New business aims to cure at-home quarantine blues

Daytonian AJ Ferguson had a nugget of an idea for years that ended up being a well-timed solution to people spending more time at home and in their backyards during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve kind of joked a few times — it’s like, on one hand, it’s an absolutely hard and challenging time to launch a business,” Ferguson said. “On the other hand, I think a lot of people are spending more time in their backyards than ever, so it’s kind of a fun time to put the idea out there.”

Event Drop, in-short, delivers and handles set-up and take-down of backyard games. Currently, Event Drop has eight yard games available for reservation including giant Connect 4, giant Jenga, cornhole, bocce, KanJam, Kubb, Molkky and spikeball. A Pick 4 Kit costs $75 and the Full Kit costs $125 for 12 hours of use.

The long-term vision is to offer a full event kit — a “party-in-a-box complete with tables, chairs, coolers, trash cans, speakers, pop-up tents, games and more.

Ferguson is the former executive director of UpDayton and currently serves as the Downtown Dayton Partnership economic development project manager.

“I think kind of in my professional roles, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to work on events and always found myself loading the same things into my car every single time and kind of realized, okay, this isn’t just me,” Ferguson said. “Everyone who throws events like this or throws a party needs the same set of 20, 30 things, whatever it might be.”

Every good gathering needs something more to do than just talk, as Ferguson put it, and that was the motivation behind Event Drop.

Event Drop currently serves parties located within 15 miles of downtown Dayton, however, pricing for events that are longer or farther away will be provided in response to the event request.

Volleyball court kits are available for $125, and badminton and pickleball court kits will soon be available.

“I’ve always just enjoyed growing up (when) we’d set up a volleyball court in our backyard or I’d build a full-blown wiffleball stadium," Ferguson said. “So it’s just sort of, those are games I enjoy and something that nobody wants to buy, set up and (then) use it once a year. So these provide kind of that more significant offering that people love to add for an event but they don’t have to store it, take care of it or even know how to set it up.”

People can request a kit at eventdrop.com.

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