The Business

iBounce is a trampoline park business founded by Rhys Heavens in 2016. He launched Cornwall’s first ever trampoline park facility in Bodmin and now has three sites across the South West.

Trampoline Parks if you haven’t heard of them are the new soft-play.   They’re the on-trend, any-age, any-ability family entertainment facility for kids and big kids alike. The parks offer wall-to-wall trampolines, dodgeball, giant airbags, fitness classes, parent & toddler sessions and interactive light games amongst many other amazing features.

Breakthrough Journey So Far

Back in December 2015 I was running a pub but I had ambitions to have my own business and to carve out a work-life balance where I could spend weekends with my family and young children. The iBounce story started if not on the back of a pub coaster, not far off. A weekend away with my friend and now business partner, experiencing a trampoline park in action, a few Long Island Iced Teas and a long old night round a cocktail bar and we realised our opportunity. The numbers just worked. We thought, “there isn’t one in Cornwall, there isn’t one in Devon. We’ve got 12p and a lot of drive. How do we get one open? And what does a trampoline park look like?”

We figured that one out pretty quickly as fast forward to Easter 2017 and, with a little help from Breakthrough, iBounce now has three sites open including Cornwall’s first trampoline park in Bodmin and just a few weeks ago Exeter’s first too.

We’ve got a lot of people here with really great knowledge and now, after such a whirlwind period of growth we need to consolidate. We’re looking to re-structure and re-attribute, responsibilities and KPIs. If you ask me about more parks I’ve got to hold myself back at the moment as up until now we’ve all been trying to get everything done as quickly as possible. On site, I’m the labourer, building stuff and getting stuff done because it needs to be done. Then 10 minutes later, I’m on the phone making business decisions, dealing with finances. That’s why it’s so valuable to have help from Breakthrough – they keep me level-headed. I just feel like there’s an extension to our company as I’m not reliant solely on just me or our management team. There are other people I can call on for support in other organisations like Oxford Innovation and Unlocking Potential, who deliver the Breakthrough support. They’re great to just to talk to and see what they think – it feels like we’ve got a bigger head office.

Rhys of iBounce case study with Breakthrough

How Breakthrough Helped

We’ve just opened our third park since our standing start last year and we’ve also got a central office and a reservations centre about to come online so we’ll have 5 buildings and around 60 employees. That’s 16 months on from what was essentially a tipsy conversation which got out of hand! But with such rapid growth and expansion comes risk – here is where support from Breakthrough has been crucial. Before meeting Breakthough Coach Heather Coupland to talk finance, I’d done basically wet finger in the wind but this was more structured with a lot more thought going into it. When we opened our third site we used the same tools Heather had shown us so we didn’t over-borrow and with this greater understanding of cashflow we’ve ensured our growth is more secure.

I’ve also been able to take on four key members of staff with the recruitment and salary support. One of those for example is Cornwall Assistant Manager Hannah Collin. She’s a real asset to the business and it was the Breakthrough job support which helped us find her – not just in terms of the Unlocking Potential Jobs website but also the help from our Business Development Manager on job descriptions, advertising, interviewing and selecting. They did their absolute best for us in a short space of time. I set myself tight deadlines and they came on that journey with me… and delivered.

Thank you to the Breakthrough team for all their support in the past and now ongoing – we couldn’t have done it without them. We’re excited about the future including re-investment upgrading the parks with more smart technology as it emerges. There are plans for franchising as well as industry consulting because I hope others can learn from our journey as you can’t take on the world by yourself.

Breakthrough Business Support

If you would like support from the Breakthrough business support team, click on this link.

 

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