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Advice needed re opening Paintball Site

deaallen

Well-Known Member
Nov 4, 2010
571
73
63
Basingstoke, Hampshire
That's me trying to predict how many days we're get bookings on, I was assuming weekends are more likely to be booked up, but we would of course take any bookings any day of the week.
 

Missy-Q

300lb of Chocolate Love
Jul 31, 2007
2,527
1,132
198
Harlem, NY
You can't predict something like that. If you could, the world would be full of millionaires and no-one would ever go out of business...

What you need is an 18 month war-kitty. Work out your business plan based on not earning any money at all for 18 months. Make sure that you could survive this period of time, either through an investor's input or a supplementary income (day job). Budget for marketing, wrapping your vehicle, posters, and cards for chip shops, gyms etc. If you're able to do that then you stand a decent chance. Operating a successful paintball field is not easy, or necessarily fun. Expect to be sitting in your car every sat/sun morning wondering if people are going to show up. There will be tough times.

Nobody ever thinks about the tough stuff. Its too easy to think about money-fights, blow and hookers.


...as a quick pointer. The weekend will be your meat & potatoes. midweek bookings are the gravy, and hard to come by. You need to be able to operate 40 people twice per week in order to be able to grow and prosper as a field. As soon as you hit the 40 you need to re-invest and double your inventory so you can push for 80-100 per day at the weekend. Once you get up to 150 players per day you'll be making decent money. If you don't think you can get to these numbers that's a red flag.
 
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Tony Harrison

What is your beef with the Mac?
Mar 13, 2007
6,518
1,874
238
@deaallen , Missy won't BS you. What she says is the real deal. I worked at NPF as a ref in the early 90's and their site blew me away - huge number of players, amazing level of organisation.

Talk to Steve Bull at the UKPSF as well - he's a good guy.
 
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philfull

Newcastle Lockdown
Jul 24, 2008
383
28
48
toon
Like Dusty has said predicting customer numbers is pointless, the site I manage can make twice as much with a group of 20 that are up for it than we make with 80+. Sometimes it gets dire when you have a bumper day on paper then the weather turns horrid on a friday night and only 25% of your customers turn up not wanting to stay all day in the rain. We get the odd day that costs us to open.