Five Decisions To Make Before Opening A Driving Range

So you want to open a driving range! Everyone loves the game of golf and everyone thinks the golf business is so (excuse the phrase) sexy! All you do is show up and hit golf balls or play golf. Of course those of us in the industry know that the golf business can be very rewarding however, it can also be very grueling at times. Especially in a down economy when everybody’s disposable income becomes smaller and smaller by the day.

With this being said, we will discuss five points that you need to think through before you open your driving range.

1.   Choose the location for your driving range – The very first rule of any type of real estate is what? C’mon you know it, location, location, location. You must have a good location. What does this mean?

You need to have traffic passing by the property and people either working or living around it. For example, you could find a piece of land to rent or own close to a business park that may not have many houses around it. However you would have a lot of traffic passing by the property. In addition, your marketing materials could include promotions for a business person’s lunch including a bucket of golf balls.

The other option is to purchase or lease your land for your driving range close to a highly populated area. You would then prepare your projections based on the surrounding rooftops.

2.   Set Realistic Initial Sales Projections - Projecting your sales potential and developing your first financial projections or budget is one of the more difficult things to do. However, you need to do them and do them thoroughly. Do not be shy or afraid to ask for help when it comes to attempting to project your sales potential. There are many free or low-cost tools for you to use such as the Small Business Administration or obtaining data from the National Golf Foundation.

3.   How will the cash be handled – How you are going to take care of the cash may sound like a foregone conclusion but believe it or not it is overlooked all too often. As bad as it sounds, you just can not trust anyone but yourself. At one point in my career, I started a job in which the employee of the month was stealing the shop blind! Will you assign each employee a bank? What paperwork will you need you employees to fill out in the opening and closing shifts? Where will the money be deposited along with credit card transactions? And the list goes on and on.   

4.   Where are you going to price your driving range products and services – Many people make the mistake of being to careful here. What I mean by that is they set original prices to low and then have no opportunity to discount their product. Keep in mind that it is much easier to discount your price as opposed to raise prices. Even if you are discounted down to the price that you are looking to achieve, the customer still feels like they got a deal and has a warm and fuzzy feeling.

5.   Set the hours of the driving range and set your hours as well – Yes you will need to set the hours of the driving range but you will also need to set your own hours. If not, you can burn yourself out very quickly.

Again, being a part of the golf industry can be very rewarding as long as you take the proper planning steps to achieve the goals of your driving range.

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