Brownie's Blog

Brownie’s Adventure Center
Overview

“The first of its kind anywhere in the world, this unique and powerful concept will merge opportunity and solutions with raw excitement to expose the awesome underwater and land-based adventures awaiting us all.”

Key Objectives:

• Create exciting facilities that cause the general public to become interested in learning more about the great outdoors and the methods of participating via sports that demand some degree of professional guidance

• Produce a high-quality consumer experience at the training and educational level on a path to providing exceptional products, services and activity participation

• Provide the ability to demonstrate basic thru expert techniques and equipment onsite and systematically eliminate these key barriers to participation and purchase

• Assemble the very best outdoor sports educators, retailers, activity coordinators, and product companies into a cohesive and powerful platform to maximize a responsible growth plan for our great sports

• Provide a superior consumer experience and great shareholder result by consolidating fragmented “professional” sports that cater to a similar active demographic

Strategy:

To increase the potential market of our core products by reaching beyond the traditional diving crowd to the emerging market of outdoors adventure enthusiast.

We will outpace the competition and revolutionize the industry by completing our long-term goal of vertical integration of the key components of the diving industry. Merging design, manufacturing, training, service and sales into a cohesive platform will yield greater efficiencies and superior value.

A key ingredient of the recipe is to cater to all levels of divers while building a platform to attract the non-diving “outdoor sports enthusiast”. The rapid emergence of the Stand-Up-Paddleboard market proves that a substantial percentage of the population is eager to get outdoors, get healthy and get involved in “real adventure”.

We will grow the market by reaching out to, and gaining participation, from other industries that share the following common threads. First, these customers will be targeted from those industries where customers demand expert guidance and training in order to reach a truly sustainable and satisfying experience. Second, these customers will generally be health conscious and desire activities that require at least some skill and fitness. Third, these customers need to experience “real life” fun and adventure rather than the “virtual” world. Interestingly, we believe the virtual world is actually helping to spawn this movement towards the great outdoors through its increasing wave of “user-content” type media publication being shared virally. Therefore, we fully embrace this trend and intend to take it a step further by fostering the development of a cultural component within the Brownie’s Adventure Center (hereinafter “BAC”) as participants are encouraged to share their experiences with others through BAC both virally and in gathering at BAC. Of course the regional BAC will be “bricks and mortar” facilities, but will accomplish the aforementioned viral and virtual components by providing virtual facility capabilities with the entire array of online conveniences.

Differentiating us further, is our somewhat unique ability to provide training and equipment demonstrations on-site. We believe this distinguishing factor alone will establish BAC as the obvious choice for consumers and instructors alike. By creating such high quality venues, we believe a greater number of quality consumers will embrace our plan. Locations for a BAC will meet three criteria. They will be located: 1) in the heart of local communities; and 2) at easily accessible, and 3) high visibility locations. Meeting these criteria is now feasible, due to both the downward adjustments in property values and resulting increase in availability. Some desired markets and locations may already be adequately served by existing industry stake holders. At these points, we may consider extending an invitation to some select, high quality, industry stake holders to join our team in this revolutionary undertaking, when we believe it will lead to greater reward and furtherance of our goals.

By reaching outside our industries traditional customer base, providing the locations, on-site training and demonstrations, combined with high quality service in both the bricks and mortar and virtual world, our great sports will be more widely viewed by the general public in ways that conveys ease, reward and instant access.

Differentiating Components of BAC:

1. Activity Lobby / Entrance. An open floor plan area with persuasive video presentations and a “greeter” ready to engage in enthusiastic dialogue about each of the sports activities. Additionally, the greeter will coordinate class scheduling, local weekly activities, daily social media reporting and travel planning. In our approach, by creating excitement and awareness of the sport, the equipment and support services will follow naturally.

2. Retail Merchandise / Showroom. Streamlined inventories with clear and precise Point of Sale guidance in a high-contrast format. Products ranging from entry level to those used by world-class experts will be featured in a progressive display format. Company owned and select brands with high-product integrity and margin management initiatives are central to the continuity theme for BAC. Resort destination centers that we strategically partner with will embrace a common product and training theme. Regional warehousing will support a high-impact; relatively small foot-print floor space and contribute to maximizing traffic flow and revenue turns. It is essential to offer more and control cost simultaneously.

3. Integrated deep-water training tank. On average, the tank will be 25-feet deep and 24-feet in diameter. Like the entire facility, the deep-water tank will be pre-fabricated in easy to manage component parts, pre-engineered and entirely surface mounted. The tank will become a major brand feature for the facility. An “Island-Style” theme will convey a relaxed and welcoming message to the traffic passing by. It is our intent to create a visual attraction that is irresistible to anyone with a little curiosity; by the way, that person is our target and a much greater demographic that what “SCUBA” currently attracts.

4. Variable Speed River Simulator. Much like a “lap-pool” this feature is designed to accommodate swim classes, diver training, testing, paddle board/kayak training and demonstrations. The “endless pool” creates another brand identifier element that also offers great utility. Keeping the instructor and consumer in our facility during the product selection period is a distinct advantage over other venues as well as offering a dramatic increase in efficiency over the current “off-site” training situation.

5. Climbing Tower: Typically this prefabricated structure will be approximately 20-feet square and over 40-feet tall. The open air construction will be highly efficient, wet-able inside, and include a bouldering feature. The typical climbing tower at a moderate size Adventure Center will be geared toward the novice and intermediate climber. Those larger BAC in key locations will include advanced climbing features. Our primary goal with the climbing tower is to familiarize the general public with the basic tenants of this great sport and prepare them for their vacations into the climbing, rappelling, zip-line regions of the globe. The visual attraction of this feature from the road is also a key ingredient to driving the optimum demographic into the Adventure Center. Certain large-scale Adventure Centers will include an array of Zip-Line features and function a bit more like an amusement center/theme park. We intend to network with the full-scale climbing facilities on a national basis and contribute to the growth of this sport along the way.

6. Tank Valet program and facility: Brownie’s designs and builds the world’s finest scuba tank-fill systems for yachts and dive operators around the globe. Each BAC will include our patented NitroxMaker and on a scalable basis a Tri-Ox/Tri-Mix facility. Our “machinery area” will also serve as to showcase and demonstrate some of the core strengths of the company behind the BAC. Customer confidence in knowing their life-support systems are state-of-the-art will enhance our brand-loyalty. Typically, dive stores hide their often embarrassing machinery and in direct proportion charge less than a cup of coffee for this unique service. We believe that the market share we are targeting embraces great technology and prefers to support smart businesses. Typical scuba tank fills will be provided at the customer’s car in VIP parking zones via our portable fill manifold. Our staff will handle the tank fill process and allow the consumer to spend more time looking at new technologies or discuss the up-coming dive event. A “Tank-Valet” membership will secure measurable advantages to the diver in an effort to reduce the hassles associated with the process of diving. In certain areas, a pick-up and delivery service and/or a self-exchange system will be offered. With the escalation of internet sales in rural areas, gear based revenues are no longer adequately subsidizing the “local fill station”. We believe this trend will continue and that our Tank-Valet program will evolve into a great membership solution for this essential element of the industry.

7. Exceptional Training and Staffing. High-quality training and experience building are key tenants to creating a stronger and longer lasting customer base in technical sports. The dive industry has identified a substantial and near immediate “drop-out” rate that is directly related to low-quality education/“expedited” SCUBA courses. We intend to promote entry level training programs simply as the first in a multi-step, experience based curriculum program. The end-goal of competency and excellence will be defined to the novice at the initial phase of training. Honest disclosure and a clear road map of how to progress from novice to expert is a hallmark of our vision. BAC resources will allow instructors and students to focus their valuable time and energy more directly. The current industry methods of off-sight training facilities create substantial logistical issues and a wasting of precious time for both the students and instructors. The modern on-line academic programs have greatly reduced the amount of time a student needs to spend accumulating written knowledge in a classroom. Creating full-efficient use of on-sight training time with hands on skills is now becoming an obvious benefit. We will also offer exclusive and highly confidential custom training, concierge, guided trips, etc. to VIP’s, Exploration groups and Film Projects. Staff training will also follow a well-balanced and vibrant program designed to highlight our commitment to excellence.

8. Design and Construction Considerations. The BAC is a scalable design that is influenced by local demographics, natural resources, and community planning factors. The in-house design team at Brownie’s Marine Group and world-class architect Gordon Moss has contributed to the concept. Pre-fabrication and modularity are key design elements. The ability to accurately predict cost and expedite in-service dates is a driving factor. Amortizing the planning, construction methods, engineering and compliance cost over a repeatable design provide cost and execution benefits.