To keep the cost down the balloon race is designed for 1 size fits all – to pay £30+vat it’s best to try to use it as it is.
As the race grows I am getting asked more and more for custom balloons to fit different markets and themes.
Question: I am curious as to the possibility of you using sailboats?
Yes it is possible to add a sailing boat. We’ve recently added ducks and halloween balloons, coffee shop theme and hearts etc.
The cost of adding a custom balloon is £150+vat and once it’s added it will appear on all races going forward. To add a balloon (or boat) means making the image in 4 different sizes and additional work on the database.
The problem with a single image (like a duck) is that once it’s added everybody will want more options and colours… rather than 1 Yellow duck…. so you have to invest in more colours.
If you add a boat it will most likely be that some will want a Red boat and some will want a Blue boat and so 1 boat will not be enough. Ultimately this will put pressure on your sales as you’ll need to make more profit to cover the cost of implementing all these designs.
The next problem is the scale. If you just have 100% boats in your race the scale doesn’t matter – but if balloons & boats are mixed together the scale doesn’t work as a boat should be 1000 times bigger than a balloon. I got around this with my Halloween theme by adding the images onto the balloons. So an image of a Witch on a balloon works and it keeps to the whole thing a “Balloon Race”.
Designs need to be simple because on the widget and leaderboards the images are tiny:
It usually takes 3 to 4 weeks to add custom balloons.