Issues starting a new club

[RITFencing]

Hi everybody,

I know a number of threads have been started on this subject. I just read many of them, and they have dealt with either college/high school clubs or had very non specific questions, generally asking for "whatever advice people want to give."

I have been thinking of starting up my own club for a while now, and while I'm not sure if I will do it any time soon, I would rather have the knowledge and not use it than need it and not have it.

If I do end up starting one, it would be something I would like to eventually live off of.

Some of these questions may seem obvious, but I do not want to leave anything for granted.

So, my questions:

1) Money. What makes money for clubs? What are money sinks? What expenses are necessary? How much should I try to leave in a bank account as a buffer? Given the relatively high income and high fencing interest area I would be thinking of setting up shop, what are good prices to set? What sort of fee structure is good? Per class, per month, per year? What is a good ratio of floor/membership fees to class fees? Should class fees be included in floor/memberhsip fees? How much should I budget for unforeseen costs and equipment repair?

2) Students. How do I attract them? How do I keep them? What age groups should I pander to? It seems like the bulk of the money in fencing is from parents; one person I greatly respect told me that parents are the actual customers in fencing; their kids are just extra. What skill level should I pander to? Another person whose opinion I respect told me that I am competent to coach div 2 and 3 fencers to solid results, but am not yet ready to do much with (competitive) cadet and up. How dedicated should I expect students to be at first?

3) Space. Is a dedicated space necessary? They're very expensive, but they allow more freedom with respect to time, volume and modification. Does a club that has its own space seem more attractive to customers? Should I wait until I have a certain number of students, or a certain amount of steady income, before making the switch? How much should I save up beforehand? What expenses besides rent and utilities should I look at? Monetarily, is it worth the expense to have air conditioning in the summer?

4) Equipment. How much should I try to get ahold of, and what are the cheapest places to go for it, for both personal gear and scoring equipment? Should I require students to buy their own? Should I run everything dry at first? How easy/hard is it to get sponsorship from different fencing suppliers?

5) Business. Should I try to get someone else to take care of the business end of things? I've had it suggested to me that it is better if the coaches have less to do with the business of the club because the two positions can come into conflict. Is it worth it to try and go for article 501(c)(3), making the club a charitible organization? Why or why not? Is it difficult to do so? What about LLC (Limited Liability Corporations?) Is the insurance from the USFA a good deal? It certainly seems like it. What other types of insurance should I have?

6) Coaching Staff. I've had an offer by a friend to come in as something of a floater and give private lessons, giving a cut to the club. Is renting floor space a good policy in a business sense? It seems like it could bring in extra talent from people who might not want to commit to larger coaching responsibilities, especially in my case when I'm not totally qualified (at least currently) to do anything beyond beginner work in foil and sabre. If it is unfeasible to get coaches in those two weapons, should I just make it a one weapon club for the moment? How should coaches be paid? A flat fee, a per lesson/class fee, or some other structure? Should I ask coaches to commit to giving lessons at my club, or should I be open to allowing people to coach at multiple ones. I am definitely leaning towards not requiring an exclusive commitment. How can I attract more coaches when/if the demand goes up? Is it a good idea or not to let advanced students with the inclination teach beginner classes? What kind of split in spending should I plan out between coach/other staff pay, business expenses, site expenses, equipment expenses, and any other things I may be forgetting?

7) Continuing Education/Competition. I am very interested in getting better both as a fencer and a coach. Should I cut back on my competition/training schedule to teach more? Is it a good idea to bring in very knowledgeable coaches for short seminars on both fencing and coaching? Do they tend to be amenable to this? Aside from Coaches College, has anyone had any really positive experiences with seminars/coaching education?

8) Lesson plans. Should I focus more on group or individual lessons? Should I require a certain number of group lessons to be taken in ordered to give private ones? How much time should be dedicated to open bouting? Should I allow people to come from other clubs for open bouting? If so, should I charge a fee? If so, how big or small? Should I make it free for the first one or two sessions? What is a good length for a practice? Does it changed based on the level of the student? How many different levels (ie beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc) are good to have? What is a good class size?

9) Tournaments. How long should I wait to host them? Should I try to get other clubs to send equipment? I've seen some really expensive venue costs discussed in the forum; what are good ways to defray them? What kind of profit should I expect from tournaments, if any? I'd like to keep the cost low in general, are there any good ways to do so other than the venue? What is a good example of referee pay?

10) Anything else I didn't ask that either someone has a question on or someone thinks should be included.

I know there are a lot of questions there. Feel free to answer as many or as few as you like. If people would rather send things to me in private, my email is SeanTHoran@gmail.com; my PM box is almost full so email is the way to go.

EDIT: Now that I think of it...

11) Web presence. What sorts of things should be on the website? Is it important to have one right off of the bat? Do people look at the sites of various clubs much?

[Jason]

You have way too many questions here--though they are all great ones.

Some of them will be answered when you write your business plan. You'll have to decide things like what your business exists to do. There is no right answer to this. It's your choice.

From there, many of the other questions will have clearer answers.

Now, calm the hell down.

[RITFencing]

Now, calm the hell down.

I'm quite calm; I'm just intensely curious by nature.

So here's another question: Got a good example of the business plan for a fencing club? A lot of the things I asked would be big components of one, and one of the reasons I asked so many is so I would be capable of setting one up.

[Allen Evans]

Jason is right: the business plan will help mold and shape your ideas. In a lot of ways, you have the formation of a business plan with the questions you've asked. You need to look at where you are starting from, where you want to end up, and move from there.

It's been my experiance that most clubs DON'T have a business plan ("We don't need no stink'n business plan"...that's a direct quote a club owner once made to me). They meet in little gyms and rooms and suddenly, they have enough money and the right space comes along and they move into a permanent space. They grow and prosper without much formal structure, and then a crises comes along and without any plan for handling decision making, or allocating resources, they fold.

Or the coaches start fighting, the club splits in half, and one prospers and one folds.

Or....

Well, you get the idea.

You can often find examples of simple business plans with a google search.

Allen

[RITFencing]

Or the coaches start fighting, the club splits in half, and one prospers and one folds.

Hmmmmm... what could he be referring to?

Yes, I had realized that this is more or less the start of a business plan. I hadn't thought of looking on google for examples (stupid me; how could I miss that?)

I'll check it out.

[Five Rings]

Here is a partial list of responses:

1. On Business Plans - there is a "Business Plans for Dummies" that is actually quite good. You should get familiar with some basic functions in Excel. One point though - you should always work on the assumption that the business plan will, at some point, be shared with a third party, and you should have someone critique the language and your assumptions. Nothing more embarassing than to have a banker or grant committee say "I thought Northern Jersey's population was 10,000 smaller."

2. On Money - One big turn off for members is when clubs start being cute with fees and have, what look like reasonable fees, but then tack on all sorts of additional fees that make the whole thing expensive. Some level of group lessons should be included in membership. Pricing - looks like annual fees are around $500 in your region.

3. On Money - I would suggest a 3 to 6 month non-negotiable expense reserve (rent, electric, insurance, etc.)

4. On Money - I personally don't like the idea of club equipment, if only because of the liability issues they bring up.

5. On Money - if you are not too keen on admin stuff, better get someone else to help out on the admin and the bookkeeping. Its a bear.

6. Students - as young as you are comfortable and have the capacity to coach. Keep them by offering a sport that is an alternative to basketball in the winter session. Also keep them by giving them a sense that this is "their" club rather than just the place where they go to fence. With kids, this could include organizing the kids into teams, having after session snacks, etc. Something to keep them around to mingle. I think many coaches focus on the fencing aspect but forget the social aspect of fencing (which for grown ups is easier - you can always meet at a pub for drinks after).

7. Space - here are the expenses you have to worry about - rent, insurance, utilities and (maybe) your share of real estate taxes and common area charges (depends on your lease). You may have to factor in for a cleaning service and garbage removal, depending on your lease too. PM me if you need more info on this.

8. Form of organization - PM me for this.

9. Web Presence - definitely yes. Clubs are spaced few and far between. I would definitely look at the website before I check a club out.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

A friend of mine decided that she missed the feeling of our high school fencing club, (the fun/camraderie/hanging out with your friends feeling), and decided that the best way to regain the part of fencing that she had loved in high school and not found at her NCAA college was to create her own club.


She did this by renting a room in a (slightly) refurbished warehouse--- it's impossible to give directions to, and you can't even easily make signs to direct someone assuming they find the building.

In the room, there is enough space for one strip. But the floor is so uneven that you don't feel safe fencing on it. You also don't feel like the floor would hold you if you were to jump.

She has no plans for classes. no gear.

And no fencers.




This is a bad business plan.

In fact, I challenge you to come up with a worse business plan.

[reawl]

Your audience determines everything, and you determine your audience. Do you hate little kids? If so, then maybe you want to make an adult club. Are you uncomfortable coaching people older than you? Do you have a lot of charisma and happen to be single? Maybe a women's only club is the plan for you ;-)

As far as skill, you should plan on making the club be something that matches the talent you have available. If you're the only coach, then shoot for a skill level that fits you. If you have two coaches, then you can pander to a wider skill level and wider audience.

Where's the money? Well the volume is in the people who have never tried fencing (that's almost everyone!) but the problem is they aren't ready to sink the money right off the bat, so your fees have to be lower to attract the volume fencers. The people who spend the big bucks are the ones who like it and stick with it and typically want to compete on a national level (or higher). Some coaches have the reputation where they take 10 students each year, charge each one $10K and there's their salary. Other coaches like myself have goals of getting fencing to be more widespread and so we shoot for the volume, but it means we have to get more people in the door. You may want to adopt a middle ground, or you may try to adopt both. Group lessons are a pretty good deal financially in that you can teach a bunch of people in a short time and make a pretty decent hourly wage when you break it down. The Real Money (TM) is in private lessons. If you can stack up several hours of lessons each day at $15 for thirty minutes, you figure you're making $30/hr.

Getting people in the door/advertising. You can spend a lot of money and get a little bit of return, or you can spend a lot of time and get a little return. A buddy of mine determined that for every 200 people he demos/advertises/talks to, 1 comes to his club. Depending on your demographic and price, that number will vary. Personally, I've found that when I have paid to advertise, it isn't nearly worth the return, but when I do "free stuff" it's easy to recoup my financial investment. Demos at any public event (basketball games, fairs, parades, randomly in the streets, boy scouts, etc.) is money in the bank. If you don't get someone who is there, they'll probably tell someone else who may be interested.

Space & Money. For me it was too much of a hassle to schedule around someone else's time and to store the equipment where it had to be unloaded and packed away every day. A small space that hosts three strips can be the home of a sizable club if you have the time to keep it open 5 nights a week and might run you about $750/month depending on your area and what utilities are covered. If you're willing to run on someone else's schedule, the YMCA, gyms, even churches can be good sources of space, and in the first two they will handle the money/business side, you just have to show up and teach. Extra utilities we use are phone and internet (DSL). Our current place is heated and has AC, our previous warehouse space had neither and the members appreciate the new space year-round (so maybe it's better to start off roughin' it?)

Equipment. We got our start by charging $150 for beginner class that ran two months. That let us get a beginner set of equipment for each fencer in the class that was club property. Since the equipment lasts a lot longer than the 2-months of the class the next class was pretty much pure profit. We use Absolute, good prices (and discounts for clubs) and great customer service).

Tournaments. Host them as soon as you think you can draw the crowd. They increase retention, encourage members to get their own gear, and bring in revenue. If you have some good relationships with nearby clubs you can often borrow their scoring equipment (or rent it if that's their set up). Space, if yours is insufficient, can be had from schools that aren't using the gym (starting a local high school or middle school group can be beneficial when trying to get this space). Otherwise you can try fitness clubs or vacant store fronts, often times realtors are willing to rent those out for a day or two at a time just to cover their rent.

Business Structure. It has to match what you want to get out of it. Assuming your new club fits the business mold, it won't make any money the first year or two, so don't worry about the expense of taxes right away. Things like LLC and Corporation status reduce your personal risk, but they do so by adding a board of directors who get to make decisions for you. For me, I made the club so that I'd get to make decisions, so I have kept it a sole proprietorship. The paperwork for an SP with yourself as the only employee is ridiculously easy.

Education. This is the best way to improve your club and the services you can offer. A lot of people criticize me for putting my own fencing on the back burner while I learn to be a better coach, but I've made the right choice for me. Many coaches are more than willing to come out for a Saturday clinic so long as there's some pocket money in it for them and it is a good way to add some breadth to your fencers. Shy of coaches college, a good way to grow your own coaching is to take lessons from other coaches and talk about what they teach you, why, and how.

Extra: Don't do it alone. Yeah this will be your project, but find people you can lean on, both in the fencing community and outside. Make friends with the local press, school principals, community leaders. LISTEN to ALL the ideas people will offer you, and take only the ones that make sense for you and your situation and use them.

[Five Rings]

Business Structure. It has to match what you want to get out of it. Assuming your new club fits the business mold, it won't make any money the first year or two, so don't worry about the expense of taxes right away. Things like LLC and Corporation status reduce your personal risk, but they do so by adding a board of directors who get to make decisions for you. For me, I made the club so that I'd get to make decisions, so I have kept it a sole proprietorship. The paperwork for an SP with yourself as the only employee is ridiculously easy.

FYI, you don't need a board of directors for an LLC or Corporation, but reawl is right in that it provides some limitation to liability. I can't give legal advice per se (damn rules) but would be happy to discuss this by PM or any decent small business book can give you a brief summary of the pros and cons of each type of structure (especially taxes - very important if you want to pass through some of your expenses). As they say always consult a lawyer.

[Allen Evans]

Hmmmmm... what could he be referring to?

I know what you're getting at, but remember that tensions at club are something that every club handles (or it's not going anywhere).

You would be surprised how many clubs don't plan to be successful. Suddenly they are (relatively speaking) and have serious choices to make. The club may have grown to a certain size by simple concensus and "in passing" decision making, and suddenly they have real issues to face (usually involving money). There is a difference of opinion, and no established way to resolve it, and clubs split over it.

In addition to the business plan, I think it's important to have an underlying philosophy of what your club is about, and where it is going. This might just be as simple as "recreational" vs "competitive" to start with. This helps the club make decisions later on, or at least gives a structure to the questions the club has to answer as they grow.

When you start thinking about the philosophy of the club, you start being driven to certain answers. Competitive vs. Recreational will drive your coaching philosophy, and that, in turn, will describe the relationship of the club with it's coaches -- which I think is another overlooked aspect of running a club. The coaching philosopy has to match the club philosophy, or you're doomed to the same sort of tension and eventual split I talked about above.

Reawl makes some good points, but I would disagree with one: teaching classes makes a lot more money than individual lessons, and is a lot less work. Even "competitive" clubs teach classes, to get new talent in the door, and to pay for their top competitors (which always use up more resources than then contribute).

Finally...document what you're doing now, and learn from your mistakes. In five years or so, when the next person asks that raft of questions that you did, you'll be able to provide them with some real answers.

Allen

[JackSparrow]

I make a good living through running college/high school clubs five days a week, often doing more than one school a day. As I am also a comittee member for what I condidered be a busy, thriving local club. At the last comitee meeting, I was suprised when handed the financial report for the club that although it had around two thousand pounds to fall back on, it just about broke even on a yearly basis. The coaching staff for this club are not paid but get free membership. Given my experience I'd say the way to go if you're out to make money is by coaching at schools.

I charge £15 per hour, although I'm putting my prices up now that I'm coaching every day. I don't have to pay for the venue or equipment breakages. When I organised a large inter-school tournament the school refused to let me charge the participants and they forked out for trophies, referees and again I got the venue for free.

Better coaches than me have struggled to make much cash from independent clubs. The only downside is that you have to work school hours. I've already turned down several schools because they all want you in the same time period 3-6pm (and I hate turning down well paid work that I enjoy). Still if you can work in those time slots then I recommend college/high school club coaching.

[Greg]

is to run camps, lots and lots of camps through your club. Camps for kids, camps for teenagers, pre-nationals camps, pre-season camps, veterans camps, etc. Some clubs like the FASJ in New Jersey run loads of these - a real fencing factory and they are not cheap. But you need to money to pay for coaches, rent or mortgage, utilitities and equipment.

[dcmdale]

Some great questions and great answers.

Remember that there are very few clubs that address the entire range of the fencing market. Most excel at a particular segment based on age, experience, competitive goals, etc.

As you match up what you can offer (based on coaching skill, available cash and resources, location, personality, risk acceptance, etc.) to what particular market segments are willing to pay for, do some informal market research to test your assumptions before laying out cash for things like rentals. A little effort can go a long way in increasing the chance that you will still be in business in 5 years.

A few years ago, I sent my daughter out to do a "Market Research" assignment for homeschool. She went to three non-fencing competitions targeted at her target audience (10-13 year olds, actively involved in extra-curricular sports, whose parents were used to shelling out cash for sports activities, but who were not "hard core" into a particular sport, local to "where she would establish her club"). In her case that was two swim meets and a Saturday basketball league. At each event, she asked 10 kids questions about their impressions of fencing as a sport, their willingness to try fencing, and things that would keep them from signing up tomorrow. Then she asked 10 parents questions about goals that parents have in involving their kids in sports, how much they expect to pay for sports, what they look for when considering a sport, what they look for when deciding on a club or league, how the decision making process worked in their family (combination of kid begging and parent deciding), willingness to support a more competitive direction for their kid if the kid was good enough, and willingness to consider particular sports (including fencing). Hey, it was an eighth grade project, but it brought out some reasonable results. Most kids were interested in fencing (some enthusiastically). Fencing rated very high vs. other sports on the "cool" scale. Biggest immediate impediment for the kids was that they didn't know that fencing was available (even though there were 3 large clubs in the area). Biggest real impediment for both kids and parents was the lack of a defined "season." Both kids and parents felt the need for a well defined "exit strategy." For kids, they wanted to know where fencing fit into their yearly cycle of other sports. For parents, they wanted to know that they were committing for a specific period of time--that if the kid didn't like it, it would be over in two months and they wouldn't sign up next year. Parents were adverse to something you "dropped out" of if you didn't like it. Parents generally were willing to enroll their kids in whatever the kid was begging for, as long as there was time with other activities. Location of the club was critical for consideration: safety of dropping off/picking up/waiting for kids was a big concern about a local club located in a warehouse area for example. Cleanliness and professionalism at the club also counted very high for parents. As far as decision making: Kids often had a great deal of influence about which sports they were involved in, but parents typically seemed to make choices about the club/league. Parents often didn't shop around between possible clubs/league, but would make a choice based on location, friends, yellow page/internet ad, etc.

The club she was involved with at the time actually did a very good job of reaching this target group. (It was located in a upscale outdoor mall and routinely did fencing demonstrations at local schools, had plate glass windows allowing foot traffic to stop and watch, etc.. They had a popular “learn to fence” 1 month introductory program and a solid conversion rate out of that program into group lessons. Several fencers with age-level national rankings were frequently called on as part of that process to convince parents that this was the kind of program that would give their kids a real “quality fencing education”). However, one of the issues that we noted was that there was a high drop out rate during the 6 month – 1 year time frame. So, as a follow-on project, my daughter was asked to look at dissatisfiers at that phase. She started talking to kids in the intermediate classes, just casually, and found that there was a lot of comments like, “I don’t know where to go from here. I am not ready for national competitions. I don’t think that I am even ready for local competitions, but I am bored just coming and doing group lessons.” I have seen this same thing is several other clubs where the owners don’t pay attention to development transitions and, therefore, lose students = revenue. In general, it is a lot cheaper to keep a student than to attract a new one. This is particularly true if you lose them at a point where they would be willing to pay more money to get to the next development step, but there instead, there is a gap in the staircase and they fall through instead.

YMMV on my daughter’s results, both because it was a eighth grade project more to teach marketing concepts than to get great results and because it is not for your market space. What is important though is that it isn’t hard to get some really valuable market research without spending $70K to a research firm just by sitting down and listening to people.

[eac]

I don't know about the money aspect, but as a customer of fencing clubs, I have strong opinions, having been members of several. That said, taking advice from the general fencing.net population seems like a bad idea, since you probably don't want to be like the majority of clubs out there.

Take the following advice essentially as what I would want in a coach and a club, and do with it what you like.

1) Given the relatively high income and high fencing interest area I would be thinking of setting up shop, what are good prices to set?

Keep in mind what your customers are paying for. If you're not going to take them to the top, don't charge them like you are. Conversely, if you do reach the top yourself and then feel qualified to take your students there, FEEL FREE to charge like you are taking them to the top, if they want to go.

2) Students. How do I attract them? How do I keep them? What age groups should I pander to? It seems like the bulk of the money in fencing is from parents; one person I greatly respect told me that parents are the actual customers in fencing; their kids are just extra. What skill level should I pander to? Another person whose opinion I respect told me that I am competent to coach div 2 and 3 fencers to solid results, but am not yet ready to do much with (competitive) cadet and up. How dedicated should I expect students to be at first?

Honestly, if you can't coach competitive cadet and up, I'm not sure you should be coaching div 2/3 either. This is because you may yourself be in a local maximum, and you may have to fundamentally change your game before becoming someone who knows how to be competitive at higher levels. Who knows? If you knew, you would be competing at a higher level. I strongly believe that there are unique, new insights that you reach as you become competitive in Div I, and that these may erase or contradict what you previously thought about how to fence. Thus, if you don't know how to fence at that level yourself, you should fear that you will lead your students into a local maximum as well, which would be royally screwing over those who wish to continue to the Div I or world level (I was one such royally screwed student, and I regret my loyalty to that coach incredibly.).

4) Should I run everything dry at first?

NO! Dry fencing is a fundamentally different sport that leaves you with messed up thoughts about fencing that take a while to fix.

On 6, number of coaches-- more coaches is good, because the students get more attention. But each coach has to be pretty good, or sub-coach A ends up contradicting the good master coach and students get messed up. Students should have a strong, clear, unified signal, especially if they're little.

7) Continuing Education/Competition. I am very interested in getting better both as a fencer and a coach. Should I cut back on my competition/training schedule to teach more?

My advice is to first get good, and then coach. You don't want your fencers to have to hear one thing from you one year, and then you get your A rating (or national points, or whatever), realize something new about fencing, and then hear the opposite. Wait until you really, really know, so your students can trust that what you say is gospel. As corny as it sounds, something about fencing is a bit akin to becoming a Jedi, in the sense that for some actions, you start to "feel" what's going on at a deep, subconscious level rather than consciously seeing and then thinking and then acting. Until you've had that at its highest level (which I haven't), you shouldn't tell other people what to do, because you might be wrong.

8) Lesson plans. Should I focus more on group or individual lessons?

As far as I can tell, the things that make fencers improve are practice fencing, footwork, individual lessons, and tournaments. Conditioning too, once you get to a certain level. I have never known group lessons to make any significant improvement for anyone, and for the clubs I've been in, the more group lessons a fencer does, the worse he gets. (Bladework lessons; footwork group work is fine.)

Should I require a certain number of group lessons to be taken in ordered to give private ones?

No, because then no one will ever get there except by using raw talent to overcome the obstacle of the immobility, lethargy, and bad technique encouraged by group lessons. Instead, get them while they haven't been poisoned; start with individual lessons the first day. Feel free to fix anything about their technique in lessons; don't restrict to bladework or tactics.

How much time should be dedicated to open bouting?

All the time you have that you're not giving conditioning, footwork, or individual lessons.

Should I allow people to come from other clubs for open bouting?

Sure, if you have room. Your fencers can only benefit from a wider variety.

What is a good length for a practice?

I don't know for sure, but it seems that 2.5-3 hours is a good length; it lets you do a significant amount of bouting, get multiple lessons in, get significant footwork in. For camps and specific preparation for tournaments, you can increase it to up to 5-6 hours (One club I was at had 6 hours a day for two weeks straight in preparation for Nationals. Once and if their fencers got to the later rounds, they ran away with the tournament because of their vast stores of stamina.).

[Farfetnoogen]

2) Students. How do I attract them? How do I keep them? What age groups should I pander to? It seems like the bulk of the money in fencing is from parents; one person I greatly respect told me that parents are the actual customers in fencing; their kids are just extra. What skill level should I pander to? Another person whose opinion I respect told me that I am competent to coach div 2 and 3 fencers to solid results, but am not yet ready to do much with (competitive) cadet and up. How dedicated should I expect students to be at first?

3) Space. Is a dedicated space necessary? They're very expensive, but they allow more freedom with respect to time, volume and modification. Does a club that has its own space seem more attractive to customers? Should I wait until I have a certain number of students, or a certain amount of steady income, before making the switch? How much should I save up beforehand? What expenses besides rent and utilities should I look at? Monetarily, is it worth the expense to have air conditioning in the summer?

4) Equipment. How much should I try to get ahold of, and what are the cheapest places to go for it, for both personal gear and scoring equipment? Should I require students to buy their own? Should I run everything dry at first? How easy/hard is it to get sponsorship from different fencing suppliers?

8) Lesson plans. Should I focus more on group or individual lessons? Should I require a certain number of group lessons to be taken in ordered to give private ones? How much time should be dedicated to open bouting? Should I allow people to come from other clubs for open bouting? If so, should I charge a fee? If so, how big or small? Should I make it free for the first one or two sessions? What is a good length for a practice? Does it changed based on the level of the student? How many different levels (ie beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc) are good to have? What is a good class size?

11) Web presence. What sorts of things should be on the website? Is it important to have one right off of the bat? Do people look at the sites of various clubs much?

Ok, these are the only ones that I have an opinion about.

2.) While parents are the customers in fencing, it's the kids that tell their parents that they'd want to take up fencing. Speaking from experience, I'd suggest that you advertise to elementary and high schools that don't have fencing programs. Maybe children's libraries, too, if they don't mind having people come in and give demonstrations or whatever.

3.) No, a dedicated space isn't necessary, but it's quite useful for all the reasons you gave. Yes, a club that has it's own space does seem a bit better than a club that doesn't because it gives the appearence that the club is dedicated and successful. But waiting till you have a steady income to get your own space sounds a lot more reasonable.

4.) Yes, you should wait till your club has a enough students before buying elcetric equipment, because (gawd forbid) your club is unsuccessful, you'd have bought all that equipment and then just have to sell it back if you had nothing else to do with it.

8.) -You should focus on group lessons untill your fencers are dedicated enough to want private lessons.
- About a quarter or third of the lesson is probably enough time for open bouting
- Yes, allowing people from other clubs to come fence would make sense because word of mouth is a wonderful thing. Maybe a small fee to fence there and a larger fee if they're going to use your equipment.
- I think the length of the practice should change depending on skill level. 45 minutes is probably enough for beginners, so you don't tire them out too much.

11.) You should try to get a website as soon as possible, because people are more likely to look at a website instead of calling the club. As far as content, maybe location, which weapons you teach, lesson schedule, and however much you're going to charge for the lessons.