Anyone can list a balloon on a website. Far fewer can build one that is still flying in five years, tell you what to do about airspace, or answer the phone when something goes wrong in the middle of a sale weekend. These are the nine questions that separate them. Ask all nine before you order.
1. What material is it?
The most important question, and the one most suppliers answer vaguely.
You want **polyurethane**. It handles ultraviolet light and recovers from being folded. **PVC** is cheaper, goes brittle under sustained sun, and holds a crease that eventually becomes a failure line.
A supplier who cannot answer this in one word is telling you something.
2. Is artwork included, or extra?
Compare like for like. A 13-foot advertising blimp at **$1,526 includes full-colour artwork on both sides**. Some quotes look lower until artwork, plates, colour charges and proofs are added.
Ask for the delivered price with your logo on it.
3. What starts the production clock?
The answer should be **artwork approval**, not order date. Production runs three to seven days from approval, and shipping adds two to five business days.
If a supplier quotes “one week” without saying what week one starts on, you do not have a date.
4. Where does it ship from, and in what?
Ask for the origin and the packaging. A straight answer sounds like: UPS Ground from the factory in North Carolina, two to five business days anywhere in the continental United States, in a single carton 60 by 26 by 3 inches, at $135 for a blimp or $27 for a sphere.
The carton matters beyond delivery — it is also your storage container for the rest of the unit’s life.
5. What exactly is in the box?
Vague inclusions cause bad first days. A clear answer: the unit, plus your choice of a 120-foot tether line **or** a 105-foot metallic pennant line. One or the other, not both. A fill hose is $45 if you need one.
Knowing this before delivery is how you avoid a Saturday morning with no way to attach anything.
6. What does the warranty actually cover?
Scope, not adjectives. The honest answer is **wear** — if it wears out in service, it goes back for a replacement.
**Weather loss is not covered**, by anyone. A balloon that got away in wind is gone. Any supplier claiming otherwise has either not read their own terms or is pricing that risk into the unit.
7. Can they answer the airspace question?
This is the fastest way to sort professionals from resellers.
The correct answer: below 150 feet above ground level the FAA is not involved in tethered balloons, so the standard flight height of 120 feet sits deliberately under that line. Within five miles of controlled airspace, you call the local tower for permission.
A supplier who has made that call hundreds of times, and never been refused, is a different proposition from one who has never heard of it. Arizona Balloon Company’s founder holds an FAA commercial pilot certificate — that is the level of answer worth looking for when a landlord or a city starts asking.
8. What is their liability position?
Ask two things: the coverage, and the record.
A good answer has both — **$1,000,000 in liability coverage**, behind a record of **one claim in forty years, for $2,000**. The record is the more useful number. It is the real answer to “what happens if this comes down on a customer’s car.”
9. How long have their customers stayed?
Renewal behaviour beats testimonials.
Some customers have been with the same supplier for **over thirty years**. One California balloon company flies **more than a hundred of these blimps every weekend for homebuilders**. Customers are still flying units bought fourteen years ago.
Nobody re-buys a marketing expense for three decades unless it works.
Two things a good supplier will tell you unprompted
**The wind rule.** Winds forecast over 25 miles per hour, bring it in. Wind does not wear a balloon out; wind loses one. A supplier who does not volunteer this is not preparing you to keep what you bought.
**The helium reality.** Every balloon loses about one percent of its gas per day — physics, not a defect. Top off every three to seven days, roughly $2.50 a day of flying on a blimp. Helium runs about $1.50 per cubic foot, so a 170 cubic foot blimp fill is around $255.
A supplier who lets you discover the running cost after purchase has told you what kind of relationship this is.
If you would rather not own any of it
Some suppliers also operate. In greater Phoenix and Tucson there is a service programme where equipment, helium, installation, weather monitoring and removal are all handled — $297.25 per day for a blimp in greater Phoenix, $327.25 in Tucson.
Weekend-priced, billed the Monday after, no contract, no minimum, stop any week. If weather keeps it down there is no charge for that day, which puts the weather risk on the operator rather than on you.
Questions we get
What does a 13 ft advertising blimp cost?
$1,526 printed, with full-colour artwork on both sides included in the price. Shipping is $135 UPS Ground from the factory in North Carolina.
How much helium does it use?
About 170 cubic feet for a full fill, roughly $255 at $1.50 per cubic foot from a welding-gas supplier. It loses about one percent per day, so top off every three to seven days.
How high does it fly?
120 feet on the standard tether. That is deliberately below the 150-foot line at which the FAA becomes involved in tethered balloons.
What happens in wind?
Winds forecast over 25 miles per hour, bring it in. Wind does not wear a balloon out, but it can lose one.
How long until it ships?
Three to seven days from artwork approval, plus two to five business days shipping.
More at giantadvertisinginflatables.com.