Starting an indoor airsoft site.

[team flex]

It all depends on how much it would cost to run/maintain and rent surely? If you can find a place which is in a good location, you know lots of players will go for the first time, you can buy supplies in for a cheap cost and run a good little shop, if you are prepared to put the work in, and of course if you listen to what people recommend for the future, and soon lots of people come, start renting, then you would be in the money. Lots of people have tried, some succeed but I bet you lots fail. If you think you can do it, go for it

just remember 50% for us (joking)

 

[Airsoft_Mr B]

My local site is Halo Mill. It's small but they definitely do alright. I'd imagine the success is down to the fact they are open so much. Though, obviously being open all week is a huge commitment and you would need to prepared to hire staff. If you see a gap in the market and there's potential locally then that's a good reason to try though. Probably wouldn't be such a good idea opening one up here in West Yorkshire for example as there are actually a lot of sites around (at least, easy for me to get to in around an hour or under)

 

[fkw_couves]

after reading this, id like to add a couple of nuggets in.

with a indoor site, you have the options of lazer tag, in door paintball that you can run in the same area, and i dontthink its break thebank money to hire the kit instead of buying it...You may want to look for a old warhouse in town, after all kids love war and are more likely to do these things in the week/ weekend mornin/day time

also if you are starting as self employed breaking even is a good thing from a tax point of view...

after all one room in house is now your office and a element of the house hold bills are now tax deductable you personnal mobile is now partly a business phone...etc etc, even asmall lose is benefical as you can offset the loss in term of tax against full time employment i wont bore you with the details but if you know a accountant locally have them pass an eye over the plan.

 

[n1ckh]

How about going to the local council and asking if you can use specific areas and just organise a meeting, you could always turn it into a club and have a small membership fee for a year, if its possible then you can rent a church hall to have meetings, work out a calendar of events, have demos where the more experienced guys can talk about all things airsoft

you'll need public liability insurance aswell which means all your members are insured and you can pretty much do what you want and when you want

You could do open days to encourage other people to come along and have a a go with the weapons shooting at targets

 

[Russe11]

Hmm. Possibly a silly idea but I wonder if there is any spare space at the Cobbaton Combat collection? http://www.cobbatoncombat.co.uk/index.htm

It would boost their army surplus sales and groups going to the museum might be interested in a couple of hours shooting each other into a package deal. You could even make the hire guns more unusual by using Stens and MP40's

 

[Lozart]

after reading this, id like to add a couple of nuggets in.

with a indoor site, you have the options of lazer tag, in door paintball that you can run in the same area, and i dontthink its break thebank money to hire the kit instead of buying it...You may want to look for a old warhouse in town, after all kids love war and are more likely to do these things in the week/ weekend mornin/day time

also if you are starting as self employed breaking even is a good thing from a tax point of view...

after all one room in house is now your office and a element of the house hold bills are now tax deductable you personnal mobile is now partly a business phone...etc etc, even asmall lose is benefical as you can offset the loss in term of tax against full time employment i wont bore you with the details but if you know a accountant locally have them pass an eye over the plan.

Click to shrink...

If you run paintball in the same area you will either spend a LOT of time doing clean up or you'll get a lot of airsofters complaining about getting paint on their £150 combat pants or slipping over on the paint residue.

People do seem to be almost dismissing insurance as a "oh yeah, you'll need some of that". PI insurance costs an absolute crapping fortune, not to mention making sure all your staff have up to date CRB checks.

Don't buy in stock to run your own shop, offer a local shop space to sell and take a cut in return for advertising.

And remember - the best way to make a small fortune doing this kind of stuff is to start off with a much larger one.

 

[fkw_couves]

If you run paintball in the same area you will either spend a LOT of time doing clean up or you'll get a lot of airsofters complaining about getting paint on their £150 combat pants or slipping over on the paint residue.

Click to shrink...

there is a indoor paint ball system where the balls are foam/rubber so no mess

 

[jcheeseright]

so not paintball then?!

 

[cavninja]

Nerf??!! lol

 

[Lozart]

there is a indoor paint ball system where the balls are foam/rubber so no mess

Click to shrink...

Yeah. That's not paintball. Clue's in the name.

 

[Jambo88]

Here's a idea. Bare with me on this

People that like airsoft like the excitement and adrenalin rush of the sport. Cross that with something that gives you a sense of danger and fear but is 100% free such as urban exploring. You have free locations because you only goto abandoned buildings and every week you can get a new location. I'm sure I read if you don't break in then it's not illegal to be in a empty building and as long as yous don't smash every window in the place there is no harm done. Start a private Facebook group and charge a small fee to join. You then post date/time and location of the event in the group. If you charge £15 membership fee for a year you could potentially have thousands of members join. You will have regular airsofters playing it opens the door to people that are into urban ex and it's a cheap way for first timers to get into the sport because you can charge the green fee for 1day for a whole year of playing and you can play as much as you want. With the membership fee you could buy stuff for rental and make money from that. It won't cost you much money to start just time. You would need to scout locations and find ways in and you would need to check if there was anything that could hurt someone.

I like this idea but I talk shit a lot :lol:

 

[Jambo88]

Double post

 

[Chock]

Here's a idea. Bare with me on this

People that like airsoft like the excitement and adrenalin rush of the sport. Cross that with something that gives you a sense of danger and fear but is 100% free such as urban exploring. You have free locations because you only goto abandoned buildings and every week you can get a new location. I'm sure I read if you don't break in then it's not illegal to be in a empty building and as long as yous don't smash every window in the place there is no harm done. Start a private Facebook group and charge a small fee to join. You then post date/time and location of the event in the group. If you charge £15 membership fee for a year you could potentially have thousands of members join. You will have regular airsofters playing it opens the door to people that are into urban ex and it's a cheap way for first timers to get into the sport because you can charge the green fee for 1day for a whole year of playing and you can play as much as you want. With the membership fee you could buy stuff for rental and make money from that. It won't cost you much money to start just time. You would need to scout locations and find ways in and you would need to check if there was anything that could hurt someone.

I like this idea but I talk sh*t a lot :lol:

Click to shrink...

It absolutely is illegal to be in an empty building without the permission of the owner, even if it is unoccupied, not to mention the fact that it could very well be dangerous to be there too. In fact it is both a criminal offence and a civil offence. Not only that, since it is a criminal offence, you would not be able to provide insurance for anyone taking part in such an activity where they were potentially at risk, so it would also be illegal for you to take money for it. Being uninsured and illegal, it would also be outside the stated acceptable defences of the VCR Act, which means that in addition to being open to prosecution under that Act, the CPS would probably throw some firearms offences at you, and you'd also be open to numerous potential civil actions as well. Not forgetting that you'd be in breach of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which was specifically put together to counter 'raves' and other such organised gatherings in disused empty buildings, where incidentally, that Act specifically mentions that it is illegal to throw things, which makes half of what goes on in airsoft games a non starter as well, even if everything else wasn't problematic. Last but not least, I bet you Facebok would push for you to be prosecuted if you used them to promo such an activity, they love some free publicity.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, even if you got away with nobody being injured, for which you, as the organiser, would be held responsible, it would be absolutely appallingly bad publicity for airsoft, and that's the last thing we need when the Government would love a reason to put a stop to people having airsoft replicas. We should be going out of our way to appear responsible, not seeing how many laws we can break in one day

And can you imagine what would happen if Joe Blow saw a bunch or people dressed in assorted combat gear, with a bunch of AKs, M16s, UZIs and god knows what else, creeping through some building where they knew there was no official airsoft site? They'd be dialling 999 before you could spit; you'd be lucky if an armed response unit didn't shoot a load of them on sight. And if that happened, it'd probably mean the end of airsoft in the UK overnight.

 

[Lozart]

It absolutely is illegal to be in an empty building without the permission of the owner, even if it is unoccupied, not to mention the fact that it could very well be dangerous to be there too. In fact it is both a criminal offence and a civil offence. Not only that, since it is a criminal offence, you would not be able to provide insurance for anyone taking part in such an activity where they were potentially at risk, so it would also be illegal for you to take money for it. Being uninsured and illegal, it would also be outside the stated acceptable defences of the VCR Act, which means that in addition to being open to prosecution under that Act, the CPS would probably throw some firearms offences at you, and you'd also be open to numerous potential civil actions as well. Not forgetting that you'd be in breach of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which was specifically put together to counter 'raves' and other such organised gatherings in disused empty buildings, where incidentally, that Act specifically mentions that it is illegal to throw things, which makes half of what goes on in airsoft games a non starter as well, even if everything else wasn't problematic. Last but not least, I bet you Facebok would push for you to be prosecuted if you used them to promo such an activity, they love some free publicity.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, even if you got away with nobody being injured, for which you, as the organiser, would be held responsible, it would be absolutely appallingly bad publicity for airsoft, and that's the last thing we need when the Government would love a reason to put a stop to people having airsoft replicas. We should be going out of our way to appear responsible, not seeing how many laws we can break in one day

Click to shrink...

Plus someone is BOUND to spot you and report a bunch of blokes running about with guns which would result in the local ARU turning out. Which has enormous potential for going south pretty quickly.

 

[two_zero]

basically, running a site on profit is not easy.


As for the site, I am pretty sure that some sites are just unused otherwise useless land that is being ranted out to airsoft until it can be developed. So if you for example could find a decommissioned warehouse waiting to be demolished and convince the owner to rent it for a little money rather than just having it standing.

I've been thinking sometimes, maybe if we put our differences aside, maybe we could run more than one of following: airsoft, paintball, larp, run-n-gun, archery and air gunning at the same site (not at the same days obviously), seeing how they potentially could have similar requirements (not saying the necessarily do either, as I do not know a lot about them), meaning everyone does not have to get their own place. Don't think I've mentioned this idea before, know I will mention it again.

 

[aidanbeckls]

I personally live in Barnstaple, and I know the 'muddy shitehole' your talking about. The only other site close to us is at exeter but fps limits are too low. I think that making an indoor site is an amazing idea and I know that it will become very popular in the North Devon area as there is no indoor sites in the whole of Devon and beyond. An indoor site would be a first in the Devon area and would thrive. Attracting new and  experienced players alike to a new indoor CQB site that we have all been waiting for. PLEASE MAKE IT HAPPEN.

 

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