This store makes millions renting out sports equipment

GM. This is Work "After" Work, the newsletter that serves you the best flavors of side hustles. We’re looking at you Blue Moon 😋

Here’s how we’re starting the week:

• 🏂 Sporting equipment rentals

• 😂 Meme of the day

Before the heat: to the 305 new readers since Friday.. Welcome to the WAW fam 😊

SPORTING EQUIPMENT RENTALS

You can practically rent almost anything nowadays — from cars and vacation homes to pet goats for yoga sessions.. yeah I said goats (ever heard of goat yoga?)

These goats rent out for $175, which is crazy to me but hey, I’m not knockin’ it if it makes money 🤷‍♂️

Now I’m not here to talk about baby goats (not today, at least 😉)

I'm here to talk about something there’s not much competition in: high-end sports equipment rentals.

Here's the thing: I did a deep dive and found a site called Bat Club USA that offers top-notch baseball gear rentals and they’re raking in an eye-popping $3.1 million (so there’s clearly a market here)

How does it work?

You can buy the bat outright, buy the MVP program (a yearly membership that allows you to switch bats every year), or rent it out monthly.

If Bat Club USA can pull in millions doing this, so can you with the right strategy.

Here's what I’d do it:

1. Build a better website

First, I’d take advantage of this by building a more user-friendly and visually appealing website.

Thanks to no-code tools like Framer, you could do this yourself even if you don't have any tech skills.

Or… hire a freelance developer from Upwork or Fiverr (you can find great talent for $10 an hour)

2. Target a different niche

Serious young athletes (or more often, their parents) face constant pressure to buy new equipment as they outgrow gear — or as new technologies emerge.

And boy, is this equipment getting expensive! This one golf club goes for over $600. A new bag of clubs can easily run you over $3,000.

And these baseball bats go for $500.

Queue the saying “money doesn’t grow on trees”.

This is where you come in and offer this as a rental service and do step #3: market it to middle-class families.

Why? Because rich parents aren’t going to rent equipment, they’re just going to buy it.

Middle-class families have a tighter budget aka renting is the better option. And let’s call it like it is - parents will pay for their kids to “fit in” and have the best of the best.

Now, you can take this one step further.

Bat Club USA is only tailored to baseball. Why limit yourself to one sport when you can cover them all?

Make it an all-around service for all kinds of sports like golf, baseball, tennis, and lacrosse - all this gear gets very expensive and for a kid who might not do it next year, renting is all the more reason.

4. How do I market this?

I’d start the old-fashioned way at local park districts and schools to get the word out.

Since you’ll target young athletes and their parents, the local park districts and schools are where they’ll hang out.

I’d also tinker with a referral program because if you can get one person on the team to rent from you, best believe they’ll tell everyone else if you give them an incentive.

Maybe “$20 off your next purchase with any referral”.

Paid ads can also work but I’d do a pre-sale and gauge the interest from parents before you spend money. What’s a pre-sale? I’m glad you asked.

It’s essentially gauging the interest before you have the product ready. In this case, you could look at how many views your site is getting or how interested people are in the idea.

This prevents you from buying all the equipment and realizing no one wanted it in the first place.

5. The last step - getting the equipment

Everything I’ve said so far sounds good and all but when it comes down to it, your business is buying equipment and renting it out over the next few years to turn a profit.

To give you a sense of how this works I’ll give you a quick breakdown.

This Louisville Slugger goes for $350 on Bat Club USA.

The monthly rental charge is $43. Meaning in just 6.5 months Bat Club USA breaks even assuming they bought the bat for 20% cheaper ($280).

Everything from there is profit. Maybe it’s in great condition for another year or two but by that point, they’ve made 4-5 hundred dollars from it. Then it’s rinse and repeat with the new year’s equipment.

I’d source most of the equipment from FB marketplace because you can negotiate prices, which means more money for you, and you won’t be paying the markup a retailer would be charging you.

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MEME OF THE DAY

alright who did it? 😂😂

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That's all I got for ya today folks!!

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.