Karting Facility startup costs

Someone help me get an idea what’s involved in starting a karting rental facility, money wise.

I am assuming that fleet is 250k ish.
I am assuming that a track costs about 1ml min.
I am assuming that facility depends on land costs and ambitions. Let’s say minimally 500k for some sort o basic structures. Realistically, a lot more, probably another 1-3 mil.
I have no idea how much insurance premiums amount to.

What expenses are involved?

And, finally, how do you estimate what revenue could be, range wise?

I am guessing the expensive way to do this would be to engage a company that designs facility like 360 (the fancy indoor tracks). These appear to be in a different league, startup costs wise.

This being a climate with seasons, in order to make money year round it would have to be indoors. There is a cool facility in Europe that has an indoor to outdoor facility that uses both when weather allows.

It’s just been a pipe dream but technically, it’s possible. Just sorta noodling this. @Richard_Jacques save me from myself.

Let’s assume indoor since you mentioned it.

Typically indoor places are leased. Nothing preventing one from purchasing of course.

One rule of thumb for the karting activity is 2.5 days at your maximum capacity (Basically Fri+Sat+Sunday). Capacity is going to be number of sessions per hour x number of karts/tickets on track x number of hours.

If you have a restaurant or other activities you can factor that in too.

Worlds first track and dispensary combo? :joy:

I kid. Thank you for that. So basically weekends pay the bills and money-making happens above and beyond that I am guessing.

Ohhh my days Dom, this is a rabbit hole. You wanna follow me down it? Take my hand and lets go!! My ramblings are just what I’ve learned and figures I’ve set, I’ll try to explain my reasoning so try to keep up lol

TAM-SAM-SOM
First thing you want to look at is market size.
TAM - total available market, this should be around the 1m figure, we’re talking about catchment area population as a whole which is basically your addressable market - everyone you’re going to be advertising to. Since we all know kids can start karting from 3 yrs old and there are folks here in their 90s still racing, your TAM is pretty much everyone.
SAM - Serviceable Addressable Market - how much of that total market can you realistically expect might want to come to you and have the means. Take away over 70s and under 3s, plus whatever the local unemployment rate is. OK guys still race past 70 but not often, you need to draw a line somewhere for assumption making, I drew it at 70.
SOM - Serviceable Obtainable Market. How much of whats left do you expect to actually capture? From my research, take 35% of the 4-25 yr olds because this is essentially your core market. 10% of the 25-35 year olds because around 25 many guys and gals go off and get married, have kids etc so their disposable income and time is reduced for a few years. 25% of the over 35s, those who were your customers before they got married some will come back as a family here, some won’t because the kid(s)/wife just plain aren’t interested.

Set-UP costs depend entirely on what you want to build. I’m fortunate in that I don’t need any major ground works or construction, Single level track, brand new premises, the guys just have to come in, paint the floor and put down some barriers. Under 400k. Outside tracks I haven’t looked into that much but I’d say anywhere between 1-3m for construction if nothing is there already.

Karts…again big variation. Latest gen Sodi RSX2 electric karts with Lithium batteries run at around $14k EACH, and remember for electric you need to double up - for every kart you wnat to have on track you need another one on the charger. Thats the bulk of my cost at just under $600k. Petrol karts are pretty much half that and you need half as many, but then you need to consider ventilation if you’re indoors, plus fuel costs and engine rebuilds etc. Electric is virtually maintenance free, bearing lubs and swap primary / secondary batteries over every month thats about it. Motors are brushless induction - nothing to do on them.

Work out your costs - I can share a pretty detailed template if you want to really study it and work it out, depends how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.

Revenue - yeap weekends are your bread and butter. The challenge is to fill in early and midweek track time, here’s where you target corporations. Corporate events, team building etc - build a team building event platform you can sell. I did a case study on a centre in France - Only Kart Lyon - visited them last year with my daughter on our way back from the Alps. They targeted corporations and have been so successful with that they have to now close to the public 2 days every week just to accommodate their corporate bookings. If you can do that, you’re made.

I’m close to the line, company was incorporated couple of weeks ago so now I’m officially applying for the export financing from France. If they say yes then I’ll be up and running by the end of this year.

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Thanks Richard. Food for thought.

Presumably you went and got investors?

The bulk of it is (hopefully) coming from the French Sovereign Bank’s export credit facility - it exists to boost French exports. There are some conditions but Sodi Kart meets them all. I’m seeking 26% of the project cost from investor participation, I’ve only really just got the presentation tidied up and ready to send out. Thats a job for the weekend :smiley:

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Ah. I noticed on the 360 company website that they were working in association with various European governmental agencies. So that’s some sort of govt economic stimulus effort? That seems like something that doesn’t happen in USA.

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I’d definitely be interested in seeing something that’s at the level you’re working at if you were willing to share it.

I can show you mine, but you might laugh :smiley:

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DM me your email bud I’ll shoot it across

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I’ve seen some rental places that are completely inefficient getting sessions on/off the track. For instance, if using 8 minute sessions, some tracks can get 6 of those off in an hour, others just 4. If your pricing model is per session, you really need to put the time/energy into making sure the staff are well trained and have an efficient operating model to maximize the busy weekends.

Some tracks don’t charge per session and charge a fixed fee for X hours of unlimited sessions, however many a customer can fit in based on the line of guests. For those tracks it takes a little pressure off of operational perfection - at least until session turnaround times get slow enough to piss off customers.

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Another advantage of electric over ICE, you can have the next session sitting in their karts ready to go as the current session ends. Much easier to achieve efficiency

You can do that with ICE too… of course your customers might be breathing fumes for a while depending on when you fire the karts up, or keep them running.

I love EV karts because they’ve made gasser prices drop like a stone :laughing:

Actually I like them for a bunch of reasons, but for my application/budget (outdoor on ice for six weeks) it just doesn’t make sense right now.

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The electrics seem like they may be easier to equalize for racing.

Yeah electric on ice really doesn’t work, you ever notice how quick your phone dies when you’re skiing :joy:

Equalizing Dom it’s not so much that it’s easier more that it just naturally equalizes. The low down torque is so high the heavies aren’t really disadvantaged, if anything they have an advantage because they’ve got the weight to better transfer the torque to the track. That advantage is countered by the lighter guys getting ever so slightly higher top end, but it essentially equals out.

Sodi sells an electronic equalizer but they recommend not bothering, because it makes little to no difference

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Id like to race electrics a bit. It has potential and these rental karts could be very quick. Iirc I saw a lightweight (with bumpers) sort of race-rental that would be dope.

Hard to argue with CRG look. Cool wheel.
image

Now this looks legit:


Blue Shock Racing is a Latvian company. I can’t get their page to load this am.

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I’ll always have an affinity towards CRG :heart:

But, SWS league racing is really important for my project - a first not only in Kazakhstan but in Central Asia as a whole.

Ah yes. Fortunately the Sodis are fantastic.

Drove the electric CRGs at SIK - Daytona. Very fun!

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