the site and does not know if it is suitable or not, they also have a tendency to "sell" to the a junior member of staff who don't ask managers or owner’s permission and so I have not got into all of the sites. From my first batch of 100 I sent back around 20 or so and Rob sent me some replacements fairly quickly. Yes I have contacted Hurleys and not had a reply straight away but I take the view that I am not their sole customer and so if I have not had a reply I give a follow up call which sorts it out.

I'm glad I used the site finding service to get me started as I have learnt a lot from it and it has got me into sites I would never have approached myself. I have also started to site find myself as someone else said it is not rocket science and I already have had some success with this. Going to start in earnest after the new year and hopefully have 300 sites by the end of Jan and another 300 during Feb, then the really hard work for the next 6 months re-siting the crap sites and tweaking it.

I have a mix a sites consisting of shops, industrial units and pubs and the pubs have proved so far to be the best earners along with fast food outlets. Still early days and I should imagine it will take a few months for me to get a proper feel for things.

Great Feedback Newleaf!

Please keep us all posted how you go along with this, particually whether you are actually making money on it or not.
I know that sounds daft, but i know nearly half a dozen individuals who made nothing from there HB venture, indeed some of them actually lost money!
How much are you paying per bag , by the way?
I do hope it works for you as I may get into it myself if someone can prove the numbers stack up?

Cheers

Nigel

[Newleaf]

Please keep us all posted how you go along with this, particually whether you are actually making money on it or not.
I know that sounds daft, but i know nearly half a dozen individuals who made nothing from there HB venture, indeed some of them actually lost money!
How much are you paying per bag , by the way?
I do hope it works for you as I may get into it myself if someone can prove the numbers stack up?

Cheers

Nigel

Hi Nigel

Which HB franchise / package did the people you know go with? I would be interested to know why they failed, ie. shortages? Not enough sales? Did they give it enough time?

I'm paying 55p per bag which includes 10p charity donation, so you effectively pay the charity up front. The profit is 45p per bag before losses which I am led to belive are in the region of 8% - 10% in the normal cause of events. My first collections bore this out and came back at around 9.5%.

Its a numbers game at the end of the day, as I'm sure you will agree is the same as the towers, although the number of units sold will not be as high as with towers, hence why you need several hundreds to make money. Hurleys model is based on 600 sites with an average turnover of 3 units per site per week.

My first collection of 30 boxes was £236 pounds and my second collection of 30 boxes was £176. They were in a mix of businesses and in two seperate towns and the boxes were placed between one and two weeks before Christmas and collected and restocked on Thursday and Friday of this week. Normally I would not collect boxes after such a short time for most of the sites but as I was keen to see what the results would be I went out early. Some of the boxes which hold 16 bags had sold out completely, these were placed in pubs and for these I will collect on a more regular basis and other sites maybe only every 3 or 4 weeks. You can also get the boxes into more sites than towers due to size of the boxes.

Before deciding which company to go with I looked at buying an established round of honesty boxes with another company Sweet Appeal with the franchisee having in the region of 750 sites producing around £40K a year, but he wanted £27K for the business which I thought way over priced and I have got started for a fraction of this with Hurleys. For more info on the Childline model look at http://www.hurleysfoods.com/index.php?id=24

[FlintVending]

Hi Newleaf

Yes, Sweet appeal and Snack appeal seem to be the best ones, too lose money on, that is! LOL!
Barnardos didnt work out for another fella I spoke to but I think he lost his Dad recently so that may have well been a major factor?
I have also seen Marie Curie and Great ormond street boxes come and go in many of my sites over the years.
Not 100% sure why, but it does appear to be a business with No longevity!
I always seem to see little post it notes on these boxes saying something like -
"This box was £6.70 short last time, would the person/ persons with money owing please make it right for the next collection or else box will be withdrawn"
Needless to say dishonest people dont change there spots and box is withdrawn.
If you work hard at resiteing, I guess you can mitiigate this?
I know the Hurleys outfit well and have dealt with Rob many times.
I think Hurleys is definately a good company to work with on this, but they would need to get there bag prices down to around 35p per bag to stand a chance to make decent money on this IMO!

cheers
Nigel

[Newleaf]

I think the trick is to constantly monitor the sites and re-site the non-productive or the constantly short sites. I am expecting once I have 600 sites up and running to have to re-site around 10% - 20% of these on a monthly basis for various reasons, shortages, not productive, site owner no longer wishes to have a box, business closed or changed hands, competition.

From reading the threads on this forum many have failed at running a tower based business and I think it is true of any business for that matter in that nothing comes easy and you have to work hard to achieve results. I expect I will make quiite a few mistakes in the comming weeks and hopefully learn from them so as to avoid them in the future.

[smudge2410]

Hurleys mentioned these to me, the investment needed seems a lot to me. I also see these turn up on a regular basis, where I have my towers. The boxes seem to disappear as quick as they turned up. Then they reappear again weeks later. I get the feeling its because someone else is having a go.

[Jon123]

6500 for some sweets and cardboard is an awful lot of money. Someone said on the forum ages ago. at the end of a tower business you can run the stock down and sell the machines at least you get something, these charity boxes are worthless and you would probably have to pay to get rid of them. too low margin per visit to make it work. self employed couriers who do 30 + drops a day don't start work until they have £190 in there pocket and they pay for there fuel and van. which would mean that they wouldn't do charity boxes unless there was £310 quid a day to collect.

On top of this if hurleys are giving £25,000 to charity minimum fixed payment then that means they need to sell 250,000 packets if they fall short I am assuming the pay out of there own pockets, if they sell 1,000,000 do they give everyone a 7.5p rebate per pack?

I had enough problems with Vending Revolution charity bulks the only saving grace from a very sour experience was that I could recoup some money lost by selling the bulks.

I would think very hard how much time it took you to get 6500 and whether all those days putting in graft to get to 6500 is worth spending in one go.

[Newleaf]

Jon

What is to stop you running the stock down wth a honesty box business if you wanted to get out, its the same as a tower business in that respect, the sweets are the same. Also if a Pub landlord does a runner over night with and nicks the money its a lot less to loose than a tower!!

The £6500 for start up is mainly the cost of stock and if you did decide to wind the business down you can get the cost of the stock back, selling price of all the stock would be £9600 (assuming all the boxes were full when you decided to wind it up) you would should just need to reduce your number of sites untill all of the stock had sold.

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Vending Revolution I looked at their proposition and was very nearly tempted but the cost as with most tower businesses was very high to get enough towers to make a decent living, £20K + for a hundred towers, plus I found some negative post with regards to Vending Revolution on here which put me off.

[pjo]

Honesty box could work only when the COG is as low as 15-20%. Then you can afford of having 40% theft rate and you are still not loosing your money. Also, you have to be prepared for constant site finding, as after 4-5 cycles the theft ratio is rising fast (someone has stolen something once and get away with this, so he tries more). Obviously, you may have some luck and account that will have 0% theft ratio for a year or so.

Anyway, I would rather do traditional american model of honesty boxes with branded sweets in it.

[kris@tubzbrandsltd]

Hi Smudge,

We do now also stock the bigger type of Jelly Mix and Fizzy Mix as we have had a few customers saying their customers prefer the bigger type. Also we are looking at getting the Stripey Assorted Pencils back as some operators (flint being one) saying that this typw of pencil is the only one that really sells for them and not the bold coloured pencils.

I hope all had a good Christmas and have a great New Year?.