All-American Fencing Academy - Putting the Idea Cafe grant win to work!

Editor Note: As a rule, all Idea Cafe grant winners provide monthly reports on how their business is doing since receiving Idea Cafe's Grant. Here is the first update from Gerhard Guevarra, owner of All-American Fencing Academy, where he passes on his business wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit, and shares thoughts on how to use the grant money most effectively to take his business to the next level.

The All-American Fencing Academy has now survived two summers as a fully fledged LLC. Since 2003, the All-American Fencing Academy has been in existence, providing fencing programs, but it had existed upon the shoulders of Parks and Recreation programs and other community sponsored activities. In 2008, the All-American Fencing Academy took a flying leap into the small business world.

Summers are always a challenge for any school type business entity. Our clients and patrons are students, athletes really, but they’re students; and like students of any school, they need a mental and physical break...and just like any school, this break comes in the summer. A summer school break in North Carolina seems to be getting longer and longer, nearly 3 months. From about June 10th to August 25th, students and families have ample time to migrate to Disney World, tan at the beach, or head home.

Head home? Head home for vacation? Let me explain, the All-American Fencing Academy is nestled in the heart of Downtown Fayetteville; Fayetteville - the home of Fort Bragg; Fort Bragg - the home of the 18th Airborne Corps, 82nd Airborne Division, Special Forces and the Delta Force (but they don’t really exist, so forget that I even mentioned the last one). This is important to know because a rather large percentage of our community does not call North Carolina, or even Fayetteville home. They Army Military Families, and for many, North Carolina is not home.

I digress. So for nearly 3 months, our high ‘Op-Tempo’ town is left for the likes of beaches, mountains, hometowns, and anywhere far from the sounds of heavy artillery and semi-automatic rifles. These 3 months have been designated by North Carolina as souvenier hunting season. Increase tourism! Spend money on travel! Gas! Food! Lodging! Buy t-shirts! Buy key chains! Buy useless trinkets at beach stores you would never in your right mind have ever bought in a sober state of mind. Maybe even...buy a surfboard. And don’t forget to count the endless South of the Border billboards on I- 95. If you don’t know what South of the Border is, I encourage you to take a trip on I-95 through North Carolina and South Carolina.

For the past 2 years, my closest staff has watched me pour over the All-American Fencing Academy’s budget and the oncoming doldrums of the next 3 summer months. The next 3 months when our traditional monthly clients take their vacation. The next 3 months when the expenses seem to fly in through the mailbox like Harry Potter’s invitations to attend Hogwart’s Wizarding School. Expenses like license renewals, membership renewals and insurance bills. In the next 3 months the All-American Fencing Academy will also participate in Sectional Championships, Summer National Champions (which is almost always out of town) and staff training. And every year, I sit at my desk with a calendar, budget, and expenses doing the lambada around my already stressed planning thoughts. Paul and Megan, my two staff members and coaches, are prepared for my next line, “Let’s take a look at the summer.” Paul, who’s been working with me for the last 7 years, knows too well that in my head, I’m actually saying, “How are we going to survive this summer.”

This year, the All-American Fencing Academy is facing new challenges. During our first summer, we were sublet tenants for a ballet school and didn’t have the burden all the bills and rent. We also only had two part-time coaches (Paul and myself) who’s life wasn’t dependent on the cash flow of the fencing school. The All-American Fencing Academy would host one or two 3-day summer camps for the potential future regular students.

In our second full summer, we were the full time tenants of our brick and mortar facility with all the bills still doing the lambada around my wallet, but the All-American Fencing Academy still broke even on budget. Although we would close the school for 2 of the 3 summer months, our summer camps offset our expenses, and we still didn’t have a full time coach to worry about.

This year, we have a full time assistant coach and we were determined to offer an array of camps for all ages all through the summer...and do so with the minimum amount spent on advertising and a maximum time spent on marketing. Smart? Maybe not. But were we good at it, maybe a little.

The All-American Fencing Academy, in it’s third year, battle planned for two types of camps: on-site and off-site. The on-site camps are self explanatory. The off-site camps are camps being provided by external organizations such as private schools and the local Military installation (through their youth summer camps programs). Those camps sold themselves with very little advertising.

However, the on-site camps needed help. We decided to advertise and market the All-American Fencing Camps through social-networking, visual and print media, and summer camp fairs. First the easiest...summer camp fairs. Local youth oriented organizations were hosting them around the community before the summer months began and it was an opportunity to put the fencing camps in the middle of basketball, football and cheerleading camps.

Social networking was fairly easy as well. The All-American Fencing Academy focused mostly on the local Facebook audience. Although we keep up with other social network outlets such as MySpace and Twitter; Facebook has been the most effective for us to get information out to a mass audience.

The most difficult was the visual and print media. The All-American Fencing Academy needed to get the word out of the fencing camps to the most accessible and recognizable outlets: TV and newspaper...and how do we do that without shoveling money into the effort? Know how to write a newspaper article and use the community channel.

Newspapers and other printed media are starving for stories; and editors find it even easier if stories are given to them rather than having to write the stories themselves.
The All-American Fencing Academy strategically place a number of events near the beginning of summer such as End of Year Student Championships, travel tournaments and other student achievements. This gives us plenty to write about, so if you know how to write a Public Service Announcement, you have instant advertising (sometimes a full half page with pictures) without having to pay a cent. Each Public Service Announcement would also include information about our club and additional information about our camps.

TV advertising is slightly more difficult. The All-American Fencing Academy has been utilizing a little bit of luck and quid pro quo to accomplish this. We have been fortunate in our community relations, fairs and public service announcements, we met a parent who worked for the community channel. Never under-estimate the power of the community channel. Although teens and young parents may not be watching the community channel, grandparents are, and they love getting their grandkids involved. The quid pro quo in this scenario is that the community channel usually does not allow for profit businesses to place ads on the community channel. However, with a little word play, spin the ad so it’s more of a health announcement, and a little push from an insider, we were able to get our ad on the community channel.

By far, the successes of our summer camps pales in comparison to larger clubs in North Carolina, including Durham and Chapel Hill, both with rather more affluent communities. Some of our summer camps did reach it’s participant maximum capacity.

In this instance, we under programmed the services being provided to our Military community on Fort Bragg where a waiting list had started to develop. The All- American Fencing Academy is proud to say that we are the only fencing club that has a Department of Defense contract to provide programs to our local Military Community. Through Fort Bragg, families are able to participate in several camp and programs for free if they have a family member on a deployed status. Our camps was in high demand and we did not supply. At the conclusion of all our programs, we like to do an after action - top of our list for next year...more camps on Fort Bragg and other dedicated satellite sites.

Two main reasons for this: 1) Immediate and accessible audience. and 2) Air Conditioning. (Unfortunately, our training facility does not have the modern convenience of central air...but if you want to lose wait fast, come fence with us).

As we near the end of the summer months, we expect new customers as they return from summer break and as parents look for new ways to spend their hard earned money for the benefit of their young ones. With the new assistant coach, the All- American Fencing Academy benefited from an increase in revenue, but spent more money on employee work time. We have already begun to schedule our new classes for the month, and we are looking at a more productive and streamlined work schedule that can reduce stress on our employees.

The All-American Fencing Academy is also hoping to create at least 1 new satellite site or program to round out our offerings. We have plenty of demonstrations planned and we’re also hoping to have a productive fencing season with our returning competitors. The staff and administrators at the All-American Fencing Academy has learned to adapt and create a program that is successful, profitable and provide a valuable service to the community. We look forward to our next year!