Enterprise Nation

Craig Hailes and Victoria Corcoran were 24 and 21 respectively when they started Rent ‘A’ Bod from Vicktoria’s Mum’s house. Three years on and they’re now operating from their own home that has a second business in the garden .. the Small Animal Hotel. Enterprise Nation pays them a visit. 

If you don’t mind me being too personal, did you live together when you set up the business?

Yes we are engaged to be married and met at university in 2003. My degree was criminology and Craig’s was sport science. When we graduated we wanted to work together so started Rent A Bod so we could be together. We were living in my mum’s house and working out of the bedroom! A couple of months later we rented our own place and now use a spare room as the office. 

What is the most popular service you offer?

During the summer it’s gardening, followed by cleaning which is all year round, although during the school holidays we are fully booked for the small animal hotel.

Do you employ people or do you carry out all the jobs yourselves?

The two of us do everything! We run the animal hotel before and after work and we also do gardening, cleaning, gutter cleaning, driveway cleaning, painting, carpet cleaning. We do have my mum and her friend who work for us at the weekends (they work full time themselves so can’t manage any more hours). We have had 8 members of staff this year so far but none of them have been reliable, punctual, or done a good job. It’s a shame because we are fully booked for the next 5 weeks and losing customers because we just can’t fit them in.

It looks like you’ve had support from Prince’s Trust and Knowsley Council – how did this help you start and grow the business?

We got a £5000 loan from the Princes Trust and a business mentor Brian Fisher who we see every month. The loan helped us buy all the tools and a van to start up so it saved us having to use all my Dads tools and gardening equipment! We had a £500 grant from Knowsley Council which went towards more tools, then 6 months later we won £2000 expansion award from the council which we used to buy a carpet cleaner and the small animal hotel. 

I love your Small Animal Hotel - how did you come up with the idea?

We have two guinea pigs ourselves and we were going on holiday in December 2006 and thought who’s going to look after the girls? So we had a look around and found lots of kennels and catteries but couldn’t find anywhere who took small animals so my mum had to do it. When we got back we looked into it further and thought we had found a gap in the market so decided to give it a go. At the time we were renting and had a  1metre by 1metre yard! So we decided to buy our first house together with a big garden so we could start the small animal hotel. We found a house with a 45metre garden that wasn’t overlooked and went for it. 

Did you need any special planning permission to accommodate animals in your garden?

No. To look after small animals you don’t need a license, but we did have to apply to the council to change from residential to residential/commercial all to do with the flow of traffic and amount of people coming to the house each day.

Do you offer room service?!

We do offer room service for the animal hotel. Each guest has breakfast in bed every morning which includes carrots, cucumber, cabbage and a bowl of their dry feed, fresh water, and the radio is turned on each morning. Then either the fan or heater is turned on depending on the weather. If it’s really hot each guest has an ice-pack put in. Then every night each guest is put out into the run outside for about 2 hours then they come in and go to bed with carrots, kale, apple and spinach.

What are your plans for the future?

We are waiting for planning permission from the council but all going well we are building a luxury cattery. It will have 15 chalets all big enough to hold 3 cats in each one. Each chalet will have toys and scratching posts, radio, sky lights, its own fully heated bedroom and large private exercise area, and web-cameras, so when the owner is on holiday they can log on to the website and look at their cat. We are also planning on franchising the small animal hotel. Then sub-contracting out cleaning and gardening work to other companies maybe??

What advice would you offer anyone just graduating who is thinking about starting a business?

Be willing to work 7 days a week and long hours. You have to be willing to just get on with it and do it! And have determination! Marketing is important too so make sure you advertise your business!

Victoria Corcoran talks to Emma Jones 

• Rent 'A' Bod