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Mardi Gras World
One of the places we visited in New Orleans was Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World. It's basically the central location for New Orleans Mardi Gras floats, and it's very impressive.
Jethrien and I went there with chantal1382, and she was very impressed by the scheme these guys have going. I can't say that I blame her. If you live in New Orleans, you probably belong to a "krewe", basically a social club. Most krewes own 15-20 floats and have their own parade during the couple of weeks before Mardi Gras (plus the "superkrewes", who have hundreds of members and creative ways of getting around the 30-float-per-parade limits).
The thing is, you can't use the same float more than once. So you design a theme for your parade and bring it to this company (and only this company, apparently), and they design your floats, paint them, and attach "props" to them. The props are the biggest part, giant custom 3-D pieces made of styrofoam or fiberglass. Heads, characters, flowers, dragons, you name it. Each prop costs thousands of dollars to make. But when you buy a prop from them for your float, you don't own it. You get to ride that float in the parade, then they take it back and take all the props off, and rebuild or repaint them to use again next year. In the warehouse we saw a fiberglass football player that's apparently as old as I am--they just repaint it as a different player/team member as necessary each year. It's a really impressive use of resources.
They have a strong market lock, both through tradition and high-setup-cost barriers to entry. They have dozens of customers, so any particular krewe disbanding doesn't hurt them too much. As long as this parade tradition continues, they have a nice, steady business. Oh, and they make all the props for Universal Studios on the side, too.
Nice work if you can get it.
Jethrien and I went there with chantal1382, and she was very impressed by the scheme these guys have going. I can't say that I blame her. If you live in New Orleans, you probably belong to a "krewe", basically a social club. Most krewes own 15-20 floats and have their own parade during the couple of weeks before Mardi Gras (plus the "superkrewes", who have hundreds of members and creative ways of getting around the 30-float-per-parade limits).
The thing is, you can't use the same float more than once. So you design a theme for your parade and bring it to this company (and only this company, apparently), and they design your floats, paint them, and attach "props" to them. The props are the biggest part, giant custom 3-D pieces made of styrofoam or fiberglass. Heads, characters, flowers, dragons, you name it. Each prop costs thousands of dollars to make. But when you buy a prop from them for your float, you don't own it. You get to ride that float in the parade, then they take it back and take all the props off, and rebuild or repaint them to use again next year. In the warehouse we saw a fiberglass football player that's apparently as old as I am--they just repaint it as a different player/team member as necessary each year. It's a really impressive use of resources.
They have a strong market lock, both through tradition and high-setup-cost barriers to entry. They have dozens of customers, so any particular krewe disbanding doesn't hurt them too much. As long as this parade tradition continues, they have a nice, steady business. Oh, and they make all the props for Universal Studios on the side, too.
Nice work if you can get it.
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