Episode #532: Pickleball Expansion on Long Island: David and Sam Ring's Vision for PickleballXpo

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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 dot com. They are the leader in workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED light masks, neck enhancers, and other products such as PMF mats and sauna blankets. If you have not gotten on the workout recovery train

yet, your time and your stop is now. You 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 and going into one of their locations for $200 per month where they're paying 39 to you. Let's become an 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.