Bonsall Bounce

A small community bounce house rental site my family built together on the weekends, designed, built, and shipped end-to-end. A deliberate experiment in vibecoding: how far can a designer take a real business with modern AI tooling, from brand to booking flow.

Role: Designer + builder
Team: Family of 4
Timeline: Weekends, 2026
Tools: Lovable, Figma

Problem

Bonsall is a small town, population under 4,000, with a reputation for being out of the way. In reality it's full of higher-end families with a lot of young kids, exactly the demographic that throws birthday parties every weekend.

Trying to get a bounce house delivered here is dicey. Most rental companies won't drive out this far, the ones that will tack on distance fees, and the units that show up are often the loud, primary-colored castles that clash with the styled backyard parties these families actually want.

The usual experience: you call a number, and the bounce house arrives late, dirty, and you're not sure it's going to hold up through the party. So the idea was to invest in a house that was reasonably priced, versatile, and photogenic, first for our own family, then test the market to see if we could rent it out on the weekends.

Challenge and Research

The goal was simple: cover the cost of the first bounce house, and use what we learned to decide whether to invest in a second. That meant treating this like a real market test, not just a family purchase.

I started posting AI-generated images on Instagram to gauge interest and shape the brand look before spending on photography. The feed pulled in early feedback and DMs, which gave us a first read on which styles and price points resonated.

From there, I ran a small focus group with 10 local moms to test the booking flow end-to-end. The hypothesis: if we kept the base rental price reasonable, families would happily layer on reasonable add-ons (extra time, tables, popcorn, etc.), making the unit economics work without pricing anyone out.

Synthesis

In-practice research surfaced three patterns that reshaped the offer and the flow:

Tight budgets are the norm. Families want a clear base price and small, honest add-ons, not a quote-by-phone dance.
Parties aren't planned far in advance. Most booking interest lands inside a 1–2 week window, so the site has to make short-notice availability feel obvious and safe.
"Wet/dry" is misleading. Despite the marketing category, the unit doesn't actually hold up well in water, so we reframed listings and add-ons around dry-play use.

Design Recommendations

The brand had to feel like a styled shoot, not a carnival, photogenic, calm, and mom-friendly. Every design decision laddered back to that one promise: "Everyone has fun, including mom."

Voice & positioning

Mom-centric, calm-over-chaos angle, not kid-hype.
Four pillars: Family-Run & Local · Non-Toxic & Safe · Affordable for All · Mom Has Fun Too.
Promise: "photogenic, clean, adds to the calm of your celebration."

Palette

Forest

#3F6B54

Coral

#E9825A

Mustard

#D9A24A

Blush

#F3D9D3

Cream

#FBF6EF

Typography

Wordmark: soft humanist display, friendly, slightly retro. "Bonsall" in forest, "Bounce" with the two o's replaced by stacked coral and mustard dots.
Body: clean sans, casual not corporate, high legibility on mobile.

UI & layout moves

Hazy, sun-flared hero photo with the wordmark centered, editorial, not e-commerce.
Pill-shaped buttons: solid forest primary, outlined secondary.
Icon-led nav labels (calendar, cart, camera, star) to keep tone casual.
Section rhythm: hero → 4 value cards → packages → extras.
Companion mark: coral castle silhouette for favicons and small placements.

Visual motifs

Pastel balloon arches, white bounce houses, wooden cross-back chairs, florals, and overexposed light, mom-blog / wedding-photographer grammar, deliberately borrowed to earn trust with the target host.

Takeaways & Next Steps

Bonsall Bounce admin dashboard showing bookings, revenue, and a 30-day conversion funnel — Bonsall Bounce admin, traffic, funnel, and revenue at a glance.

What we learned

Paid visibility moves the needle here more than we expected. We pulled a small ad in the local dance recital program, the only spend we could comfortably afford, and traffic tanked almost immediately after it ran its course. Bonsall is small enough that a single well-placed, offline touchpoint can carry the funnel for weeks; when it disappears, so does the top of funnel.

Next steps

Time the next push to the new park opening. Line up promotions, signage, and a launch weekend around the ribbon cutting so we ride the built-in foot traffic.
Add more publicly visible offline ads, recital programs, sports rosters, café bulletin boards, anywhere local families already look.
Adopt-a-Highway sponsorship along a Bonsall road (currently on the waitlist). It's free, gives us a permanent roadside sign, and reinforces the "family-run & local" pillar.
Flyers at NCAD (North County Academy of Dance), the dance-family audience already converts best.
School volunteering as a soft channel. I already volunteer and wear branded apparel on campus. Next step is a short, written pitch for PTA / school-event coordinators so Bonsall Bounce becomes the default for fundraisers and end-of-year events.

Visit bonsallbounce.com →