9/13/2006 10:00:00 PM 

No bull: Bounce houses rule
Good-times company finds its footing in the Kinzie Corridor

By TIMOTHY INKLEBARGER, Staff Writer

On a cool autumn morning just west of downtown, most of the workers at the Kinzie Industrial Corridor are headed back to their warehouse spaces after a long, relaxing weekend. But crunch time is just ending for Patrick McNulty, general manager of All-4-Fun Chicago, a company that rents inflatable bounce houses, popcorn machines, a mechanical bull, and other party paraphernalia.

"Saturdays and Sundays are the craziest," McNulty said, adding that the company worked 11 parties over the weekend.

All-4-Fun President Bobby Bradley started the firm in Garland, Texas, in 1998. And in 2004, it opened its Chicago office with 11 inflatable bounce houses, obstacle courses, and some office furniture, McNulty said.

"It was kind of like All-4-Fun in a box," McNulty said.

Bradley said that in two short years, the Chicago location has become the most successful of its six satellite operations throughout the country-more than tripling the number of inflatables in its good-times arsenal. And its revenue has doubled from $180,000 in 2005 to $350,000 so far this year, according to McNulty. Most the inflatable games and bounce houses run $200 for the full day, and $35 to $50 fee to set it up, depending on how far away the event is held.

Bradley said the Texas-based company was borne out of a mobile DJ business he started while still in high school in Austin in 1988. After graduating from the University of Texas in the 1990s with a degree in economics and finance, he purchased a franchise of a mobile DJ and party entertainment business. While working private parties and outdoor festivals, Bradley said he started to notice a demand for inflatable entertainment games such as bounce houses. In 1995 he bought a sewing machine and taught himself to make his own bounce houses and inflatable creations.

"Once I built that game, I rented it out a few times and it paid for itself," he said.

As he created more inflatable games with his sewing machine, Bradley began to see that niche as his future. He sold the entertainment franchise in 1998 and went full-time with All-4-Fun, developing new and unusual games such as inflatable water slides and a so-called bungee run. Bradley described the bungee run as a 30-foot inflatable runway where competitors race to the finish line with a bungee chord strapped around their waists. As they reach the end of the race, the bungee chord yanks them backward, robbing them of their victory.

In addition to its inflatable games, the company offers pony rides, a 26-foot climbing wall, puffy sumo wrestling body suits, and a mechanical bull machine. The mechanical bull also can be removed from its bucking apparatus and fitted with a detachable surf board for those more interested in catching some virtual waves. McNulty said the bull, which rents for $250 an hour, is one of the most popular attractions.

In 2003, the company opened locations in Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Houston, and Plano, Texas. The expansion was not a total slam dunk, though. Another satellite operation in Atlanta that opened the same time as the Chicago location failed after a year.

"The biggest lesson [from the Atlanta operation] is that … your leadership is the key to success," Bradley said. "We had some significant challenges to find the right people to run that office there."

McNulty attributed the success of the Chicago operation partly to its location in the city, noting that competitors have remained largely in the suburbs.

"I think the inner city has been underserved," he said, adding that the company works mainly private parties and outdoor festivals. He said working out of a warehouse space owned by the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago, 2010 W. Fulton, also has helped. The council, which acts like a chamber of commerce for businesses in the industrial corridor, houses 100 tenants at its warehouse building. Member companies at the ICNC vary widely to include purse manufacturers, chocolate producers, software designers, and manufacturers of corrugated cardboard, to name a few.

"The entrepreneurial spirit is really contagious here," McNulty said.

Joyce Shanahan, executive director for the ICNC, said the ICNC coaches fledgling businesses along with providing loan programs, business workshops, and job placement services. The optimal benefit of membership, she said, is "being in the incubator."

"Many of [the companies] are in the same position even if they are in different industries," she said. "A lot of them have the same clientele."

She said the council represents about 350 companies of the 1,500 located in the corridor, which is bounded by Grand, Chicago, Lake, and Kedzie.

The council's revolving loan fund program gives small businesses planning to expand the opportunity to borrow up to $12,500, with three years to pay it back. It's a program that might eventually come in handy for the All-4-Fun Chicago operation as its business grows. At its warehouse space, the popcorn machines and inflatable bounce houses are piling up, and McNulty said he already is storing some of the larger games, such as the rock wall and the water dunk tank, at other spaces in the ICNC building.

Bradley said the company plans to open a 20,000-square-foot venue somewhere in the city in 2007. He said the company has not found a new space yet, but it plans to begin looking in December. It will be one of three new similar venues it plans to open at its other satellite locations in the coming year, he said.

Until then, McNulty said he'll continue operating out of the warehouse space at the ICNC building and work at building the good-times empire. He said he was asked by one of his pint-sized patrons recently whether he had kids of his own. He said no.

The kid promptly told him: "Man, they're going to be lucky."