Business Plan for Pocono Gymnastics Center
Jackie Lutz Unsolicited Proposal Proposing & Persuading
Table of Contents
I. Introduction …………………………………………………1 II. Product & Services ………………………………………. 2 III. Goals ….………………………………………………….. 3 IV. Location ………………………………………………….. 3 V. Staff …………..…………………………………………… 4 VI. Equipment ……………………………………………….. 5 VII. Marketing Plan …...…………………………………….. 5 VIII. Pricing ………………………………………………….. 5 IX. Competition .…………………………………………….. 6 X. Conclusion ……………………………………………….. 6
Introduction
Pocono Gymnastics Center teaches gymnastics skills to children of all ages and skill levels. It has been located at 9 Pilgrim Way in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania since April 1st 2002 and was previously located at 3 Golden Slipper Road in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. From 1992 to February 2000 the business was called Penn Jersey Gymnastics and was owned by Mike Romano. Mike was a coach for many years at International Gymnastics School and after terminating his employment there he open Penn Jersey five miles down the road. Teale Nattress bought the business in February 2000 and changed the name to Pocono Gymnastics Center with the hopes of establishing a new and more positive reputation. Pocono Gymnastics Center provides instruction to children ranging in age from 18 months to 18 years at a variety of skill levels. Pocono has a pre-school program, a recreational class program, a recreational girl’s competitive team, a USGA competitive girl’s team, a USGA competitive boy’s team, and cheerleading/tumbling classes. Preschool classes are offered on weekday mornings and evenings. Recreational classes are offered only in the evenings because children in this age group are in school during the day. Cheerleading/tumbling classes are offered one night a week and on Saturday afternoons to accommodate the busy practice and game schedules of high school cheerleaders. Team practices are held Monday through Friday evenings from 5:30 to 8:30 and the children attend on specific nights according to their competition level. Pocono Gymnastics Center also offers birthday parties on the weekends as a means to introduce new children to the sport and to increase the business’s income. Teale Nattress, a 22 year old entrepreneur, is the owner of Pocono Gymnastics Center and the head coach of the girl’s teams and class programs. Teale was a competitive gymnast until she was 15. She began coaching recreational classes and team practices at Penn Jersey when she was 18. In February of 2000 Teale bought the business from Mike Romano with the help and support of her parents. Teale and Pocono face the challenges of competition, as most new business owners do. International Gymnastics School is located 15 minutes away from Pocono and is a nationally renowned facility. IGS has trained Olympic level gymnasts and currently has over 200 students enrolled. Pocono has approximately 60 students enrolled in classes and team programs. The reputation Pocono has received from word of mouth advertising has allowed the gym to acquire new team members from IGS. At International team members are coached with a win or else attitude, and at Pocono the team members are encouraged to do their best and have fun. In the past three months, Pocono has acquired four new team members that were previously team members at IGS. In a recent survey of Pocono parents many said that the reason they and their children have chosen Pocono is because of the coach’s attitudes towards the children. It is a positive environment where encouragement, as opposed to threats, is used to motivate the team members to perform well and win. Teale desires for Pocono to have a reputation as a fun and exciting place to learn and practice gymnastics. She enjoys helping children overcome fears and challenges. In the
future she would like to train and coach state and national champions. Last year one of her level five team girls won first place in the Pennsylvania state competition. Teale would also like to help her students apply for and receive athletic scholarships to help the children fund their college education. Teale would like Pocono to have the image of a place where children are treated with respect and are encouraged to do their best while they have fun.
Product & Services
Pocono Gymnastics Center offers gymnastic instruction to students of all ages and skill levels. Recreational classes are offered for children from eighteen months to eighteen years to develop endurance, strength, flexibility and gymnastics skills. Pocono offers USGA competitive programs from level three through ten. All of these gymnasts have the opportunity to compete and qualify to Sectional and State competitions. Optional gymnasts (levels eight–ten) will also have the chance to qualify to National competitions. For younger gymnasts, a developmental team and pre-team (level three) are available. These teams prepare children with the necessary basics to progress to USGA competitions. Pocono also offers a girl’s recreational competitive team which allows girls to experience competition in meets in a more relaxed environment and only demands four hours of practice per week as opposed to the many hours the compulsory and optional team members spend at the gym. Cheerleading classes offer tumbling, trampoline, and flexibility to enhance cheerleading and acro skills. Birthday parties are also offered on the weekends to introduce new children to the fun and excitement of gymnastics. Preschool classes are offered on weekday morning and evenings and last for fifty minutes. Recreational classes offered every evening during the week for one hour each. Cheerleading classes are held one evening a week and on Saturday mornings to accommodate the busy schedules of high school cheerleaders. Team practices are held every evening of the week starting at five-thirty and lasting until seven-thirty or eightthirty depending on the competition level of the student. Birthday parties can only be offered on Saturdays and Sundays due to the size of the facility, the limited number of staff members, and the amount of children in classes at all available class times. All parents whose children are in pre-school or recreational classes pay at the beginning of each eight week session. If they do not pay by the second week of the session their child is not allowed to participate in classes unless they have spoken with Teale about the situation that is prevent them from paying their bill. All team parents must pay tuition for the month by the first. If they do not pay by the second week of the month then their child is not allowed to practice or compete until their account is settled unless they have spoken with Teale about their situation. There is a lot of room for growth and development in this business because the services offered are targeted towards all large age group of children who can participate in a variety of programs. Pocono is located across the street from a highly populated school district which had the potential to produce many clients. Additionally, the competition (International Gymnastics School) currently has over two-hundred students enrolled in their program which are also potential clients for Pocono Gymnastics Center. Another
avenue Pocono may choose to increase enrollment is to offer additional products and services, such as dance or aerobic classes; however, a larger facility is necessary for this growth because more space would be needed to hold these classes.
Goals
Teale has one immediate goal, one short term goal, and two long term goals for Pocono Gymnastics Center. Her immediate goal is to move into a larger facility because the space she is renting right now is too small for the amount of children she has, which also limits her possibility to grow. Her short term goal is to find an optional girl’s team coach who is strong enough to spot teenage girls doing advanced tumbling and tricks. And the two long term goals are to purchase new equipment and mats and to get more students. Teale would also like to keep the reputation she has begun to establish for her patient and fun coaching techniques.
Location
Pocono Gymnastics Center is located on Pilgrim Way which is approximately one-half mile off of route 209 in Brodheadsville, Pennsylvania. Route 209 is a highly traveled road where Pleasant Valley School District (PV) is located. PV is a highly populated school in an area of the Pocono Mountains that is growing at a rapid pace with middle class families. This location is ideal for Pocono Gymnastics Center because there is a large supply of clients in the immediate surrounding area. Currently Pocono is renting space from Champion Sports Plex, a company that specialized in indoor soccer and karate classes. Teale rents half of the building from Champion and the other half is used for karate and soccer classes. When Teale moved into this facility Tony, the owner of Champion, agreed to put an addition onto the building for foam tumbling pit and more floor space. Teale signed a six month lease to be extended upon completion of these renovations. The facility is located on the ground floor so it is easily accessible by everyone. There are no stairs or steps to get into the gym. There is a large parking lot in the front of the building to allow plenty of room for parking when there are many classes in session and when Pocono hosts meets. The street is also a dead end side street that is rarely used so there will not be any problem with parking on the street if there is an overflow of cars when there are meets at the gym with large amounts of people. The biggest advantage of this location is that its location across from a highly populated school district with a large sports program where children are active in many extracurricular activities. The main disadvantage is the lack of space on this facility. Currently, no renovations to the building have been made and there is no sign of renovations to begin in the near future. Part of the addition is supposed to host the foam tumbling pit. This pit needs to be several feet into the ground so that the edge of it is even with the floor and deep enough that the bottom can never be touched by a gymnast tumbling into the foam blocks. The pit is necessary for a gym that wants to coach advanced gymnasts because it allows the gymnasts to practice skills without having to worry about landing on their feet until they start to become comfortable with the skills.
There are other disadvantages of the location that could be improved upon if the addition to the facility was completed. At the present time, Teale is only able to have a single set of parallel bars and high uneven bars set up. With the added space she would be able to have both sets of bars set up which would allow for more children to participate at one time. Pocono has four balance beams for the girls to practice on, but in the current location there is only space for two of the beams. This limits that amount of children that are able to work out at any given time. There is also a large trampoline that was used in the old facility to practice tumbling skills and to entertain younger children in preschool classes and birthday parties that is not set up in the current building because of space restraints. Since there has not been an attempt on the part of Champion Sports Plex to begin the addition, Teale would like to more into another facility. She hopes that this facility will be within ten minutes of where she is located now. This building needs to be approximately eight-thousand square feet in order for all of the necessary equipment to be set up and utilized to its fullest capabilities. If the gym is utilized to its potential then Teale will be able to have more classes during each time and more children on each team.
Staff
All coaches are USGA (United States Gymnastics Association) safety certified and team coaches have USGA numbers that allow them to be on the floor coaching during meets. Currently, there are two pre-school class coaches, three team coaches for recreational classes and team practices for the girl’s program, and two coaches for the recreational classes and team practices for the boy’s program. The team coaches also teach the cheerleading/tumbling classes. Birthday parties are coached by two or three coaches that are available that weekend. The three coaches for the girl’s team are all females and are excellent with the children; however, they are not strong enough to spot the teenage gymnasts on optional level skills. At the present time they are able to spot the girls that are on the team, but this will be a huge factor next competition season when the girls are older, bigger, faster, stronger, and performing more advanced tumbling passes on the floor and release moves on the bars. The absence of a optional level coach may also prevent Pocono from gaining new clientele that are currently unhappy with the optional program they are in because an optional gymnasts cannot move to another program if there is not an appropriate coach for their skill level. So, Teale is aggressively seeking an optional level coach, most likely a male because they are stronger, to add to her staff. Teale has been placing advertisements in the local newspapers and on the USGA website. She has been contacting other coaches to ask if they know anyone who is looking for an optional coaching position and she tells other coaches in casual conversation at meets that she is currently looking for an optional girls coach. Gymnastics coaches seem to be hard to come by because normally in order to coach the sport at that highly competitive level the coach needs to have been a serious gymnasts in their past and there is not a large pool of people in the class. If they are lucky enough to find an optional coach who is not completely satisfied with their current job, then need to compete with salaries that are still too far out of their price range. Teale would be able to pay a coach more if she was in
a facility that was not limiting the number of students she was able to have in her programs and therefore limiting her income.
Equipment
Pocono has all of the necessary equipment needed to teach the children the skills they need to compete in state and national meets. The USGA decided that vaulting horses were to dangerous last year and changed to the vaulting table, which Teale did not have. The Team parents raised enough money with fundraisers to buy the vaulting table and the practice vaulting table which is a stack of mats that can easily be raised or lowered by putting more mats on or taking mats off for the gymnasts to learn how to vault on the table. There is an additional piece of equipment that Teale would like to have for her students but does not have the money or room for, a tumbling track. Tumbling tracks are long trampolines that can be placed in the ground or above the ground, depending on the gym’s preference. Tumbling tacks allow the gymnasts to practice their tumbling passes for their floor routine will a little help. They are built like trampolines so they give the gymnast extra height which allows them to complete the trick more easily before hitting the ground. Tumbling tracks are normally set up to end next to the foam pit so the gymnast can learn the pass without worrying about landing on the floor at the end. In order to add this tool to Pocono’s equipment Teale would need to be in a larger location with a foam pit and she would need about five thousand dollars. This is another attraction, in addition to an optional level coach, that will bring in more gymnasts from neighboring gyms.
Marketing Plan
Pocono’s target customer group is children from 18 months to 18 years who enjoy recreational or competitive sports programs. The target market is parents within a 40 minute radius who are interested in enrolling their child in recreational or competitive sports programs. In an attempt to reach this audience Pocono places advertisements in local newspapers and free newsletters that the community produces. Their main marketing tool is word-of-mouth. Many of the new children that have enrolled in either classes or team programs have heard about Pocono through a friend. Students and parents are very pleased with Teale’s work hard and have fun attitude. Most parents want their child to enjoy gymnasts and to learn it in a positive environment and if they are happy they are telling their friends and family about Pocono. Unfortunately, marketing materials are only distributed to people who stop in to pick it up and to people who call and request for information to be sent to them. In the past, marketing materials where handed out at the end of each birthday party; however, with the lack of space in the current facility there is not enough space to hold birthday parties for younger children, which is the primary market for gymnasts birthday parties.
Pricing
Recreational classes are priced based on an eight week session and team practices are priced on a monthly basis. Preschool classes cost ninty dollars per eight week session, recreational classes and cheerleading classes costs one-hundred dollars per eight week session. Pricing for the team programs depend on the level the child is practicine and
competing at. Girls on the devo team pay ninty dollars per month, level three gymnasts pay one-hundred and ten dollars a month, level four gymnasts pay one-hundred and fourty-five dollars per month, level five gymnasts pay one-hundred and sixty dollars per month, level six gymnasts pay one-hundred and eighty-five dollars per month, optional gymnasts pay two-hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, and girls on the recreational team pay one-hundred and ten dollars per month. Male gymnasts in class seven pay one-hundred and ten dollars per month, class six and class five gymnasts pay one-hundred and seventy dollars per month, and optional boys pay two-hundred and twenty-five dollars per month. Pocono offers discounts to families that enroll more than one child during any given session. Prices are adjusted at the beginning of each school year when the new sessions begin in accordance with the financial needs of the gym and the prices of the competition. These prices are based on overhead expenses and the prices of the competition. Teale wants her prices to be competitive with surrounding facilities but she also needs to charge enough to cover her expenses. Currently, the prices at Pocono are very comparable to the competition. Teale feels that this is necessary because people tend to make initial decisions based on cost, so if Pocono’s prices were higher new clients might now give PGC a chance.
Competition
International Gymnastics School located in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania is the main competitor for Pocono Gymnastics Center. IGS is approximately fifteen minutes from PGC. Pocono and IGS are similar in the class and team programs that they offer. IGS offers a wide variety of summer camps for athletes of all sports. Children and teenagers come from all over the world to attend the camps at IGS. International has a much larger facility and staff than Pocono to accommodate the number of students that attend their programs and camps. However, at IGS children are treated like trophies and not people. Pocono has a smaller facility, less students and coaches, but a better reputation in regards to how they treat their students. International Gymnastics School has a much larger share of the market than Pocono at the current time. They have a reputation for producing national level gymnasts and for having excellent summer sports camps; However, their reputation has been lacking in the past year in regards to the way they treat the girls on their team, which has caused several of their team girls to leave and start attending Pocono.
Conclusion
Pocono Gymnastics Center has the potential to be a very successful business if given the right opportunities. Teale took a business with a poor reputation and turned it into a business with a strong reputation for the positive way they treat their children. Pocono is not only respected for a postitive attitude and the way they treat their children, but Pocono also produces excellent gymnasts who win many competitions. If Pocono moved into a large facility and hired a optional level coach for the girls team Teale would be able to increase the number of students she coached and her income.