The Start of School is a good time to Ramp Up

Often at this time of year there is a down turn in participants, particularly on the weekend.  With all the new things that are going on, and with your successful summer of camps and events, a little slower time now could be a good time to look to finish a project, take a much needed vacation, get the team together for a planning session, and review the year so far.  If you see a time in your schedule where you will disrupt the fewest number of people, you can use that as a guide for when you should be planning your events and remodels.  If you are newer, and need to see what happens at this time of year, keep track of when your numbers dip over according to the school and town calendar.  Those are times when, if you are closed for a week or two, you will effect the least number of people and so your planning and your work on the park will not effect your bottom line as much as closing some other time.

You should remodel every so often.  Changing ramps up, putting in new course design and new obstacles is a way to get visitors who might be a little tires of skating the same old thing back into the building and excited.  You can have a launch party once you reopen, generating buzz and revenue, send a press release, invite pros, really work it.  If you need to clean up the appearance, put some paint on the walls, re organize your front, this could also help generate some good feeling for your park.  While certain things don't require you to close or not for long, remember to see all projects through the lens of your patrons and if putting up caution tape and protection walls is going to be too restrictive, or limit too much skating area, then shutting down for a few days can serve as keeping your quality high while improving your value.  Staging your build is a good idea, having all the needed supplied and workers can speed up the remodel.

Doing other things like review, summer review, staff training, and vacationing is all a healthy part of running a business.  You just worked for thousands of hours, you can take a little break.  You should constantly be reviewing what worked and what didn't, how to work better, and where you can provide for your customer's needs better.  So if it slows down a bit at the start of the school year, Ramp UP.

Online Session Sales

Presale sessions can help everyone plan

Like movie tickets or concert tickets your skatepark can pre-sell tickets to sessions you sell, online or in the store.  Showing people that there are limited numbers of session entrances can also help sell more sessions ahead of time.  So if you have a lot of people coming in groups from out of town and they know their schedule, you can ensure these people that they will be able to get in and have the trip they were planning.  Similarly if skaters and bikers see that a session is almost selling out, they can elect to come at another time rather than trying to pack in to a crowded session.  Having a website that enables session sale and provide data in real-time can also help you plan on staffing needs.  By seeing that there are a lot of sales on afternoon sessions or on weekdays, you can staff the appropriate number of people to make sure that everyone is having fun, and all areas have enough people to keep lines down.  An additional benefit of adding online sales is that people won't show up despite having paid, or they will have bought too many tickets and will absorb the cost for a variety of reasons.  After your stated "no refunds after this date/time" it is reasonable to assume that giving a refund could have turned away others who would have paid, thereby losing you money.  While you could give a rain-check, this could be a way to increase sales and keep a steady flow of capital into your business even on non-weekend/busy time periods.  Adding functionality like this could go hand-in-hand with having a mobile ready and truly interactive site will help you and your customers get the information they need, to make their visit better.

Skate School

Adding value is a way to increase revenue and provide for a need in the community.  Often times parents want their kids to be safe and have fun.  Providing a structured program of lessons and "camps" is one way to implement a program of skate school.  Taking a weekday and having lessons in the evenings, providing for younger kids to skate in the weekend mornings with instructors, scheduling a sign up for specific skill sessions like kick flips and ollies.  Designing a program that works for your population needs to be planned based off of conversations with customers.  Without their input on what works for them, you could make a lot of work for little reward.  These lessons and sessions are a good way to sell camps too.  Remember to add the little things that make these special like prizes and certificates and stickers.

Skateparks Don't Have To Be A Stand-Alone Business

While most people reading this blog are interested in building or operating a skatepark, thinking about the opportunities that exist out there for recreation based businesses could allow for a more diverse market.  You often don't have to look very far to see that many public and some private places offer a skatepark as part of their park or complex.  Woodward Camps in PA is one example where skateboarding and extreme sports is just one of the several camps they offer.  The YMCA and their many parks around the nation is another example that comes to mind.  Both of these well respected businesses don't look to skateparks as their only source of revenue, but rather look to offer a park as part of a larger complex and a broader market.  As you look to either add a skatepark to your existing facility or start with a skatepark and build from there, consider companion areas that might make sense for your market, town, or facility.  If you have a large warehouse and a small skateboarding market, then utilizing part of the space for another business might make sense.  Whether you operate that or rent the space it could be a better to create something that fits with your market size, than something that is mostly empty due to limited numbers.  Adding a companion place like a bounce house, trampolines, go carts, basketball courts, or other entertainment type recreation facility could help bring customers in, utilize the space better, and help with cross selling.  This could be a good space where some in the family go to one side and the others go to the skatepark.  Careful design could also eliminate doubling staff as one check in area could allow for entrance to either part.  This would also be good for concessions to centralize operations so less people could serve both areas.  So as you are looking into your business plan, think about how you can monetize your space to the maximum effect.

Setting your year's goals and benchmarks

Now that the new year has turned, and the holiday vacation rush has come to an end you should set goals and benchmarks for the year.  With another (or just one) year behind you, it is possible to now look at the year, it's ups and downs and take that information to make plans for this year.  Make sure that you make time for yourself to do this especially if you are manning some part of the park.  If there are slow days or closed days, use these times to gather your information together, look at your receipts, and plan your year accordingly.  Here are some of the typical things you should be looking at:

Busy Times versus Slow Times - more than anecdotal information, you want to really see where your slowdowns are and where you were busy.  What patterns arise?  If the start of September is slow,  figure out why.  If summer was slow here and there, try to look for other things going on like July 4th, or lots of people going on vacation at the start of August.  If things were busy, like June or 2 weeks in March, try to see why.  Then, when you have an understanding of the year, figure out what you can do to increase slow times and monetize busy times better.

Membership, Entrance Data and Promotions- Since you have data from your computer entrance program (hopefully), you can mine this data to help you either resell memberships, or get members to come back for a visit.  If you haven't been doing this, try to set it up so you can get this data.  You can get data on members and non-members if you have a check in your system for waivers.  If you don't have this set up, do so. It could be the way to get more money out of each and every visitor to your park.  What is a membership worth?  What if you tracked it versus a non-member?  Create a non-member card (make it cheap with either a number to be keyed in or a barcode to be scanned.  This way when they come in you can quickly check that the person has a waiver on file.  It will also allow you to track their visits and if you see they are coming often, or that they have a birthday, or that they haven't been back in months (through data analysis from your membership software) you can send a note to these people whether they are members or not.  A discount entrance ticket, a "come in raffle", a note on a pro demo or what not is good advertising and cost effective.  You can even track how often these promos work so that this time next year you can stop sending stuff to skaters who have moved on.  Using member data and tracking can help you better see how often members come in and how much they spend.  You can offer discounts with a membership that allows you to see how much and how effective these programs are.  So go to your data to figure out ways to get people back in, ways to upsell them more stuff, or and create promotions that work.

Review How Your Workers Work - If you hire staff, you need to ensure you are getting the most out of them as possible.  Perform a review of expectation and areas of needs for the park that might be addressed by your hired staff.  If you have someone who is really tech savvy then they could be tapped to update your Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and website.  If you have others who are sitting around reading Thrasher while on duty, maybe a cleaning or mending project could be completed.  Filing and data entry is always needed.

Review Areas of Park - Does no one ever go on one of the ramps?  Is it used enough to warrant the space used.  Space in the skatepark is like money.  If skaters aren't using it, it is wasting money.  It may be a great thing to have a 12' tall vert ramp, but if only 5 people use it a year, that space is losing money.  Survey skaters about their favorite parts of the park, study where they skate the most and see if you can't create more spaces that help sell entrances.  Similarly if you have shop that people don't use enough it might be time to pull the plug.  The costs of keeping it open should be paid for by sales, if not, it needs to go.  Skaters are loyal to their shops so if you aren't getting market share for your shop, either you need to change what you are doing there or get out of the business.  Review of areas where money goes can help you create a lean and profitable park.  You can't afford to have a shop or a ramp that doesn't support itself.  The things need to be an attraction that draws people to your park to spend money, that is why you are in "business".

Make New Things- What is going to be your fresh addition this year?  A new type of contest?  A new ramp? A new Free day?  A new connection with the community?  Figure out new things and see how they can be rolled out and promoted.  Being new, relevant, or cutting edge can help keep people interested in your park.  One idea - DJ night - try it for a few weeks, then stop and see if it works so you either pull the plug or keep it going.

Take time to Recharge - Schedule a vacation for yourself now.  Have something to look forward to that rewards all your hard work.

Use The Holidays to Celebrate

Often times we come to the end of the year and things heat up in the skatepark.  Lots of kids coming in with the bad weather, lots of vacation times, sales and park rentals.  But make sure that with all the things going on you take the time to celebrate your people.  A holiday party is a great way of letting your workers and your people whom you feel add so much value to your park know you appreciate them, their commitment, and their efforts.  It's ok to close early one day during the holidays, many stores do.  Celebrations can be at the park if you all like to skate, they can be at a restaurant, your home,  the bowling alley, or a bar.  Depending on who your workers are, you can set the event to be the type of celebration they'd enjoy.  Make sure you get some unique gifts to give out, and something for everyone like a hoodie, special order hat, or something.  There are many ways to celebrate the season and your people so take the time to show you care.  It is ok to do your celebrations after the holidays especially if people you ask can't make it.

The holidays can also be a good time to celebrate your members.  I have written often about how to make your memberships "value added".  Having a member celebration day with lots of extras, a DJ, a raffle, some special food or other offering goes a long way to making those members feel a part of something special.  While you could be monetizing the time, spending some money to make people feel like a part of something special can go a long way to making your park work financially.  If you think about what it could mean to you, each member that talks you park up positively, whether they come down regularly or not is free advertising.  Word of mouth is a "viral" loop you need to create to get people in the door and excited about springing for the extra membership cost.  So a special holiday member party is a good way of helping create and keep the positive buzz about your park.

Happy Holidays.  I hope you can make 2015 the best one yet!

The Key Activities of Skatepark Owners

Owning a skatepark can be as complicated as you make it.  I've seen some barn based parks that simply float a key system around for friends and the like.  Making a living owning and operating a skatepark however requires a lot of work to get paying customers in the door.  The complexity of a skatepark then makes for a lot of activities for the owner and managers.  Here are a list of some of the main activities a skatepark owner should be completing on a monthly basis.

Promotions
schedules - park and staff - calendar year tweaks and plans
advertisements - monthly and target market specific
Events planning-
stocking, buying goods
inspecting ramps
manning the desk
talking with suppliers and key partners
meeting with finance people both investors and accountant
inventory
financial review (reconciling the cash register, imputing into quickbooks, reviewing costs -v- income
cleaning
replacing broken supplies, fixing, painting, refining
Community outreach, public relations
Outreach to area organizations for cross promotion and group visits
Managing skate team
upgrading systems and controls.
meeting with staff, training staff
calling and corresponding when appropriate
Updating web, social media, other media
Skating a little too!

Lots to do every month undoubtedly.  Try to get some of these things handled by delegating.  Paying for services is a good way to increase staff's feeling of importance as well so maybe promotions, or staffing, or updates can be handled by savvy hourly staff or salaried managers.  Taking the time to be the leader of the business is necessary so don't just man the front desk but also don't be totally absent from the front desk either.  Good luck!

Identifying Market Segment for Skateparks

Often times I hear of people who say things like, there are a ton of skaters in my town so I want to start a skatepark.  I think this is a great start but are there really a ton of skaters who will use your park is a question that needs to be asked.  In traditional business plan startups, people often look at an idea, figure out how much it will cost and look at the population as a whole and go from there.  But when your money and your sanity are on the line you want to make sure that there is a sustainable market for your business before you spend money.  Ok, so going from the premise of a "ton", who are they?  Teenagers? Little Kids? At a crappy free park?  What these people show are Market Potential, it doesn't mean that these kids will come to your park.  Sitting out and counting these people, noting their age and demographics can help to give you a better idea of the dedicated skaters.  Interview the skaters/bikers you find and see who they are, what they want, and what they are will to pay for.  Similarly making friends with the local skateshop can help you better understand the market potential by providing you with stats on patrons.  This is vital information.  You have a theory, and until you go out and test your theory you'll never know for certain what is reality.  After you have gathered some data, go back to your idea and see if the market potential fits the reality.  You are trying to create a better understanding of the market by understanding your clients better. To do this you need to get out and talk with the end users.  If you have a drawing of your park, share this with your potential clients, if you have a cost structure, share this with your clients as well.  Their feedback will help you understand what you have in terms of a product, and what your market will bare in terms of price.  At some point soon you can start looking for the archetype of a typical patron.  These conversations with parents and kids can help you understand who will come to your park, how often, and at what cost.  If you have a website you can also use that to gather information.  Put a survey on the front page and try promoting it.  Another way of gathering this info would be to do a Facebook ad campaign targeting a very select group of users in a small demographic area.  You need data to make a good decision, and it won't just come to you in a dream.  So you need to go get it.  When you have a market archetype you can then figure out how to cater your park to meet their needs.  Lets just say that Junior High aged skaters and bikers were the best respondents to your survey and interviews.  These kids have a desire to come to the park 2x a month at 12$ a pop.  They expressed they skate all the time and their parents said they have very few options for entertainment.  So these end up being the core market archetype, with other groups like teens, young adults, little kids fill in your market.  Spending your time to cater your business to meet the basic needs of these skaters first is the best idea to ensure your success.

Vacation Time is GO Time

If you ever wondered why some kids only come down once a month or once a year to your park, maybe you need to wow them every time they are there.  This sounds like a lot of work, but really what I am talking about is the little things, the things that matter to a customer.  How do your people interact with the skaters and the parents?  Can they improve?  How clean is the park?  Can it be cleaner?  Fresh paint, new trash can lids, and new posters can really make a difference.  Could you spend a few hours patching things a little before the vacation holidays to make the park shine for the guests that haven't been able to come since their last school break?  Could you get your screw gun out and make a new little fun box, pull out an old rail, put in a little vert extension on the mini-ramp?  These little tweaks aren't going to put your business over the edge cost wise but they could very well be the difference in getting repeat customers.  So part of your go-plan should include tidying up for the crowds, and re-emphasizing customer service and friendliness to you staff.

As long as we are on plans for retraining your staff, a holiday membership drive could be another needed emphasis this xmas.  Every entrance should have membership details in their hands.  What sort of cheap advertising can you get them to take home?  How about a calendar of events, or a calendar of park photos, friends and associates of theirs ripping it up at your park.  Bulk orders of these bring your cost per person down, and what a great add on to that membership.  While you're at it, why not blow up some kid photos to poster size and decorate your park with them?  If you have someone on staff with a great camera, pay them to take some photos and throw the stuff together.  It is well worth the effort and the employee will really enjoy the "promotion".  With all the new people coming down with their friends from out of town, make the most of their visit to encourage them to be members, talk the park up, and come back again!  Happy Holidays.

Check out the progress of a new park!

Greetings all, thought I would key you into a park that is in the making.  All Together Skatepark is being built in Seattle Washington and is going through many of the things that you all might be interested in.  Starting up a park in a city is expensive, starting one indoors even more so.  Check out their progress here: http://www.alltogetherskatepark.com .  Many of the people that helped me get going when I owned a park are working on this new iteration.  One thing that hopefully you all are learning is that it takes a lot of help and a lot of information to get all your services and setup together.  Chris is making it happen in Seattle now.  Do you have another project to help us all look at the process of making a park or advancing a park?  Let me know (contact info on right) and I will help you promote and plan.  Don't forget that I have a good book on opening a park and obviously this blog is a good resource too.   Good luck ATS.

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.

September slowdowns?

Sometimes in September it is harder to get the steady flow of customers through the door.  With a new school season starting up and all the things that are still ongoing from the summer, September can be a slower month for indoor parks.  Heck, the weather may be a little less hot, it still stays light late, and this keeps the kids outside and away.  So planning events for September or running a sale on park rentals could be a good way to get crowds into your park.  Other cool events could be a contest, a concert, a dj night, a sleep-over, or a demo.  These are very traditional events that you can tweek for your crowd.  How about a best of shop contest with all shop sponsored skaters?  Combine this with a DJ after-party and you could very well have a highly productive weekend.  September could be a good time to have some time off too.  There is nothing that says you have to stay open every day.  Closing for a week isn't out of the question if you can still pay the bills when you reopen.  Closing during the slow time is a great way to redo the park too.  Spending a little time and money when you are slow is a great way to get a rush of new business.  Add it all up and an event to christen the park could be a double whammy. BTW Do we still say "whammy" or is that too 1990's?  September is a good time to look at your calendar too and plan for the school closures, contests, and break camps coming up in the next few months.  Good luck!

Diversify your offerings

Beyond simply adding sessions or events to your day you can diversify your offerings in your space to help your business grow.  Who hasn't seen McDonald's playgrounds, or gone to an indoor soccer building with some climbing wall operation off in a corner?  These two ideas can be a way that your site could use some of it's space to help get people through the door.  Programming of events and services is always important, but having a large source of revenue is equally important.  Right now you might have your entrances, events, lessons, food, and as my last post pointed out - a party room, so where do you go from there?  I was reading an interesting article recently from wired.com about the Lumberyard indoor mountainbike park and thought that here was another offering that used many of the building and management skills you probably already have.  Take a look here: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/04/lumberyard-mountain-bike-course/  Finding revenue sources that fit with your space and your clientele is a double win.  Being able to attract people from a larger part of your area can help you make a strong and viable business.  While your heart may be in one aspect of the business like skateboarding or BMX biking, there are good reasons to consider offering more aspects of your business that are complimentary.  So say you have a really good indoor park with an outside area, perfect for a BMX racing course.  Or what about the massive ceiling hight you could put in a high ropes course over the track or a climbing wall.  Like I had said on my last post, an empty room is an opportunity, and an empty section of your park is also one.  What you will be doing is expanding your resources, taking advantage of your current systems and making the most of your existing skill sets.

Multi-use room?

They say that if you have space, something always fills it.  My garage is a good example of that, as I can't put the car in there anymore.  But what about the space you have that isn'g getting used in the skatepark.  If you have or can carve out some space with a temporary wall the space will be used and often it will generate revenue.  Many of the bounce houses and other kid friendly places around use party rooms to generate income.  These party rooms often are rented above and beyond the price of skating (or bouncing in the above scenario) and come with a food requirement too.  If you have a space that you can make comfortable with tables and chairs, this would be a perfect way of getting weekend and weekday traffic with groups.  Birthdays, meetings, specialty classes, card games, private areas during events, whatever you can think of, this space could serve many needs that you can also put a price on.  While some might be worth more (parties) others like card games and meetings can fill times during the days you don't have many customers.  So don't fill your room with junk and clutter, use it to make money and provide a good service for your clients.

Using Fobs or other door entry systems for added benefits

Some people have wanted to give access to their skateparks to others who have either helped out a lot for free, or they are their "friends" or whatever reason they have.  While there are some safety and liability issues at stake here, giving out a key to your park could be a reasonable idea with certain protections in place.  Firstly if you simply give a hard key to someone, you will never know when they are in the park if you don't have a system for tracking this.  Who is there?  How respectful are they?  These are some things that you should know, and randomly showing up at the park is not the answer.  FOB systems and or card-readers could be a way to get a handle on who is in the park and when.  With FOBs or readers you can track when people enter the park and you can change these FOBs out when you want to revoke a privilege that has been abused, or as you change people's jobs and roles.  This can help you also manage when people are opening the park up in the day too as you can set time parameters for the doors to unlock.  It can also tell you when a door is propped and more.  If you were to combine this with a simple security system, managing how people come to the park when you aren't there can be better understood.  FOB systems can also be used to grant levels of entrance, so that if someone is able to enter the park, they might not be allowed to enter other areas that are secured and locked.  It could save you from carrying loads of keys.  Depending on how the park is setup, allowing entrance via a FOB or card system can be arranged as a benefit for members as well.  With smaller end parks that don't have open areas of food and merchandise and money systems could use the FOB and member system as a graduated level of support.  This could be organized where more expensive memberships allow for access anytime and lesser members can only come during certain hours.  The YMCA uses this type of system as do certain gyms, and a card door reader or a FOB system could be a way to create this type of benefit.  In the end it beats giving out a key and then having to try and get it back.  Fob systems start around $60, and get more expensive from there.  But for the access and ease of use, FOBs and door readers could be a good way of giving your people access while still maintaining control.

As the new year is fast approaching I'd like to go over another way to help you make money this coming year.  It starts with an upgrade to your member management system.  Looking into how you manage your members via a system will help you maximize your understanding of your business.  Membership software and cloud-based systems while pricey can on average generate 30-50% more per member than paper and cash-register alone.  Recently I had a conversation with Hossein Noshirvani at Motionsoft, a company specializing in membership software.  We talked about the potential of membership software as it relates to skateparks and he really understands how you all can be benefitted by technology.  While most all of us agree that maintaining a website and facebook page and even a twitter feed are good for our business, some of us balk at the cost and complexity of membership software.  Lets all agree to a few things, having a membership and visitor database that can track and offer reminders and deals to every visitor is possible for most of us no matter how big or small we are.  Lets also agree that for our legal liability issues, having quick access to emergency info and contacts is invaluable for the prosperity of the business, but also for the peace-of -mind of the parents.  So beyond these aspects that could be obtained through other means, lets look at how membership programs, particularly ones that are cloud-based can help your business.

Financially the membership program can really help you maximize your business income.  These types of software can generate lists of visits, frequency, and track purchases.  Even without a membership, say you decide to issue cards like loyalty cards at the supermarket, the membership software can generate notices for you to send reminders and discounts to people to come back to the park, to purchase a new helmet, or offer a special on a new deck because it has been a long time since purchasing one.  With the membership and a card, the child can be offered a declining balance at the park allowing for the participant to buy stuff at the park without carrying money.

As far as memberships go, membership software could help you create different classes of memberships where certain times are off limits such as they do with health clubs during off-peak hour members.  You could offer a $100 anytime membership and a $50 membership off peak or no Fridays or Saturdays. Those that have the $50 membership would have to pay a fee to visit these other times.  Or you could offer a membership with a number of uses like a punchcard where coming into the park costs say $20 and you get 3 sessions and you have to buy 3 sessions at a time.  At the same time, the membership software will track visits, allow you mail or email reminders to "re-up" or you can have them automatically re-up with a credit card on file.  The system will create peak times based on visitors and so you can accurately predict typical numbers for tracking as well as allowing for "maximum capacity" warnings.  With professional and accurate information, you can make the best decisions regarding your park.

As we have mentioned the tracking of purchasing and targeting of advertisements, membership software can also be tied into promotions and membership lead generation.  Getting member referrals can be offered through the system so that members get benefits for bringing in their friends.  You can offer discounts for liking on Facebook which will help spread the word.  Amazon offers this now when you purchase stuff from them they offer a quick way of posting your purchase to facebook.  What great and almost free advertisement that would be.

In many ways membership software in needed in your park to keep you generating leads and helping with promotions.  It formalizes a relationship, creates professionalism, and helps you organize your business.  Of all the tools you have, by far membership software is the way to go.  While Noshirvani at Motionsoft states that his company might not be right for your business, he said he would be happy to talk to you about your needs, and if he can't help you he'd show you some others who could.  Good luck and set your sights high for 2013!

Skatepark things parents want

Most for-profit skateparks understand that a significant part of their money comes from younger kids.  These kids are brought to the park by the parents or the neighbor and these adults need to be pleased in order to get them back.  Finding out what parents looking for in a skatepark isn't rocket science, and if you really want to know, ask them.  Here are a few things that parents expressed to me wanting for their children.

1. Safe and clean-  I talked with one park owner who said he never swept the course.  Parents want a safe clean environment for their kids.  When they come into the park they want to be able to watch their kid, understand that someone else is looking out for their safety, and not sit in a trashed place.  True, kids are tough on things, but this has to be part of what you are offering to the parents, a clean environment.  If you go to kid friendly places like those inflatable bounce houses or Chuck-E-Cheese's you see that the place is clean, orderly, not so comfy (easy to clean is often not comfortable), with people around to offer service.  This is a big cost of their business, keeping the place clean and staffed, but this is why parents go.  The bathrooms are clean too, and when a person comes in to your park, expect the bathrooms to be a selling point too especially if you are selling lots of soda and the people are there for several hours.  Don't cheap-out on maintenance of your bathrooms. Having a chart of cleaning can be a good way of looking at this (freeing up someone on weekends and busy vacation time is a good idea).  Safe and clean also refers to the way the place looks.  With bikes and boards bumping things, you might need to paint more frequently.  Putting plastic lumber up could be a way to keep the wooded areas from fraying.  You can also get sheets of plastic from farmtek.com  that are used to keep horses from destroying their stalls.  If a horse has a hard time kicking through this stuff, a deck or bike will too.  Small strips of this attached to key parts of waiting areas and ramp railings can keep your park looking good.  Sometimes older skaters smoke too.  If they do, don't let them hang in front of your door, designate a place to smoke that isn't the first thing that parents see when they come in.  In addition make sure that you inspect the parking lot frequently.  Sometimes people litter, and your lot can look really crappy quick.  Again, with older skaters, alcohol bottles sometimes are left in your lot as these skaters don't feel like driving around with empties in their car.  Clearly stating "no alcohol" is one deterrent, but in the end, you have to make sure that your lot is clean.
     Safe is also a matter of controlling flow.  If your park is too packed, value for the customer suffers.  Consider limits per session.  Make sure too that if you have people together, big people aren't bulling their way through.  Code of conduct is printed on the back of lift tickets to deal with aggressive skiing and address the idea that maybe everyone isn't as considerate of others as they need to be to prevent injury.  So posting a "code" can help remind people that you care and help you have conversations with some of the riders.  Keeping little kids safe can also mean having a "grom" or little kid session so that parents know that these kids have only little kids around them.  Public parks don't offer this, and it could be a real selling point for you.

2.  Affordable.  Not all parents are pinching pennies, but with multiple kids in a family, it becomes expensive quick to bring the family to the park.  Family membership rates is a start, loyalty punch cards, sibling discounts, car-load discounts on slower days, packages (lesson plus...), etc can help.  Don't give away the park by any means, but look at your pricing compared to other things the people can do.  Baby sitters (sometimes we feel like them don't we), go for $6-10 per hour, movies are $12+ now-a-days, lift tickets for skiing are $50+, entrance to bounce houses are $8+ depending on location.  Given this, ask yourself, how often do you need to get families in, how do you get the most from the kids that come too?  I have written about other ways of generating income other than entrances, so refer to those posts as you look at affordability.  Don't forget that you are looking at about 3% of the population, unlike movies and bounce houses, not every kid will be able or want to come to your park.  But you still are competing for the attention of these kids and their parents with the other things they could be doing.

3. Service.  Parents want the special things that a private park offers like supervision, answering questions via the phone and email, having people there for parties and lessons, having med kits, food, equipment, rental helmets, and the like.  Having a phone protocol is important, this is first face of the business.  Rude, impatient phone or in-person behavior will turn off some parents.  Make a clear effort to answer every email in a timely manner, as well as updating any websites, flyers, and other means of communication.  Having your staff off their own phones is necessary too.  Since you are paying them, they need to be working, not chatting.  Quick responses to things like spills, injuries, calling to follow up with rentals, sending membership letters every month, making the place clean, making things easy for the parents is key to your service.

In the end though why not ask people to fill out a survey?  See what you are doing well and where you need to improve.  Survey Monkey and poll everywhere are free and paper surveys are a fine way of getting feedback from parents as they sit looking for something to do while their kids are playing.

How to start a skatepark with little to no money

So a lot of people are interested in starting a skatepark, but unfortunately they don't have much, if any money.  I have been asked frequently about getting parks running without a substantial investment from the business originator.  Honestly speaking, this is very hard to do.  Imagine if you will, someone who has earned a bit of money in their life, and they are interested in your plan.  When they hear that you won't be adding any funds yourself, they decide it is best to go elsewhere.  Why?  Because you have little to risk in the venture.  Sure you have your time and you have the organization, but in the end, what would keep you from simply walking away because you haven't made any money and bills are piling up at home?  What would the investor in this situation do?  Sound like a good place to put money?  When buying anything, people want assurances that they will get their money back and usually they want more than they put in.  It is the money that you put in that helps them make this decision easier.  If you are asking for no more than you are investing, or even less, then it is something people will consider.  Even banks don't want to loan money to businesses that need it, unless they have the money in the bank to "secure it".  This is why getting a morgage is easier than getting a personal loan, the property backs it up so if a person defaults on the loan, skips town so to speak, the bank still has a sellable house to recoup any loss.  It is the same with a business like a skatepark.

So what is to be done?  The only option that works is the Co-op model.  A co-op is where a group of people with similar interests or needs get together as a group to create buying power.  Here's a real world example: People in a community join together to buy power as a single entity.  When one house buys power it has little wiggle room to get a better rate.  But if a community of 100-500 houses get together, they can get a better rate.  So if your town needs a skatepark, and the town won't build one, then you as a skater/biker will have little influence on your own.  But if you all join together, you can either force the city into action (which is a typical tactic) or you can start one yourselves.

How can a skatepark be a Co-op?  First of all let's make a few assumptions, that there are over 500 skaters in the surrounding community that needs a park, and there is little to no places a person can go to skate. (I will use skater as shorthand for bikers as well, I hope this is ok.)  If each of these skaters were to scrape together $1000, and were willing to join together in a group to get their individual needs met, then a skatepark could gather $500,000 to start a park.  If the park were to be smaller, the investment could be too.  So if you know 10 skaters and they know 10 others, and they all know 5 others, you now have 500 people.  By setting up an account (so people can see their money is safe), you have now gathered enough to start a park.  Of course it will take organizing, but you have the investment, one of the hardest things to get.  Lets say you want this to happen but getting $1,000 is to hard.  What about $20 per week?  Basically if a person were to put away $20 a week, they could have the investment together within a year.  With automatic transfers, this would be easy enough for the average person.

So now that the investment end is dealt with, what would the business look like.  1. it could be totally private with only the investors/members allowed to use it or it could be part private with days of pay for skating, or, it could be all public, with the investors taking their money from the profits in the form a a dividend (when there is enough money in the bank, the extra is given back to the members.  2. It would be run by a board of directors who are voted on by the members.  Once the people agree to start the Co-op and put the money up for it, a board is established (even a temporary one would do at the start), and the board then makes decisions for the park.  3. The membership is responsible, in the end, for keeping the skatepark going, so if it is totally private, the money that the park needs for the next year is paid by the members (if say the operating costs were $100,000 then each member would need to pay $100).  4.  Members are usually required to work at the co-op in some fashion (office, desk, what ever).

Sound like a good idea?  I think it is one of the few ways today to get a park going without really deep pockets.  There are publications about co-ops on the web if you want more information on how to make one.  I'd be willing to help, let me know if you are interested.

More Business Models for Skateparks

Some skateparks try to work like Golds Gym but they often don't go all the way.  Patrons pay a monthly fee, a membership, and skate when they want.  Unfortunately this model is not very successful for skateparks because of the high cost often asked for up front.  With a 12$ session fee versus a $50 monthly fee (I've seen more), kids, teens, adults and their parents are wary about how much they will use this service.  Unlike Golds Gym where anyone with a pulse can sign up, skateparks are in a smaller market to attract people to their service.  Because Golds Gym can get so many people in, and the industry has accepted their 25$ or so cost, they are able to make money with lower monthly premiums.  But in many ways, skateparks can operate like this too, it just takes someone to start.  First a park would have to eliminate sessions, and thus also eliminate $12 fees.  The only way you can get in the gym is pay the monthly fee, with a credit card.  If the market can support this idea, then the skatepark can run like a gym.  But since no parks are doing this now, an owner would take some risk to pull it off. Why?  Basically gym style pricing schemes would offer the skatepark more financial security because it collects money on a monthly recurring basis.  These memberships are tied to credit cards that are automatically charged each month.  So say that 500 members all pay $50 a month to skate for as much as they want, the skatepark is looking at a $25,000 revenue stream per month.  This revenue can be taxed differently too as it is not "entrance" fees which often are taxed like concert tickets.  Within this scenerio, planning becomes easier because revenues are relatively constant.  Added emphasis and efforts are given to keeping the membership going and happy.  I am sure a few parks out there would like to know that this sort of money was coming in monthly.  Even without food or other sales, revenue of $300k per year would be welcome in many parks.  So Golds Gym is not the worst way of looking at your business structure, but you should see what your market can take before you change your current park's finances.

Business models for a skatepark

When considering how to make a business like a skatepark, one must look at other models to see how they run their business, and what a skatepark can use as their model.  The basic model used by many skateparks looks a lot like a roller rink, movie house, or amusement park.  In this model, patrons pay entrance and enjoy their time.  From many of these skatepark operations we see a reliance on entrances as the means of supporting the park.  Due to the fickle nature of skateboarders and often reliant on weather to drive people indoors, this model may not be the best one for every environment.  Unlike movies that change their show every week, skateparks are very static in their offerings.  Often change requires money and time, which is hard to come by sometimes especially if entrances are and have been down.   Similar to this model is the amusement park.  The largest parks rely on people traveling large distances to participate.   6 flags has an enormous budget and spends extensive money on innovation and novelty.  This model requires a lot of funds, advertising, and less change, but is similar in operations as a skatepark.  Both of these businesses have high prices, often have one to two visits per person per year, caters to older children and adults, and uses a captive audience and high food mark ups to make most of their money.  They also have the advantage of not offering a specialized skill sport as their only draw, which makes them more capable of appealing to a larger audience.  The point of these two operations that I feel could be emulated (copied) would be the easy to prepare and relatively profitable food choices, and the layout of amusement parks as a way to offer different experiences in a park within the confines of your building's space.  Food, if possible, needs to be a part of a park that relies on entrances as a means of income.  Offering something for the fans, friends, and parents of the patrons allows you to maximize the market and profit from visitors to your park.  Everyone gets hungry and thirsty but not everyone can ride your ramps.  Providing and monopolizing on every visitor can make your business profitable.  Similarly you can offer a different experience in your park's confines by laying out your park into different skate areas.  You could have a street course, a tricks area, and some miniramps, all typical parts of a skatepark.  But if they are crammed one on top of another, then the idea of "park" is gone.  What if you had areas that were designed for these types of skaters separated with walkways, seating areas, concession carts and the like, to provide "park" to your skatepark.  While some could argue that these areas don't maximize the skating which is what these parks are selling, I would counter that you are actually offering more than just some ramps pushed up against the wall.  You are offering a skate scene, and this is crafted and manipulated by you.  While a movie house is offering the latest flicks, it is also offering a movie experience that differs from your home.  Similarly, an amusement park understands that quality attractions do bring the customers in, and getting them to stay, relax, and have fun requires spaces  where they can relax, meet up, and eat food.  Looking to these aspects of other similar businesses can help you create a skatepark that is interesting, unique, and profitable.  I will blog soon with other examples of business models that could work for different types of skateparks.