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!