Entrepreneurs have flocked to pickleball, but succeeding in this space is not simple. Baltimore Pickleball Club co-owners Bonny Gothier and Alex Guerriere spoke with ICSC Small Business Center contributing editor Rebecca Meiser about finding the right location, what goes into a good pickleball club, lessons from their first year and the future of the sport.

How did the idea for the Baltimore Pickleball Club first come about?

Gothier: We have a [second] home in Florida where we spend the winters. I play pickleball [with a group]. Each winter, after a long summer break, I would come back and see that almost all of the other partners were advancing at a higher level of play than myself. I asked them: “How are you getting better and I’m staying the same?” They told me they have indoor pickleball clubs. They were from places like [New] Jersey, New York, Chicago, and I’d say 90% of them had access to a club or two. There was no indoor pickleball or really any structured pickleball in Baltimore County or any of the surrounding areas. I realized that Baltimore was very much behind the curve, and I thought: We’re a city that deserves to have an indoor pickleball club.

When you started approaching brokers and landlords four years ago, did they see the same potential you did?

Gothier: They thought it was going to be like racquetball. In the ‘90s and early 2000s, a bunch of big racquet clubs were built, and they kind of fizzled out. There was a big racquetball club that was here in Baltimore for years and had gone out of business during COVID. We approached the [landlord], and they said: “We want nothing to do with a racquet sport.” They very much didn’t believe that this was going to be something that could be long-standing. It just took a lot of time and finding the right business model and people to say: “This is going to work.”

Guerriere: It becomes cost prohibitive at one point if you’re in a highly demographic area where the price per square foot is very expensive. You have too much of an overhead. Pickleball is not a high ticket-price item. You might pay $6 to $9 to $12 during the day to play. It takes a lot of numbers to make a profit, and the [landlords of the] spaces that were large enough to accommodate pickleball felt like there were easier endeavors like a storage facility.

What space ultimately worked?

Gothier: It used to be a Retro Fitness gym. It’s 12,000 square feet, and it was outfitted with multiple rooms, large locker rooms and tanning beds. We demoed a lot of that existing space to open it up in order to accommodate full-size, professional-grade pickleball courts with permanent nets, lines and fencing because we felt that a lot of temporary courts don’t give you the proper game experience.

Considering the limits on what you can charge people to play, what was your plan to make the business work financially?

Gothier: You need to do volume. You need to have specialty offerings. For us, it was very important to have an in-house pro.

Guerriere: We also pursued a liquor license. We have beer and wine. It has created much more of a social atmosphere. People aren’t just coming to play pickleball and leaving. They’re hanging out together. They’re exchanging phone numbers. They’re coming back to play together the next day.

It’s been over a year since you opened in September 2023. What was the biggest learning curve for you, what was unexpected and what challenges have taught you something?

Guerriere: There’s a lot of technology that goes with scheduling and coordinating people. Finding the best platforms to accommodate that was challenging and something new for us. It’s [also] challenging hearing everything people don’t like. You put your heart and soul into something, you feel like you’re trying to do your best and everyone has an opinion. For us, it’s just trying to weed through [and determine] which of those opinions going to help us grow.

How do you do that?

Gothier: By doing your research and seeing what’s working. We might have a customer that says: “I want you to have this lower-level clinic at this time of day, and I know four other people who’d join.” But you know that wouldn’t yield much, and it’s going to hurt 10 to 20 other people in [the higher level] player field who also play at that time. Every business has to say: “What makes sense and works for the majority of our players?” We’re always open to ideas and want to make everyone feel accommodated, but that’s not always possible so you have to see what’s profitable and what keeps the customer base.

How do you ensure your business remains competitive as pickleball continues to grow?

Gothier: First through great customer service, then by offering a clean, safe, high-end and modern facility. A lot of places are setting up in “we can make this work” types of spaces where the lighting and other elements aren’t quite right.

Guerriere: Like a mall or a former Barnes & Noble. There’s a big push to put pickleball into empty spaces, but you need to have a clear vision for the business first and then find the right space for it, not the other way around. We’re seeing a lot of that, and I don’t think it will pan out for those facilities in the long term.

Did you know Baltimore Pickleball Club was going to be the name from the beginning?

Gothier: No. I actually had a marketing person from New York come up with a bunch of names. In my opinion and Alex’s, they sounded corny. They all had something to do with pickles. We just really didn’t want the name to be cheesy. The vision was always to be more high-end, and I said to Alex: “Every time I go to a new town and I want to play pickleball, the first thing I do is Google pickleball in that town, so I would go to California and say: “OK Google, where can I play pickleball?” Also, I love my city. We were both born and raised here and it was important that the city was in the name, so we decided on the name the Baltimore Pickleball Club. Marketing-wise, it’s been kind of brilliant.

Where do you want to be in five or 10 years?

Gothier: We have had many, many, many offers to expand. We’d like to concentrate on this location and enjoy the process. My daughter has small children. We have four children ourselves, my husband and I. We want to enjoy life and enjoy our business, and when you start turning pickleball into a multilocation situation, it becomes very demanding. That’s lovely if that’s what you want. I’m not sure that eventually we wouldn’t open more locations, but for right now, we’re very happy with what we’re doing.

Where do you see pickleball going?

Gothier: Pickleball is going to go through a challenging process in the next few years because it’s very hot and people see it as a new fad. If we keep building pickleball facilities without assessing local demand and having some sort of model of demographics per square mile, you’re going to see some close. There’s starting to be some development proposals that are literally within miles of each other.