I am super excited to announce that we now have a formal
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wizard. Go get them.
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC, a native
Long Island strong islander who is a big pickleball advocate. I had the
pleasure of having David Ring and Sam Ring, and we
are gonna talk about Oceanside. We're gonna talk about the Pickleball
Expo, and we're gonna talk about a movement that has no
signs of letting up. Thank you, Randy Sussman, pickle 65,
for getting us connected. And, guys, welcome to your first halo
talks. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having us. To be here.
Awesome. So, why don't you talk about when you guys got involved in this,
in this, global movement and, why you decided to,
basically, commit your time and your, your
careers on, the game of pickleball? I'll take that
one if you don't mind. So a year ago, my wife put the bug in
my ear because she was an avid player, and she knew that I was
winding down at work, retiring from a 46
year career. And she knew I was gonna drive her crazy, so I had
to do something. So I started looking around for real estate,
and, I got lucky. About 8 months ago, I
found a beautiful piece of real estate with the right dimensions,
and I cut the deal with the landlord through some negotiations
and started the process. And, there is it's
very underserved in this community. There's only
one competitor that's about 30 minutes away, and they have
no parking. This has about a 100 and 25 spots
and 25 foot ceilings. And so it was a no brainer
in terms of the space and to serve, what was an
unserved, opportunity, because
people were driving endlessly to find courts, indoor
courts Mhmm. And a special place where they could spend time
and socialize and play and have some fun. We we what were you
doing before, before this? So I was in consumer
electronics. I worked for nobody beats the Wiz for 20 years. I was
with Best Buy for another 18 years after that, and I finished
out my career at Samsung Electronics.
And I retired on July 5th. I took 1 week off from
retirement, and I went right back to work. Yeah. It doesn't seem like you're
ready for, for full time retirement. No. Good for
you. And and on the, by the way, we used to go to Nobody Beats
the Wiz on Old Country Road all the time. That was one of mine.
Unfortunately, there was a guy that worked there that used to give away a lot
of CDs. Not gonna give his last name, but his name's Adam. And he
had we we all had, like, Milli Vanilli CDs, and I'm like and a lot
more. My mom's like, where'd you get all those? Like, oh, Adam works at the,
you know, the the Wiz. I'm like, dude, it's like, they got inventory control issue
there. That you weren't running inventory, were you? Yeah. We had a 5 finger
discount program. Yeah. That was pretty yeah. There was there was there was a
little bit of shrinkage. Yeah. There was a there was a lot yeah. Streaming
probably helps the the the, you know, the shrinkage.
Yeah. Moving on to to the the location that you, acquired, what was
that before you turned it into this? Yeah. Interestingly enough, it
was a sporting facility. It was called Turf Island. It was a batting
cage and an indoor lacrosse. It was here for a good 20 something
years. Matter of fact, my son, Sam, I had him in
here hitting baseballs at the age of 6 7.
So this was known in the community as a place to
bring your your children to learn lacrosse,
batting, catching, etcetera. And and, they defaulted,
and I happen to be in the right place at the right time. So you
bought the property or you leased it? We leased it. We have a 30 year
lease, 10 year with 4, 5 year renewals, and Good for you. We got
a great deal. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of next generation space that's coming
up, and I think there's a lot of fever into the pickleball
category. But I'm glad to hear that you have it seems like you got an
a location and an a box where I think some people look at and
say, hey. The the the sport will fill it, and it's like the
location's gotta be the right, you know Mhmm. Layout, and there can't be, like, all
these, you know, columns and and so on and so forth. So That's the challenge.
I saw a lot of real estate. You know, Bed Bath and Beyond was going
out at the time, but they're filled with columns, and their square footage
was expensive. Warehouse space was ideal. And this is really
less than an eighth of a mile from Costco. So we're pulling a
lot of those customers, across the board here. Great.
Great. Yeah. And, Sam, what's your involvement in, you know
Yeah. For sure. Working with your dad and building a business? Yeah.
So it's been a really fun ride so far.
We've been open for about 2 or 3 weeks now, but I feel like we've
been working together on this for probably over a year at this point.
You know, from finding the right real estate to having the ups and downs if
we're getting the lease or not, the construction being done on time,
the permitting, all all that, it's been a hell of a
ride. In terms of my,
my operational role here, I am mostly focused
on all of the marketing, the socials, the
sales, the customer service, the software.
Really, the whole operation is what I'm spearheading with the help
of my dad and some other family members and some people that we hired,
some locals in the area that have a history of teaching pickleball. We
we really tried to hire people that sort of had a following
within the Long Island community in regards to pickleball, which we did a good job
of of finding. But I'm mostly focused on the
back end of things, outside of some customer service and some
sales, because, you know, driving the business is
really what is gonna keep the doors open, obviously, and,
get our name on the map for people who haven't even played yet and people
that are already playing. And what's your background,
before this? Yeah. So my background before this has mostly been,
just in a lot of b to b sales roles at a few different firms,
but nothing to do with pickleball. I started playing pickleball
personally probably about 2 years ago in the park,
right here in Manhattan. And, to this day,
every day I walk by the park, there's, like, 20 new people every
time I walk by the park. Yeah. It should be The sport is just like
everyone people are like, just capture the bug now. I caught it 2 years
ago. And, you know, my as my
dad mentioned, Alisa, my my mother and
and David's wife, she put the bug in
his head a couple of years ago looking for a space, and she got
into it a while ago. And then I started playing 2 years ago,
and it really I think, got my dad even more interested because I
was telling him how all my friends and I are playing every night, every day,
and we can't get off the court. So he's like, you know what? We gotta
look more into this. So that's where we're
In in Oceanside in general, I mean, it's not it's not that easy to find
this type of, you know, box with that kind of parking,
you know, in the area. So it kind of has a little bit of a
moat to it, I would think also. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And then on top
of that, you know, we opened up this location in an industrial area right by
Costco, which everyone goes to, because everyone loves shopping at Costco.
Shout out to Costco. And, you know, we're really trying
to turn around the area that we're in. The area right now is a little
bit overrun by construction sites, recycling plants, etcetera.
So we're trying to really lift up the area and make it a little bit
more, you know, a little bit more feasible for more more
people to come visit. Gotcha. There's a local brewery around the corner
from us. We partnered with them, a beer and wine place called South Shore
Brewery. Shout out to them, and we're doing some cross promotions with them.
Eventually, we'll get them in here, Once we're able
to legalize the licensing aspect and do drink and drink
nights, you know, singles nights, we're gonna do that
kind of stuff, parties. We're we're expanding the space. We
have another 84 100 feet coming in October, which will
include 3 more courts and a 2,000 square foot party
room that will include a kitchen, big video monitors on
the wall, overhead projectors. So we'll have corporate
events, functions, parties, holiday parties, birthday
parties, where they could utilize the space and have
courts available. Sam mentioned we hired some folks
that have been in the business a while. They're former pros,
pickleball instructors, with a great following. We
hired Frank, and he's kinda running that for us. We have 3 other
pros with Frank. And since there's so many new people joining,
the sport, they're spending a lot of time with clinics, 1 on 1
lessons, group lessons. So it's been a really
fantastic, opportunity for people to come and learn a
new sport at all ages. And we find that we're really attracting
anywhere from, you know, the twenties up to the seventies,
and that seems to be the range of folks that are looking
to do something and get out of their homes and socialize. Yeah. I'm I'm
shocked too that when I go and play pickleball, the 20 year
olds are playing with 70 year olds. So it's not like, you know, you have
to, like, segment them. A a couple of questions that that I
wanna ask you guys. 1, are you guys running a membership monthly membership model
and and court times as well? Or how how have you got that set up
from the revenue model? Right. So we before we opened, we were offering
a founder's membership, basically, an entry
membership to allow people to subsidize the cost of our
different options, like open play and private court rentals. We
stopped selling that membership the day of our grand opening. That's when it
expired. So right now, there is not currently a membership required
to play at our facility, so everyone's welcome. You know, it's very
inclusive, if you will. We want everyone to come enjoy it and to come play
and come inside. And in terms of the courts,
we have open plays. We have private court rentals. We
have learn and play leagues. We have clinics.
We have, like, beginner basic classes. We're really trying to
appeal to as many people as possible, especially the people who haven't really
ever picked up a paddle yet.
This is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this
company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from
retailers that allow you to incentivize your
members without having to do 0 down and 1 month
free or giving away shakes or giving away t shirts. What
you wanna do is build a rewards program that lasts, that
people value, and that doesn't discount your own products and services.
So here's the deal. There's something called rewards vault. The rewards
vault is going to allow a member to set up their own profile.
They are going to answer questions. You are gonna get those answers. You're gonna be
able to target those members, and you're gonna reward them inside your
club, inside your spa, and outside of the club and outside
of the spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay
their monthly dues, and to be rewarded properly
for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't
be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust me. This is real.
From a standpoint of looking at some of the other
models that are out there from a research standpoint or just to, like, understand what
they're doing, we pulled a number of the, franchise
disclosure documents on some of these groups to see We do a lot
of things in franchising in the health club industry and the studio space. So there's
a part of the franchise agreement. I don't know if you guys have looked at
this ever, but it's called item 19. And out of this
document, if I say, hey. I'm gonna sell you adult thinkers. I can't tell you
what your revenue and what your EBITDA is, but I can say, you know, go
to the franchise agreement, sign the the the confidentiality agreement, and then
go to item 19. And that item 19 will show you our
entire network of locations, what their revenue is, what their
expenses are, what their cash flow or EBITDA is, how much what their square footage
is, and number of members. There are certain groups that
don't publish their item 19, and, historically, I found the only reason
why you would not publish your item 19 is because it doesn't look good. Right.
So when I find one of these early stage groups that are out there and
they're selling pickleball franchises, I'm like, wow. These they say they sold, like,
300, and they're not showing the item 19. I'm getting a little nervous. Like, did
they just sell somebody, you know Right. A lemon? And they don't even know
like, you shouldn't really be selling anything until you've, like, proven the
unit economics. And the reason why the franchise is to say, hey. This is
more capital efficient to me Right. To to roll it
out. So I'm nervous about a lot of these pickleball
franchisees saying, like, oh, yeah. I got the Dildankers or, you know
Yeah. Chicken and pickle. I don't I don't know all of them. Yeah. Pickle mall.
And I'm like, dude, like, does the franchisor know what the fuck they're doing yet?
Like like, why are you paying them a fee unless they give you an operating
model? Yeah. So, David, you've been around business a long time. You know what
spells and looks like like a real business, and you know, like, hey. I might
be able to do this my own. So my question is, have you looked at
those? 2nd question is you you're going on your own. We didn't
look at a franchisee option. We really took a grassroots approach. We
funded it ourselves, and we learned a lot
of valuable lessons along the way. There are inherent course that
for a franchisee operator, you know, you gotta do your homework.
You gotta get educated, around some of
the, course that could surprise you. So,
clearly, you know, it really comes down to
capital expense, comes down to, like you said,
your overhead. And then the courts. You know, how are you
gonna invest? I've been to many clubs where our courts are
we put a lot of money into the actual court design,
more so than any competitor around here. We have 4 layers of rubber
on top of a cement floor and then an acrylic paint over that
and then the lines. And it it's actually a professional court
where it's much easier on your body in terms of your
hips and your knees wear and tear. There are other places that just
have cement, and they slap a coat of paint over cement, and that they
call that a court. So there are, but it's
more expensive. Right? And can you afford that? And you have to look at those
ROIs and see, can I make money here? So at the end of the day,
it's a real estate play. You're really you're selling court time. Sure.
And with our, you know, event space, and we also opened
up a smoothie bar, an iced coffee bar. And
so we brought in other amenities along the way, to raise
revenues, and, we're getting a lot of,
increase now into the event space because we're coming into that season with
holiday parties, corporate parties. So so two questions. You know,
one is we do a lot of work in the software space in the health
and fitness industry. Did you guys put use any kind of
pickleball centric software to to manage the POS?
And if so, can you tell us what that is? So I can tell you
about it for hours because the software is so
it's so diverse in what it can do. So shout out to Play by
Point. Play by Point. Play by Point? Yeah. Play by Point's been working with
us. They started working with us probably 3 months before we even opened. So
that's how much work goes into actually setting up a proper POS
that's capable of doing God's work, if you will.
Right. Their POS, it I'm not sure how
any club operates without their POS or without their software, I should say.
From scheduling programs and running reports
and looking at all different types of data points, anywhere
from which court in your facility sells the
least, during which times of the day, during which, months
of the year, as detailed as that, like,
across the board for everything that you wanna learn. You know? It can do
mass emails, mass texting, based on the groups.
You know, if they're in a beginner class, you can send it all to beginners.
If they're in this class to that class, the amount of access at
play by point enables the the business to really,
use and access is unparalleled by any other
software that we interview. So we interviewed with multiple softwares.
By far the most, intriguing and and and most
complex in a good way. With with my background in operations
at at Best Buy and Samsung, a lot of
KPIs to follow. And this software uses
Tableau, as a analytics,
background capability. So to Sam's point, when I wanna
run, per hour what I'm making, from 4
to 6, you know, if there's any report I want, I'm able to vacillate
through the various programs. Furthermore, they're 247.
I've seen Sam communicate with them at, you know, midnight when there was
an issue or a hiccup, and they resolve it on the spot. I
I would just say the software is crucial,
component to, anybody who's gonna delve into
this. Yeah. And they have over what was it, Sam? 700?
About 700 facilities. Awesome.
Yeah. Last question before we get the, to the classic event
coming up, end of October. You could probably keep
this facility open 24 hours if you wanted to. What
times are are you keeping it open now, and and how are you thinking about
that? Because at a hockey rink, you know, kids are going and playing it like,
oh, I got 4 AM ice time. I got 1 AM ice time. I feel
like if you're a pickleball evangelist or, like, you you're, like, out late at night,
maybe you got a plan a didn't work out at one of the clubs,
d ring. Right. You know, I'm not saying I'm not going out. Me and Dave
are gonna if we're going out of his clubs, hey, man. It's you know, I
don't like this. You know, let why don't we go play some pickleball at the
expo? What do you think? What's the time? Well, we
we started out our hours conservatively. We're running from
8 to 11 PM Okay. Right now. As demand and
remember, we opened up, you know, in the summertime, so
late August, early September. As we get into the season,
if there's more demand, we'll be more flexible. Our competitor
does open up to 1 in the morning. We've been watching and monitoring
that, action through their calendar.
It's not where it needs to be to support the labor yet,
but, you know, you only really need 1 person at the front desk. Exactly.
You know? So if there's demand, we'll meet that demand. I think as
we grow the business, we'll have to revisit that. Got it. One
question before we go because I played, pickleball in Chicago
a couple of months ago, and they had the ability to, like,
replay the the point on the video. Yeah. And then you could get
it sent to you as, like, you know, for a fee. Yeah. I felt like
that was awesome. Like, you create, like, a little highlight reel. Have you guys installed
that video technology? Yeah. Great question. So we interviewed with a few
different software companies that offer that technology. You
know, given our the critical mass of our clientele for our
facility are baby boomers. And
upon, you know, going through different softwares and the different
options from each software, we just concluded that that would not be
of value to most of our clientele. Okay. But we did look
into it. It is a cool technology, and we are open to it in the
future, but we don't currently possess that capability. Well,
we are wired for it, however. So if we wanted to add
additional cameras onto a particular court Yep. We
have one court designated like our champion court. We have
that functionality and capability. Matter of fact, being that I'm an audio
video guy, I brought in, a company,
that specializes in just that. And so,
our our u our our club is completely wired
for any music, HVAC, control 4.
I could see any camera anytime and, control
everything about the business from my phone. And,
inevitably, we could add that feature. We just have to wire up a couple of
more cameras, quite frankly. Just a complete complete aside, there was
a guy who came to us with a, tennis technology where
it was gonna basically like, you'd hit with a pro, and it would, like, give
you, like, a a footprint of, like, here's where all
your balls were in and out. Yeah. Yeah. And I I said to him, why
don't you just take the technology of, like, the line calling technology
and sell that? Because I think people in I know in tennis, you know, if
you can say, hey. For another $20, you want, like, the lines called for you
automatically? I was like, that's the way you sell this thing. Do they do that
in pickleball yet where it's like a Yep. Visual line calling? They
do have that. It's not some guy it's not some guy to call center,
like, calling it from, like, remote. It's, like, real. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Yeah.
Play a video replay. There there are apps on the phone. If you put your
phone on a tripod and put it behind one of the baselines, you put it
high up, extend the tripod camera. There's actually an app from the App
Store you can just download that does line calling. Oh, sweet. It's, like,
94% accurate or something like that. Gosh.
Enough. Yeah. So 90% yeah. More that's probably higher than you And if you wear
your Apple Watch while you're playing, it tells you on the watch. Jeez. You
gotta tell me to talk talk to me about that later.
This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.
We are partnered up with a company called Higher Dose, higher dose
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gotta get these products in there before these workout recovery and spas
end up saturating your market, having your members walk out of the club
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expert in workout recovery if we are already an authority in
workouts. Higher dose, check it out. There's a
wholesale code, and we look forward to helping
you augment your products and services to meet the demands of
your members. And, hey, let's get people happy,
healthy, and sweaty, and the recovery should be just as good as the
workout.
We're we're huge advocates of of pickleball just to give you one more,
tidbit here. So we came up with this term halo, health, active, lifestyle,
outdoors, because I don't like the word wellness. So we so we say we're health
and wellness bankers. Our day job is we help people put money get
money into businesses that are gonna further the health,
active lifestyle, outdoor lifestyles, and, you know,
events and hopefully get rid of, like, childhood obesity, diabetes,
and, you know, loneliness. So once we got involved in pickleball, I'm like,
dude, this is, like, the the the category killer or, like, the the
outdoor of Halo is pickleball.
Yeah. So so we're excited about what you're doing. So give us in closing here,
and we could probably talk for hours. But, you know, talk about this event that
you've got going on, how we could get people over there, and we'll fast track
this, and see if we can get a, you know, some people to attend.
Yeah. For sure. So we have the New York indoor pickleball classic.
That's, gonna be held October 26 October
27th. Men's doubles and mixed
doubles are Saturday 26th, and women's doubles
are Sunday 27th. We have
unbelievable prizes that we're gonna be giving away,
such as not limited to kitchen backpacks, KTCHN.
It's a new company out of Utah. So shout out to them for they
make the nicest pickle bag on the market without question.
It's fully leather, fully waterproof. It's got
more pockets than you would ever imagine. It's got all the
features you want, and it's very, very high end, and it's gonna
be a great giveaway. On top of that, YOLA is sponsoring
our facilities, so shout out to YOLA. And we'll be giving away some
higher some of their higher end paddles as well. You know, we didn't wanna make
it a tournament where you just get a medal and you just walk out. We're
also working on, different tiers of cash prizes for our
bronze through gold winners. And, you know, really wanna incentivize people to
come have a good time and really enjoy themselves, especially at a brand new place.
And then lastly, like I said earlier, it's gonna be on Pickleball TV
Network, live streamed on Roku and Apple.
Pickleball TV Network is coming to set up cameras throughout the
facility for the 2 day event. And then on top of that, we have the
National Pickleball League coming the day of both of the events, the 26th and
27th to host, some of their championship
games for the National Pickleball League at our facility.
Awesome. So it's gonna be a really a hell of an event, and we love
it if anyone, you know, anyone from all over can come on down. We have
people registered from Connecticut. We have someone registered from Rhode Island,
a bunch of people from Manhattan, and, obviously, a bunch from Long Island.
Awesome. So we'll get we'll get an an email blast out. We'll make some intros,
like, as I referenced before. I'm unfortunately or fortunately, I'm at my,
Emery, 30 year, undergrad
reunion that weekend, so I'm not gonna be able to make it. I do have,
like, couple of, touch points to Oceanside. 1 is, my buddy,
Mike Peska, the Peska family. I hope you know those guys, p s c
a. He's one of my close friends, went to Emory with me. Used to be
a sports analyst, radio shows on,
on NPR, so I'll I'll make sure he knows about the event. Great. Thank you.
Second thing, did you go to did you go to Oceanside High School, Sam? No.
My sister did. I did not. Okay. So I used to there's a
DX, NFL quarterback, Jay Fiedler, from Miami.
Yeah. So he he went to Oceanside High School, and his dad used to
own a camp called Brookwood. And I went to Camp Laconda, which
was across the lake. We were the same age. So I used to have to
guard Fiedler back in the day, whatever sport we were playing.
And I was a decent basketball player, but not anywhere near, like, the physical structure
of that guy. So they still, like, taunt him a little bit. Come on, Jay.
Take me to the hole. You know? And that'd be like yeah. He's like on
the free throw line, you know, on an n one. He's like, hey, Pete, man.
I took you. You told me, like, I'm sorry about that. So, that's my
claim to fame on that front. But, love what you guys are doing. You know?
Thank you. Focus on this one location. I feel like there's so much that could
be put into it. That's one of the questions with the hours. You know? We
also did something with a ninja park
that basically I said, hey. You're not really spending any money on marketing.
You know, why aren't you spending any money on marketing? He's like, bro, I've got
400 kids that come here in here a weekend for birthday parties.
Right. And every one of their parents has to sign a waiver that has their
name on it and how old the kid is. So my leads are, like,
400 leads every Monday. You know? So I feel like every time you guys do
a private event, make somebody sign that waiver with a little checklist and, like,
bam, you got, like basically, just leverage it. It's, like, negative marketing
cost. Yep. 100%. We, you gotta leverage the data. Right?
Anytime people are at the facility, you gotta collect the data. So I hear
you. Yeah. And then, David, if there's a drop box where I could send back
some of those, CDs from, The Wiz, let
me know. I think they're obsolete. Yeah. Anyway
Maybe on eBay. That's why I grew up.
I grew up 2 doors down from Jay Fiedler. Jay and Scott, I grew
up with Jay and Scott on Judith Lane and Kenny and Donna
Fiedler who owned Lenny Lenape. I grew up Lenny Lenape, and then he moved it
to Brooklyn. Judith Lane. Great spot. That's where I grew up. Tennis
behind that Oceanside High School quite often. That's right. Near
the red store. Yes. The Red store's gone, by the way. Now it's
like, not sure what to call it. Something else. It's gone.
Yeah. Well, look. I'm glad to see you guys, you know,
being a leader in this, and, it sounds like you know what you're doing. And,
I I think your results are gonna exceed what your expectations are
because this is gonna be huge, and it's only getting bigger. So, you know, we're
happy to, get involved, help this show, you know, maybe host,
like, a halo talk. So we do these things live. Maybe we could do a
halo talk where we bring up, you know, a 100 people, and we do this
on the side. Get a pickleball twenty going, and go from
there. Alright, guys. Great work. Hey. Thank you, guys. Meet you.
Later, guys. You both. Appreciate it.