The Answer to Fixing Pool is Simple

[sfleinen]

I personally just would hate to see this great game morph any closer to a cheap carnival game with toy tables.

There's a fine line between "keeping the game classic" and moving/rolling with the times. You can have too much of one or the other.

The problem we have -- which is a societal problem and not exclusively a pool world problem -- is "all or nothing" extremism. People have lost the sense of the word "moderation" -- where there are countless shades of gray in between the two extremes of "keeping the game classic" and morphing with the times.

Morphing with the times doesn't necessarily have to be "turning the game into a carnival on toy tables." We sometimes have to release our white-knuckled grip on the "keeping the game classic" signpost extreme, and find a happy medium somewhere in the middle.

-Sean

 

[Kim Bye]

336Robin had one very good point: The future of pool rests on recrutiment from the comming generation.
One of the strategies to reach young kids is to have a low cost, low threshold approach, and I`m all for that.
The problem is that pool halls usually also sell food and alcohol - a notoriously hard business to make money in, add the cost of realestate occupied by the tables, the tables them selves and maintenance and you need quite the turnover to turn a profit.
The fact that bars might not be the most conducive enviroment for kids comes on top of that...
So if pool is gonna grow, dedicated poolhalls for youth is what we need, and it needs to be cheap, quality equipment and grown ups with the desire to teach.
I don`t see a private venture that can make money of that, so either you need a very, very wealthy "poolantrophist" or you need some sort of city/state sponsored arrangement.
Gambling and the seedy aspects of pool does not help either. Pool needs to be "cleaner" than it is now, characters is fine, but the whole mach thing must go, especially if pool is going to apeal to women.
When those things are taken care of, I see no reason that pool should not grow and more serious sponsors being atracted. Why can`t Nike make pool clothing? If pool gets big enough, they will...

 

[Bambu]

336Robin had one very good point: The future of pool rests on recrutiment from the comming generation.
One of the strategies to reach young kids is to have a low cost, low threshold approach, and I`m all for that.
The problem is that pool halls usually also sell food and alcohol - a notoriously hard business to make money in, add the cost of realestate occupied by the tables, the tables them selves and maintenance and you need quite the turnover to turn a profit.
The fact that bars might not be the most conducive enviroment for kids comes on top of that...
So if pool is gonna grow, dedicated poolhalls for youth is what we need, and it needs to be cheap, quality equipment and grown ups with the desire to teach.
I don`t see a private venture that can make money of that, so either you need a very, very wealthy "poolantrophist" or you need some sort of city/state sponsored arrangement.
Gambling and the seedy aspects of pool does not help either. Pool needs to be "cleaner" than it is now, characters is fine, but the whole mach thing must go, especially if pool is going to apeal to women.
When those things are taken care of, I see no reason that pool should not grow and more serious sponsors being atracted. Why can`t Nike make pool clothing? If pool gets big enough, they will...

I have to agree but cant help but think, why is gambling and pool automatically considered seedy? Plenty of golfers gamble for big money all the time and its ok, some bowlers too. Yet, golf is still the fair haired boy. Even the state says its ok to gamble, as long as they get a slice of the pie.

Pool players though, they put up 100 bucks to gamble with, and people start freaking out.

 

[336Robin]

You have a point..sorta

336Robin had one very good point: The future of pool rests on recrutiment from the comming generation.
One of the strategies to reach young kids is to have a low cost, low threshold approach, and I`m all for that.
The problem is that pool halls usually also sell food and alcohol - a notoriously hard business to make money in, add the cost of realestate occupied by the tables, the tables them selves and maintenance and you need quite the turnover to turn a profit.
The fact that bars might not be the most conducive enviroment for kids comes on top of that...
So if pool is gonna grow, dedicated poolhalls for youth is what we need, and it needs to be cheap, quality equipment and grown ups with the desire to teach.
I don`t see a private venture that can make money of that, so either you need a very, very wealthy "poolantrophist" or you need some sort of city/state sponsored arrangement.
Gambling and the seedy aspects of pool does not help either. Pool needs to be "cleaner" than it is now, characters is fine, but the whole mach thing must go, especially if pool is going to apeal to women.
When those things are taken care of, I see no reason that pool should not grow and more serious sponsors being atracted. Why can`t Nike make pool clothing? If pool gets big enough, they will...

You have a point sorta so lets check the numbers to find out if it can be done. This is sort of a dream of mine to open up small rooms and sell them off to locals and move on to the next and the next.

You go into a town that has a high school close by. You rent a space lets guess that you will pay.....2000 for room and electricity on average for 12 months=24k

If you open up a 8 table room, sell sodas, cold sandwiches, crackers. etc and have a juke box. You open up charge 3 bucks an hour for awhile and get some regulars but you want more.

So you charge a set rate for pool from 5pm to closing time....12mid night---7 hrs

lets say you pack the place with kids who are looking for something to do. You have 8 tables and people play partners 4 people to a table that 32 people x 5=160 plus the rest of the revenue that comes in likely 220 to 250.

You do this Monday through Thursday night-----4 nights that probably 850 to 1000 for that week so far now you have Friday and Saturday and you up the price for pool time to 3 dollars an hour or play all evening for $10....now you make at least 20 a table for 8 tables that's 160 for Friday and 160 for Saturday and you sell stuff both days so you make around 220 for the Saturday and Friday....add say 440 to the 1000 and you have =1400 a week x 4 weeks=5600 that is possible a month if you promote the 8 table room and you do everything you can to keep it filled up.

Your rent lights heat etc is 2000...your revenue is realistically 4000-5600
You have a profit of 2000 to 3600 depending on how you do. You have business loan you need to pay on that so you pay it back at least 600 a month.

You now have 1400 dollars a month up to 3000 possible and you haven't really been open at all during the day...Just the evening.

So you hire someone to run it...you get a retired guy....you get a team of retired guys to make it their hangout during the day and you get yourself retiree business.

You sell them table time, sandwiches, coffee, donuts etc you pay for the labor of the place through your daytime sales, you have other retirees who want to work there so you train them to run it nights.

You eventually sell the room for what you have in it plus say 15k

You have minimum of money invested because you use used equipment.

8 x 3k per table=24k You picked up a refridgeration unit, cash register and a house cues mounts, a display case or two and you add say 6k for various things such as that.

You have 30 k in the place. You offer it for sale to the people that run it likely they are retired and want something to do.....you ask 45 k. You take 20 k in cash and you take payments on the last 25k at worst case scenario. You were in the business for 6 months to a year getting the kinks worked out and you paid off a bit of the loan you took out for the place. So you are getting 20k cash and payments on the last 25 k. If they continue paying the personal note to you you are now getting cash every month for debt you have satisfied so this is your payment pure and in profit from the development you just did.....and you roll this to the next one...where you do the same thing all over. You do this within driving distance of your home town and you can open up 10 to twenty of these in so many years and retire really well.

So is that for a dream scenario.....possible or not?

 

[Kim Bye]

There is so many hidden cost you don't factor in.
your estimates for running cost seem very, very low.
What about insurance? Taxes?
You will have higher employment cost than you think. Finding good, honest stable workers is hard.
You will have things break, you need to spend money on cleaning and maintnace etc etc.
It's a reason over 50% of the places in the "restaurant/bar" industry don't survive their first year of business.
I have 10+ years experience as a chef and mixologist.
I have seen great people with great ideas loose their life savings more than once.

 

[336Robin]

There is so many hidden cost you don't factor in.
your estimates for running cost seem very, very low.
What about insurance? Taxes?
You will have higher employment cost than you think. Finding good, honest stable workers is hard.
You will have things break, you need to spend money on cleaning and maintnace etc etc.
It's a reason over 50% of the places in the "restaurant/bar" industry don't survive their first year of business.
I have 10+ years experience as a chef and mixologist.
I have seen great people with great ideas loose their life savings more than once.

I agree the idea will have to be looked at much closer and yes there will be lots of other expenses so this was an extremely rough approximation. I've wanted to do this for years and may very well do it once I find out the true numbers it could be that I'm way off with the estimate.

The main test is to see if the expenses can be made on a minimum of tables and square footage for starters. What I would prefer is a situation where there are 15 to 16 tables and more room for more people but the bigger you get the more pressure you have to fill the room.

What I am after is finding a model that would make for income for a person who would be the owner/buyer of the business. Tables are cheap now if good rents can be found then it would work. If not you run it awhile and sell it off. Even if you walk out with a note on the loan that can be refinanced down to reduce the payment because you paid on the loan awhile, you can sell and finance the sale over a long period and this would allow a person to walk into the business with practically no huge personal investment up front but a note for all of it plus some profit for you.

If they owner defaults the loan you step back in and run it for awhile or you sell it again or sell off the assets.

What I am after is the creation of small billiard establishments that are similar to the billiard club ideology but with an American flavor. Retired guys hanging out possibly, mentoring kids, putting kids in touch with community college programs and have that literature, a place for kids to study, posters for the armed forces and other employment programs.

These were my initial ideas. My main curiosity is if it could work financially and I think it could.

If it could and did then it makes owning a pool room more desire able and that is something good because maybe others might want to.

 

[Banks]

If something's successful, people don't just up and abandon it just because they want to be nice. Maybe if they're through with it and want to retire, sure.

Also, if it was so cut and dry to open up a business, plunk down inventory into a store and make money, everybody would be doing it. If a business is making virtually no profit, who's going to buy it? How will you convince somebody to spend a good portion of their life committed to a business that makes almost nothing? What do they live on? Well, I guess that would make sense.. it would have to be a pool player.

 

[336Robin]

If something's successful, people don't just up and abandon it just because they want to be nice. Maybe if they're through with it and want to retire, sure.

Also, if it was so cut and dry to open up a business, plunk down inventory into a store and make money, everybody would be doing it. If a business is making virtually no profit, who's going to buy it? How will you convince somebody to spend a good portion of their life committed to a business that makes almost nothing? What do they live on? Well, I guess that would make sense.. it would have to be a pool player.

Well I am retired been retired a month and a half. I don't want anything to do full time for the rest of my life but Id like to try my hand at opening rooms working them for awhile, staffing them and selling them off and then doing another at least that was a plan I had. Its sort of pipe dream but my main thing is I like the idea of bringing in high school kids into the game.

If it ended up that a small room could be worthwhile for locals to hang out and run those two things fit in there pretty good.

I ran enough during my working life Id rather employ someone else to run things for me after I get it going.

 

[rhatten]

I think you buddy Steve in Mocksville is looking to sell his place... Its set up ready to go with cash income. He mentioned it a couple of months ago that he might roll out of it.

R

 

[(((Satori)))]

I'm not sure what it takes to succeed in the pool hall bus. But I know that my favorite place had to shut down and I thought they were doing thing right.

They had a great location in a college town, very friendly and cute staff, great food, very nice bar, groups of business regulars who hung out, groups of regular players who hung out, regulars who just came in to socialize, and a steady stream of walk ins.

But when the landlord raised the rent the owner sold his equipment and called it quits.

 

[336Robin]

I think you buddy Steve in Mocksville is looking to sell his place... Its set up ready to go with cash income. He mentioned it a couple of months ago that he might roll out of it.

R

Randy,
Steves place is a great place with a base income built into it. Were I intending to spend the next 40 yrs running a great pool room, that pays for itself I would buy it but that's not what I want to do with my last years.

It was the old room in Mocksville that gave me the idea that rooms can be opened and run on the cheap and become part of the local fabric. I wouldn't have a place as ratty as Cliffs was but I can see rooms like that making a large imprint in the pool world if they were done with the right theme in mind.

The themes: Billiard Club sorta, local place for retirees and kids to go, place for at risk kids to come into contact with local on the job, community college, and military recruitment options.

I think that small rooms could have a very large impact throughout the rural towns and provide a modest income for the owners.

As for me staying in one place again....for a very long time...no can do. I want to keep things moving....a desk for 20 plus years will do that to you.

I'm not sure what it takes to succeed in the pool hall bus. But I know that my favorite place had to shut down and I thought they were doing thing right.

They had a great location in a college town, very friendly and cute staff, great food, very nice bar, groups of business regulars who hung out, groups of regular players who hung out, regulars who just came in to socialize, and a steady stream of walk ins.

But when the landlord raised the rent the owner sold his equipment and called it quits.

Ive seen that more than once. The last time it happened the guy who raised the rent left his shop empty for 2 plus years so that did him a lot of good but he owned the building so its his call and this forces us to look back at the price of real estate which was partly to blame for the inability of room owners to make it.

The other core cause of room owners not making it was they forgot how to find business other than just open the door for business.

No one seems to be able to market their businesses in an effective manner and today that is essential. I'm witnessing that now. A place I play on Fridays is changing specials on a crowd that is basically non-existent. They do nothing to bring in new people.

What is wrong with calling someone up, it could be any group of people. The manager at Wendys, the Lions Club, THe CEO of a local business and say....Hey its Bill down at the Pool Room and we would love to have you bring your people down here for day just for you guys and let them come in and use your......Empty tables....then make sure you organize them in a way that they have fun and when they leave make sure they know about the Pool Specials?

That is sort of central to business.....getting people through the door but Alcohol seems to have people paralyzed owners into a mindset that this is all you need to bring in business and I watch this one owner practically kiss everyone's butt that drinks and hate on the pool players and he keeps manically chasing the drinkers to make sure they a happy but he cant recognize that the Pool tables....are bait. If you bring in Players then some end up at the bar who don't care so much for pool.

Im very glad Im not in the business myself but I love pool so I care at least that much to suggest that there has got to be an affordable way to bring in business but very few seem to have found it and its my observation that the problem isn't the business itself its the inability of an owner to get past his preconceived notions about the business that might not be correct.

I like everyone else that wants to continue playing are fixing up their garages for tables and finding other people who play that have tables in their homes and we will keep on playing and loving the game and driving great distances to play.

Pool is a great game but it needs a template for success that works and everyone seems stoned on booze like its the holy grail and its not. Its not for pool anyway its a sure way to a slow death spiral because we have forgotten to raise up a generation of pool lovers because of it. Its a shame but it is what it is.

At least there are forums where people can talk about it. Maybe someone will get the idea there is another formula out there, maybe one that works.

Additionally marketing to the same audience that works for a small hometown room might be a little different for the marketing effort direction of a Sports Bar but the technique could be the same....A simple invitation is all that is required, then tell them about a special. Communicating with your potential customer hasn't changed.