Expand Your Brand

As you are able to separate yourself out from operations, expansion is always an option.  Unfortunately if you are cash strapped, expansion is going to have to be done by bringing in more investors.  While many of you are probably wary of this, there are many people out there who are looking for good investments, and having a solid product with solid sales and a solid growth plan are keys to attracting investors.  If you want to go big, you have to think big.  If you think that you want to simply run a park that is open from this hour to that, then you can expect to remain at that level.  If you have a vision whereby you want your brand to expand and grow, then this has to be your vision and you have to plan for this.  As a skatepark, how can you grow your brand?  One way is like Woodward, where your specialty is camps, and your expansion becomes events.  There are many companies out there looking for venues that are flexible enough to help them market their own events, and your place could become that venue.  Lots of work would then be focused on achieving this goal.  Similarly if you have a product and a retail presence, you can become a larger presence with that product.  Look at an area that is underserved in your market and exploit that.  Lastly you can expand like DC Shoes, Vans shoes has as well, creating more parks in more cities.  The key to what they do is to look at what their brand is, and use that as the center of the expansion.  Reinventing your brand, or creating a logical offshoot of your brand (extreme events, camps etc) can help you move into a new level of business where you are not only more successful, but also more profitable.  A good exercise would be to sit down with your management team and see if they can envision this change with you.  Bringing in people who share your vision and have a quality skill set is also a good idea.  Good luck.