Need Your Advice

[JohnBarry]

This goes out to all my friends here at MGS, members and staff. I have a decision to make this week, and it isn't easy.

 

I have been in sales all my life, and I currently work for a clothing line, selling urban clothing to stores across the country and make a decent living. My job though never feels stable, as we went bankrupt almost 3 years ago, and we have fought back since. I invested money in the business and haven't got all my returns, and heck, I like my job, the people and the business. I do the job of maybe 4 people, which everyone still around has had to do, and of course I am under payed for what I do.

 

I have a friend who called me Monday, knowing my sales experience, my love of golf, social networking and marketing, and presented me an oppertunity. Please take a look and let me know what you folks think about this. He bought the state of Virginia from this company as his territory. Here is a picture of what he/we would be selling:

 

 

 

I would be going to clubs, selling them the score board, then working first with the members who own businesses and then surrounding businesses to sell the advertising space. A typical board with sold out advertising would generate a 50k profit, which I would get 30% per board. I would not have to put any money down, my friend assumes most of the risk. He/we can also buy more territory if we want to. The owners of the company want to fly me and him to FLA for a meeting. It looks like something I can surely do part time to start, and will involve limited traveling, but I see some out of pocket expenses for sure just for meetings, golf meetings, and such.

 

Do you guys think your regular club would do this? Would you advertise here business owners? Any thoughts and advice will help...thanks guys

 

Score Board

[hckymeyer]

This is a tough one for me. Personally of all the courses I've played in MN and WI I don't see many (if any) putting up something like this. Mostly because there just aren't that many tournaments at the courses I play. Then combine that with needing to get real time updates from the groups at the course to have a live leaderboard and you are adding a ton of work for the course employee's to take on in addition to the cost of the board.

 

I guess some courses could use it just at the end of events and tourney's as a place to post up the scores, but again it's not a necessity. Seems like your target course would be a higher end private or semi-private club that does a lot of member events or hosts a lot of scramble type company/charity events. I have to think the number of clubs that would be in the market for this product is much smaller than you would initially think.

 

Take all this with a grain of salt as I'm outside the situation and most likely don't know all the details. But it sounds like you are already stretched pretty thin time wise with your current job. Do you have the time and resources available that you would need to put into this to make it a success? Or at least to try it out part time? It does seem like it could be a cool gig, but I'd want to know more about the target demographic and what percentage of clubs have purchased in the past.

[GolfSpy Barbajo]

I remember the advice of some very wise people over the years --

 

1. If you had to use your own money, would you do this?

 

2. Everybody loves you and your business plan until it's time to write a check.

 

While your friend may be assuming most of the financial risk, you are risking your time (time and money are interchangeable - you can always save more of one by spending more of the other), and your friendship. If the financial risk was mostly yours, would you do it?

 

I'm with hckymeyer - don't see scoreboards at courses here in MN. The only one I remember seeing was in Florida this past February - there was a tournament going on and it wasn't used - and it looked like it hadn't been used in a while.

 

Then again, that's a limited sampling, and I tend to be a tad conservative/chicken when it comes to stuff like this, so take it all with a grain of salt...

[whiskey golf]

I haven't seen too many scoreboards like that at clubs. Most of the places I go to either have something like a wooden board they roll out and they tape a paper scoreboard to it. Then again these aren't the "best" courses when it comes to money. I can see higher end places or clubs that host a lot of tournaments buying this but in my opinion, the market seems like it would be small for something like this. I think it looks cool but as people mentioned before, it's all fun and games until you have to pay for it. I just noticed one thing that's beneficial, other smaller companies could pay for advertisement space on the board which could make up for the cost of the scoreboard over time although it depends on how much they charge for space.

[JohnBarry]

Checked the 3 courses the company shows pictured, and all of them are semi-private to public courses, in resort areas. The score board is great for tournaments, but advertising and incentives to the course (getting discounts or free rounds to advertisers) and the then the revenue of bringing in new golfers and money from the advertisers it's self is the main focus. Does make a course seem more "upscale" with a score board. I also need more details, I guess a paid flight to FLA to discuss it, might at least be worth some of my time.

 

Please keep the responses up folks, and thank you very much for those of you who have replied so far.

[GolfSpy WD]

Checked the 3 courses the company shows pictured, and all of them are semi-private to public courses, in resort areas. The score board is great for tournaments, but advertising and incentives to the course (getting discounts or free rounds to advertisers) and the then the revenue of bringing in new golfers and money from the advertisers it's self is the main focus. Does make a course seem more "upscale" with a score board. I also need more details, I guess a paid flight to FLA to discuss it, might at least be worth some of my time.

 

Please keep the responses up folks, and thank you very much for those of you who have replied so far.

 

Any advertising IMO is going to take away from the upscale feel of a course, but they said that about PGA players wearing advertisements too, so what do I know?

[BIG STU]

John I really don't know in your area how it would be. Down here ( grand strand myrtle beach area) a lot of courses have scoreboards and do have a lot of local advertising. They also have advertising on the scorecards and some local courses even have advertising on different holes at what I call the tee sign. I guess it would depend on the area in which you are going to be working. I guess with you being in sales you would know a lot more than me but I would think you can maybe get something going. If you can get 1 or 2 businesses signed up then maybe others would follow especially when the owners and mgt point out to their buddies and competitors "hey we have a ad sign at fill in the blank golf course". Of course I am not much of a salesperson I would have trouble selling water to a thirsty man for a nickel. The main thing is be happy doing what you are doing life is much too fragile not to. Good luck keep us posted

[JMiller]

Do you guys think your regular club would do this? Would you advertise here business owners? Any thoughts and advice will help...thanks guys

 

To answer that question on short no, my home club would not buy a scoreboard sign like this.

 

The reasons being the following IMHO:

1) It is Duke University G.C. A public golf course connected to the University and a nice hotel, they probably want to keep it as clean and nice looking as possible.

2) They flat out don't have the space for a stand alone scoreboard. When they hold tournaments they use a long wall between the 19th hole and the driving range ball dispenser to tape up sheets of paper and use that as their "scoreboard".

3) There are a lot of things that need fixed on the golf course itself, this summer they are re-grassing the greens with Champions Bermuda over Bent grass. They need to completely re-do the irrigation system as I'm pretty sure the thing is super old and most of the lines are original to the course when it was built back just after WW2.

 

Is the idea a good one, sure I think it is. Would a business advertise on it if they were a local place and the price was right for exposure, I would imagine so.

[RookieBlue7]

With courses struggling right now all over the place, I don't know that it'd be a great time to be doing a venture like this. They're struggling to stay a float and you'd be trying to sell them something that wouldn't generate revenue on a daily basis.

[Jmikecpa]

With courses struggling right now all over the place, I don't know that it'd be a great time to be doing a venture like this. They're struggling to stay a float and you'd be trying to sell them something that wouldn't generate revenue on a daily basis.

 

I tend to agree with this on many levels. For full disclosure I am a VP of Finance for a casino in NYC and for the most part I understand capital spend, advertising spend and the related revenues. The main issue that I see is that if a club would like to have this done and advertise then what is to stop them from building their own board and then controlling the advertising and getting all of the revenue? We have boards at the casino that we did just that since we found that we could build and install them at or below vendor cost and we get all of the revenue benefit.

[apprenti23]

Hand scoring is becoming less and less prevalent. More scoring is done on laptops at the scorers tent these days than anything. Heck they're not even teach cursive in schools anymore!

 

If a club already has a scoreboard they'll throw a fresh coat of paint on it. If they don't have one there probably isn't a great location for it.

 

Def won't be easy

[jaxbeachpackerfan]

Not. Retired corp lawyer, seen a lot of stuff come through. This is niche at best. If you're good at sales, there should be lots of opportunities out there. Check out manufacturer's reps, equipment sales, that's where some big bucks might be found.

[silver & black]

I remember the advice of some very wise people over the years --

 

1. If you had to use your own money, would you do this?

 

2. Everybody loves you and your business plan until it's time to write a check.

 

While your friend may be assuming most of the financial risk, you are risking your time (time and money are interchangeable - you can always save more of one by spending more of the other), and your friendship. If the financial risk was mostly yours, would you do it?

 

I'm with hckymeyer - don't see scoreboards at courses here in MN. The only one I remember seeing was in Florida this past February - there was a tournament going on and it wasn't used - and it looked like it hadn't been used in a while.

 

Then again, that's a limited sampling, and I tend to be a tad conservative/chicken when it comes to stuff like this, so take it all with a grain of salt...

This.

[JohnBarry]

As I find out more about this business, I am finding there is nothing but +s for the course. The board is 100% free, and through the advertising, some discounted rounds and contests the advertisers do, it's shown to add 40% to the daily tee sheets total. I guess I will be flying to FLA and Ocean City in the next couple of weeks for some training and the owner will be giving our first sales pitch to the course. The business model is super interesting, even the installation of the board is paid for by the company.

[Hula Rock]

Good luck with the new venture JB. When should I expect to see this at Herons Ridge ????

[JohnBarry]

Thanks RP, and I am doing as much research as possible. The best part it really won't cost me a dime except some local traveling expenses and maybe a green fee or 2 (for the smoozing). My friend Marc is in no matter what and has bought the territory.

 

Heron Ridge is my first target, and the owner will be doing the sales pitch with me for that one (part of my training, I get all the credit).