45 replies to this topic

[TSR]

Hey, this WAS on topic; long straights, speed... :mrgreen:

[MG Brown]

And it's MY topic, which was "Things I did on Friday".

[jimht]

All I know is what I see in the pics. Corrections from actual eyewitnesses are welcome.
Cost of track & equipment: well under $10K.
The space should cost $3K-$4K/month.
Labor for operating ~300 hours a month should be $4K-$6K/month.
Operating costs: $7K-$10K/month.
With Rental rates at $4/$5/$6 for 5 minutes, 10 customers/hour would get the $25-$35/hour needed to cover operating costs.
I don't see any reason why a busy mall wouldn't create walk-in traffic to easily cover that. If waiting lines form one or two hours/day, that means it pops to $300/hour.
$300/hour for 10 or 15 hours a week doubles the gross & the extra is all profit.
So it's possible for this operation to gross $15K-$20K/month with net profits of $7K-$10K.
A nice profit of $100K on a $10K investment if it works for one year. :mrgreen:

Numbers aside, what really interests me is the mechanics of it.
I see one attendant, not exactly your normal slot car raceway “guru”, who doesn't look like she'd enjoy running from one end of the track to the other marshalling cars.
I see a track so big that 1/32 cars would be hard to see let alone "drive".
I see customers holding the controller punched while the car is navigating a turn that “shouldn't” be full speed.
I see a track with many places to crash that has no lane markings to help with marshalling the cars into their proper slots.

Conclusion: the cars don't go fast enough to fall off, but you can spend more money & get a car that goes even faster without falling off.
Sounds like the King Track concept applied to rental cars.
Politics aside, It has to do with putting up a track that's so appealing everyone that sees it will want to run on it, then giving them the option of beating everyone else if they pay more money.
There may not be huge repeat traffic but it's all about getting thousands of people to try it once or twice & never do it again (until they bring the kids back to the mall again).

I've been curious about this concept since it first appeared in St. Louis & moved to Atlanta.
I'm really gonna have to think about this one.
To paraphrase PT Barnum:
If the average IQ is 100, half the people you meet are below average, but they've got money to spend having what they think is a good time.

[TSR]

Conclusion: the cars don't go fast enough to fall off...

Jim, trust me, they do. It does not take much and some of them can't even use all their speed in a straight line without going wandering in others slots.
Just as an example, we had to make special inserts to run the Carrera cars we raced at the Convention because none of them could even negotiate ONE turn without going straight into a wall. Indeed the design of most of these cars is so poor that on many of them, the guide flag only penetrates the slot by less than 1/8".
Brilliant!

[Cheater]

I didn't have time to go by J.D.'s on Saturday, as I had hoped to do.

Jim, to the best of my knowledge, the employees (marshalls) at J.D.'s Raceway are J.D., his wife, and his kids.

Another point we've not made is that J.D. does sell cars and sets, as well as a few spare parts. So he has income from sales as well as from rentals.

[jimht]

Dokk,
Have you been there?
I think the concept of the variable power supply for each lane is what keeps the cars under control...as I said, eyewitnesses are welcome to comment.
I know what these cars run like with 12v+ on Magnatech Braid, there's no way this operation would work as it's presented unless they turned down the power.
Cheater:
The pics indicate a 1 girl operation in a Mall. My experience with Mall traffic is that just after the pics were taken 6 people could have walked in and created business for the next hour. If she's by herself, that means she could handle a surge in business by herself...the cars don't fall out much if at all or there'd be no way she could handle it.
The retail sales would be gravy & much depends on the time of year in Mall retail.
Monthly costs have to be covered monthly, eh?

[Cheater]

Jim, I've only observed operations at J.D.'s a couple of times and they seem to do pretty well with a single marshall, though when things are rolling, they seem to use two people.

My take is that the track is so big people tend to drive fairly carefully, as at the far reaches of the track you can't see well enough to drive at the ragged edge.

[MG Brown]

Jim: Just to clarify some of your questions.

The woman (in green top) in my pics is a GF of one of the owners and I believe has a financial stake in the business. She knows a good deal about slot cars and also about how to deal with people. She is also smart enough to know that a smile and "thank you" goes a long way to getting people to pony up for another "go" at the track.

When I arrived the manager (Mike) was at lunch; he showed up just before I left and we talked a bit. Mike is seen in pic #23 wearing a white t-shirt. It's not obvious in that photo but he is standing in an "employees only" area. The usual staff is 2 people but they are looking for another manager to have 3 people on duty at all times.

Pic #23 also shows the lane numbering which is used for re-slotting cars that have come out. This system is common in Europe in lieu of the lane colour coding that is common in the USA. The drivers stations are numbered also so if you come out you tell the marshall your lane number.

I wouldn't doubt that the power is turned down and or additional magnets on the cars- as I said, I didn't examine them or check into the hardware side of things.

Mike (owner) said that they are planning to offer a turnkey franchise package for anyone who is interested in opening their own mall raceway. A dollar figure was mentioned but I won't repeat it here since it is not official.

As I mentioned; the St. Louis Mills Mall MC Speedway is still open. The Gurnee Mills MC Speedway is their #2 location. Mike knows the people at the Atlanta operation but they are not affiliated in the true sense of the word.

[jimht]

MG,
Thanks for the info.
I saw the numbers & assumed since they were not placed where the cars might wreck they had little to do with turn marshalling.
Having used both stripes & numbers on my tracks starting in 1982, I long ago decided that numbers are better for racing & stripes are better for rentals. YMMV
However, the numbering on this Ninco(?) track indicates the owners are aware that striping would possibly reduce the resale value & ability to rearrange the course.
:mrgreen:
Regarding the whole concept...Seems like it takes advantage of the new Plasticar/Plastitrack market without carrying the baggage of how unsuccessful the big wood track(s) raceways have really been.
The question asked is how to make maximum revenue in a high traffic location...the answer is clear.
With 3 of these operations in Mills Malls so far, I wouldn't be surprised to see more.
I certainly will talk to my Mall landlord about doing this in a vacant space on the other end of the Mall during the Nov-Jan retail rush...should make it easier to peddle the home tracks.
I think those that think it can't work have no idea what kind of revenue can be generated by a Mall location with hundreds of walk-by customers/hour.
It also points out how difficult it is to place plastic tracks as they are currently manufactured side by side with wood tracks & expect the casual customer to be impressed. The appeal of these huge beasts is their size, but they still aren't as impressive as a big wood track.
Next step for someone: pave a King with 8 lanes of plasti-track...

[MG Brown]

Next step for someone: pave a King with 8 lanes of Plasti-track...

Actually this has been discussed in the past but the obstacle was the banking.

[jimht]

MG
It doesn't actually have to be plastic all the way around; it just has to look like plastic...

[idare2bdul]

Plastic track king? Why does this sound like the worst of both worlds?

[jimht]

idare2bdul said:

:Plastic track king? Why does this sound like the worst of both worlds?

No, no, no, you don't see the big picture...
It might be cheaper to set the plasti-track up on a used "obsolete" King 8) instead of a big flat table...3 dimensionally more impressive to the renter.
Granted, the true King track racing aficianado would be offended, but there are more used King tracks than King track racers.

[MG Brown]

No, no, no, you don't see the big picture...
It might be cheaper to set the plasti-track up on a used "obsolete" King 8) instead of a big flat table...3 dimensionally more impressive to the renter.

If I was going to do this I'd skip the plastic track and re-braid the king with magnabraid.

[jimht]

If I was going to do this I'd skip the plastic track and re-braid the king with magnabraid.

Seriously?
Hmmm...well, OK, I'd be glad to sell you thousands of feet of braid, but putting magnetic braid on a wood track does not help promote sales of home sets which would be the main reason for laminating the roller coasting tube chute with plastic track in the first place.
In a high traffic Mall location, the Christmas sales of sets are exemplary & would simply be enhanced by having what was or what looked like a huge plastic track.
And the big plastic track would be slow enough that it wouldn't destroy the purty little cars.
If we have big tracks 'cause this is America & bigger is better, we need to make them big slow tracks. We need to remove the barriers between the home racer & the commercial track racer...the tracks can be bigger, but there's no need for the cars that work at home to be useless at a Raceway & vice versa.
The success of hardbody slot cars in other countries is not based big 8 lane high speed tracks.
In fact, most of the activity worldwide is involved with 3 to 6 lane nightmares that would wear out the normal King track racer in 5 or 10 minutes.
Fixing up a decrepit King with my braid would allow insane speeds with normal commercial track stuff, but it would probably make a track too fast & destructive for plasti-cars.
You know, the main reason I came up with the more durable copper-steel braid was because I got tired of rebraiding corners every few months. Now if you'd just like to rebraid a King with braid that will outlast the normal King track location, I can help you

[TSR]

We need to remove the barriers between the home racer & the commercial track racer...

Bingo!

[Cheater]

. . . We need to remove the barriers . . .

That sounds awfully familiar!

Another good post, Jim.

[MG Brown]

Actually I wasn't thinking of fixing up a DECREPIT old track... when the lottery money hits I was going to have Mr Swiss build a NEW one complete with Soft Walls (after the F2000 and USRA Div 1 Nats natch).

Making a track slow only takes a variable power supply.. I have at least one lying around here doing nothing.

[Dennis David]

We need to remove the barriers between the home racer & the commercial track racer...

You've heard it before because in most cases it's still there. Taking a home type slot car to a "normal" commercial track is inviting either ridicule, self destruction of said car or both. Running your scale car while the kid next to you is racing a wing car at a million miles an hour is not a nice experience.

I wonder if pastic is the solution or simply a track scaled down, 4-6 lanes and similiar to the club tracks I saw in England. Often flat tracks that I have run on in the States are off to the side, boring and not well maintained while all of the attention by the raceway is on the King or Hillclimb.

[MG Brown]

Hi Dennis:

I agree that slot nirvana would be to have tracks for both Model Racers and (dare I say it) "pro" racers in the same facility.

Fortunately we sort of have that in Chicago with the Swiss King track in LaGrange and the Ninco track in Gurnee.

I keep trying to get the owners of the two tracks to visit each other's facility...