of Boston. MA.
The Texas karate scene has always been a competitive one. In its major cities, schools abound much like armadillos and
prairie dogs in the less settled plains of the Lone Star State . That said, there are some owners who recognize that another
karate school down the street -- or even two other martial arts schools in the same half-mile perimeter -- is not the
real hazard. Rather, the real challenge is the multitude of activities, after-school programs and sports offerings that appeal
to and claim the coveted age bracket of elementary- and middle-school children.
Familiar sports activities such as soccer, T-Ball or basketball are always going to be part of the equation. The task of
the forward-looking martial arts school is to present another option. The idea is not necessarily to compete with established
programs, but in a sense, to piggyback these programs and use the connections to introduce those children to the martial arts.
The paradigm is obvious in its conclusions and yet it clashes all too often with conventional wisdom about who the competition
is.
“Our competition isn’t the karate school down the street. We compete with the soccer program offered by the
town, or the basketball league sponsored by the schools or the dance classes across town," says Scott Templeton of Dallas
, Texas .
Templeton’s assertion is hardly revolutionary. The myriad and ever expanding universe of activities that compete
for children’s time and parent’s dollars has made this sentiment a self-evident reality for scores of owners who
have moved beyond the old-line thinking about what constitutes their potential market.
So, how does a martial arts school get those youngsters through the dojo doors when the soccer field or basketball
court beckons? Especially when these activities are familiar to parents and carry the sanction of established organizations
such as Little League baseball or Pop Warner football.
Beating the Competition
Scott Templeton has found a way that works for him. A veteran school owner for nearly a decade, Templeton’s secret
to beating the competition from other sports programs is that he doesn’t try to compete with them; rather, he coexists
with them. Templeton provides the teaching services and certification that these sports programs were never designed to provide.
To do this, he has tapped into two PE (Physical Education) sources: public school’s PE programs and the home-schooling
movement, which requires a certifiable PE component as part of the curriculum guidelines.
Templeton’s first foray into the world of PE programs was a natural outgrowth of his work with the Parks and Recreation
Department.
“I studied Recreational Programming in college and I was on the city staff as a Recreation Specialist. That’s
where I learned how the city programs worked,” Templeton explains.
“The city was very supportive early on when I started a martial arts club. In the evenings, I would go to a local
intermediate school. We had a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot room. It wasn’t the best looking, but it supported our
program for three years. The way it worked was, a percentage of the student tuition would go to the city and a percentage
would go to me. This meant that I was operating with virtually no overhead. The city also mailed out a brochure quarterly
to every resident and that was our method of advertising for those first three years.”
Templeton believes that it was the seeds planted during those years that enabled him to be able to attract students when
he sought out a commercial location.
“Throughout those first several years, I was constantly out in the community, building personal relationships through
the Parks and Recreation programming. So when I did start my martial arts program, we just naturally assumed some of those
relationships and parents would come on board with the martial arts program.”
As for the organized sports, Templeton took the opportunity to learn from them, to find out what they were doing to attract
the kids and how they managed the logistics.
“We have a basketball league here that literally has twelve-hundred kids participating,” Templeton says. “As
a Recreational Specialist, I worked from the inside with the basketball organization. I figured out how they were targeting
their customers, which were obviously the children. I studied how they advertised and when. How far before the start of the
season did they advertise? What other activities were kids typically involved with during the season? What other activities
were the kids doing out of season?
"Understanding these types of things helped me target my advertising to offset that. For example, the off season for basketball
is when we’ll go heavy into the school district with our flyers, and that’s usually in January, May and September.”
Approaching the Public-School PE Programs
Templeton freely admits that he didn’t always have such a clear idea of how to cost effectively market his school.
He made one of the most common miscues that new owners make, namely wasteful and productive marketing, targeting the wrong
demographics for that school.
“At my first location, I got the biggest, prettiest, most expensive ad in the phone book. I can’t tell you
exactly how many phone calls we got—but it was minimal. We’ve since learned that our target market is an elementary-aged
child, seven-to-ten years old. So what my wife and I did was approach the school system here and target that age group, which
is typically anywhere between second to fifth grade.”
Normally, Templeton will approach the lead PE teacher in the school district and offer to teach PE at the schools. And
while his offer was met with a dollop of skepticism early on, Templeton notes that, once he gained the confidence of teachers
and administrators, the PE connection opened all kinds of doors.
“When we first came in, they were a little reluctant and sat there to monitor us. It took a little persuasion. They
were kind of concerned with the karate stereotype that all we were going to be doing was breaking boards and so forth. But
we talked to them about the fitness angle. We showed them Century’s obstacle course and explained that, while we were
going to have elements of the martial arts, our main focus was to teach them speed, agility, flexibility, etcetera, through
something like the obstacle course.”
Templeton isn’t content to approach public school’s PE in a hit-or-miss manner. Indeed, he says that he will
frequently teach the PE class all day for a particular school.
“We’ll teach PE back-to-back all day long at a given elementary school. We’ll do that at about five different
schools. All we ask for in return is to send home a flyer with the kids. We make sure that we get prior approval for the flyer
from the Superintendent of Schools. It [the flyer] doesn’t mention price; it’s more of a general information letter
where the goal is to lead the prospect to our Web site or to a free introductory class.”
To ensure that as many of these flyers as possible reach their intended audience, Templeton adds the little touches that
make it easier for teachers, and therefore more likely that those flyers will actually make it into the backpacks.
“When we’re preparing to send the flyers home with the kids, I’ll separate them for the different schools
and classes. I find out how many kids are in a particular class and paper clip them together. I don’t want to pile it
on the teachers. I do all the work and then the flyers are placed in the teacher’s respective mailboxes and, at the
end of the day, passed out in their weekly handouts to the kids.”
While flyers typically play an insignificant role in the marketing mix of many schools, Templeton explains that the sheer
number of children that receive (and take home to his or her parents) his school's flyer, make this an effective and virtually
cost-free way to market his school.
“After we teach the PE classes, every kid in that school district will go home with our [karate school] flyer in
their backpacks. Last year, my wife and I taught PE classes to almost ten-thousand kids,” notes Templeton. “We
don’t overdo it. We’ll send those out only three or four times a year.
"Let’s say we send out eight-thousand flyers. That’s about four-hundred dollars in printing costs. An ad in
the local paper for a week would cost me more than that four-hundred dollars. More importantly, we’re targeting exactly
that seven- to ten-year-old age group that makes up the bulk of our business.
“Think about it,” Templeton adds. “Teaching these kids for that one hour of PE is essentially a one-hour
commercial for our school. We aren’t blatant about it, but we use every opportunity we get to tell the kids who we are
and what school we’re from. On the flyer, we offer a free class and so our goal is to get the child in for that intro
and then we go from there just like everybody else does.”
High tech it isn’t, but Scott Templeton says the flyer distribution has worked out much better for his school than
the traditional media ad.
“If we send out eight-thousand flyers, a feasible return on that is probably about two percent [160 new students].
That’s not bad, and if we do that three times a year, that becomes the bulk of our advertising, our method of getting
new students. I’ve learned over the years that that works far better for us than putting sporadic ads all over the place
and hoping that people will open the newspaper.”
Tapping into the Home-Schooling Movement
The other linchpin of Scott Templeton’s PE strategy is to tap into the home-schooling movement and the need for a
PE outlet. According to Templeton, the home-schooling movement is a much under-appreciated potential market for martial arts
school owners.
To be sure, home schooling is no longer the province of a scattered collection of die-hard parents dissatisfied with the
environment of the public (and private) schools. Moreover, as home schooling has grown, it has also become more organized—at
least partially because of the suspicious scrutiny of the educational establishment.
So what does that mean for martial arts school owners? Simply this: Both Federal and State Education authorities have mandated
a core curriculum of subjects that home-schooled children must be taught. One of these subjects is Physical Education. Since
these children don't have access to the standard gym class provided by public and private schools, what type of program and
what type of facility can they seek out to fulfill this PE requirement?
Scott Templeton’s answer -- and perhaps the answer of many school owners once they become aware of this emerging
market -- is the martial arts school that is often empty during the day.
Templeton systematically courts this waiting market by working with local home-schooling networks. Home-school parents
have found support and strength in numbers and have formed these networks to advance their goals and protect their rights
to home-school their children.
What this means for the martial arts school owner is that he or she doesn’t have to market their school piecemeal
to families. Rather, the owner can communicate directly with local home-school groups and, in one stroke, bring dozens of
home-schooled children into their school to fulfill those PE requirements.
“It’s a big movement nationally,” says Templeton. I didn’t realize it until I got involved with
it and, fortunately, I got involved with a good organization that was well organized.
“I think we’re missing the boat if we don’t recognize the demographics involved in the home-schooling
movement. For example, last year there were 1.2-million active home-schooled children in this country. From 2000 to 2004,
there was a seventeen-point-five percent increase in kids being home schooled, and the number-one reason parents gave is their
dislike for the public-school environment. As an alternative, we provide the structure, environment and trustworthy atmosphere
that parents like and feel comfortable with.”
So what’s the upshot?
“I created a program where home-schooled children come to our facility to get their PE credit, based on attendance.
What’s great is that I don’t have to deal with regulations and so forth. The organization deals with all that.
All I do is provide our facility once a week for them to come in and get their attendance tracked. We currently have 160 children
in our home-school program. That’s 160 kids that keep our school busy during what are traditionally off-hours.”
Obviously, Templeton doesn’t cram 160 kids into his school at one time.
“We max out at between twenty-five to thirty kids per class and we break them up into age groups for quality purposes,”
says Templeton. “The organization I work with is called Agape Home School Network and it pulls from about five local
communities. So we’ll break up those 160 students into four or five classes per week and that’s just from this
one organization. We also have just started working with another organization that had contacted us.”
Templeton cautions that not every home-schooling organization is going to be able to supply a school owner with more than
150 students right out of the gate.
“Not every organization is going to be that big. Some might have twenty-five to fifty students to send to a school.
The point is that they’re out there. They have a need and, as martial arts school owners, we have the facilities to
fulfill that need.”
Given his experience in this emerging market, Scott Templeton has teamed up with the Martial Arts Industry Association
(MAIA) to produce a manual for other school owners interested in tapping into the home-schooling market.
“I have a manual coming out with MAIA that lists the state and national home-schooling contacts. This way, an owner
can call and investigate and make sure it’s an organization they are comfortable getting involved with.”
Staying on the Fitness Track
Quite apart from their work with schools and home-schooled children, Templeton has also developed several fitness programs
for adults and adolescents that have added to the school’s bottom line, while at the same time increasing their exposure
in the community.
“We run a personal-fitness program here. We have a dedicated personal-training room of five-hundred square feet that
we use for the adult fitness programs. Initially, it came about because the mothers were staying while their kids were in
the [karate] class. They didn’t want to go out and get stuck in traffic, so we instituted what we call the 'Measurable
Weight Loss' program that they could do while they were here waiting for their kids. It's been very successful for us and
for the parents involved. I think it goes back to optimizing your space and profit potentials. If people are going to
hang out at your school, you’ve got to find a way to prompt them to not only spend money, but also to buy into the fabric
of your school.
"We also started a program called Complete Kid’s Fitness, directed toward pre-adolescent girls. We noticed that there
were a significant number of ten- to twelve-year-old girls who are a little apprehensive about their appearance, especially
going into junior high. We don’t teach martial arts per se, but focus more on self-esteem, their balance, coordination
and so forth. What we found out, though, is that after a year or so, because they feel better about themselves and their bodies,
these girls are more likely to jump into a traditional martial arts program.”
Future Goals
When Scott Templeton looks back to where he was five years ago and to where he wants to be five years from now, he’s
both amazed and humbled by what he and his wife have been able to accomplish with their focus on fitness and the PE programs
inside and outside of the school system.
“When I started my first club through the Parks and Recreation Department, I had four students," Templeton points
out. "It progressively grew to twenty and then fifty students. I thought I was on top of the world! When we grew to nearly
one-hundred students, it was time to get a commercial location. After two-and-a-half years, we kind of stagnated. So, when
I had the opportunity to move to a bigger, more inviting space, we took the chance.
"In six months, we grew fifty percent in the new location. After about three years, we kind of outgrew that location. Now
we’re in a six-thousand-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility.
"It’s ironic," he adds. "I’m now exactly across the parking lot from my first location. I remember the property
owner offering the space to me three years ago. I looked at him and said, ‘Thanks for offering, but there’s no
way I’ll ever be able to do that.’ It’s just amazing how things can change in three years. It’s exciting
to see how much one can grow as an individual, as a businessman and a martial artist.”
Templeton is by no means done as far as growing his school and his association with public- and home-school PE programs.
Conversely, he has branched out and is pursuing several martial arts ventures to solidify his name recognition and his school’s
financial stability.
“I’ve got 24 instructional DVDs on the market with Century Vision. I’m also entering into a venture
with Dollamur Sports Surfaces with people such as [Olympic Judo Champion] Mike Swain and the [Brazilian jiu-jitsu] Machado
brothers. I’d probably like to max out my school at four-hundred students. I’m not interested at this point in
expanding or opening multiple locations. I’m more interested now in getting the word out about the home-schooling PE
programs to help schools make money.”
If Templeton’s goals seem beneficent, it goes back to the philosophy that other schools are not the competition.
A multitude of sports and recreation activities lay claim to children’s interests and that’s not likely to change
anytime soon. What can change is the school owner’s attitude and inventiveness. As Scott Templeton has found
out, organized sports aren’t bad for business, if school owners can manage to view them not as an enemy but as a potential
ally and source of prospects.
Andy Breen is a veteran black belt and freelance writer based in Massachusetts and can be reached
at ANDYBTKD@aol.com.
