Don't know much about the business, but make extra sure that the inventory is straight before you sign anything.  Nothing like paying for 20 balls that aren't there.  Also make sure that every piece of equipment - drill press, bits, resurfacing machine, hand tools... - are included in the transaction as well.
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Telling it like it is.

I bought a program off ebay, ICE, it is a wonderful inventory  management, point of sale, you name it, it has it. It's NOT a bowling program, but from a business stand point, it's one of the best I have seen in years. If I remember right it was $20.00 plus $4-$5 shipping.
I did have a bad file in the first one, called them and within 36 hours I had a new program.
I'm not sure if they are still in ebay, but they wrote programs for ebay, so they know what they're doing.

www.camcommerce.com   they might still be on ebay, I'm not sure.

Give me an email if you need more info, there's a LOT to this and more than this format has room to say.
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AZ Guy aka: R & L Bowlers Pro
rlbowlerspro@cox.net
www.rlbowlerspro.com

Sleep is over rated.

When I had my shop my wife used peachtree for the inventory and it worked very well and you could access and print reports to show you trends in what sells. At the shop my friend owns he offers a 10% discount on balls/bags or shoes to bowlers that bowl in that center. I also used pro shop coordinator for drilling specs but it did seem to change the spans on all balls drilled for a customer if you made a fit change so i had to always make note of what we changed to hhave a reference. I also printed the drill chart for 1 ball and kept it in a filing cabinet so if the computer crashed i still had it available.
 As for ball cups for display , your ball distributer should have them available for a reasonable price. Your crazy 8's also can usually be printed from the ball companies website if needed

I'd like to respectfully suggest the following..........
 Make sure your assistant/second driller or whoever you are going to have help you when you're not there be as fully trained as you are.
 Also,do you have a favorite ball company or line you're going to stock up on?
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Chris
 Lane#1--nothing else hits like 'em.

Thanks all, and especially to the Dude.  Thanks, it's gonna help a lot.  

What I'm basically doing for my select group of REALLY good customers (all six of them, they're also pretty good friends too) is cost plus $20 or $25, and giving them decent discounts on everything else.  Grips down a couple bucks, same with slugs, free polishing or sanding, etc.  

I was THINKING about trying to do a ball drawing myself.  Feature a brand new ball in a drawing, charge $5 to enter (minimum 30 entries), and hopefully I can give a ball away every week.  I would also then put that same ball on sale, because naturally the winner is going to tell everybody he knows about winning the ball, and they'll surely watch him throw it.  You know sometimes they'll have those buy 3 or 4, get one free deal when a new ball comes out, so if I could buy a case or two and go through them all in a month, that'd be great.  I can't decide if that would make ball sales go up or down though.  If somebody's already planning on buying a ball, but wins one, I make far less.  But on the other hand, if it makes people come in wanting one (especially because it's on sale), I could boost sales.  And hopefully it won't be just 30 entries every week, it'd be nice to have 100+.

We already do the league discount thing.  The prices are marked at retail, and we give them 15% off balls, bags, and shoes.  Our distributor is also pretty close, shipping is next day if we place the order before 5 p.m., so that's nice.  They have a bad tendency to send us the wrong stuff though, even with as clear as we try to be.  

Lol, it's a good idea, and I've thought of the financing thing myself, but with the kind of people around here, it'd NEVER work.  If they don't pay in full before they walk out of the shop with whatever they bought, we might as well kiss that money goodbye.  

I WILL run a few special sales, but I'll probably take your advice on not doing too much.  The discount already works well enough, cause if people already think they're getting a deal, there's no reason to ruin the profit margin, lol.  Plus, if they want a ball, they're gonna buy the ball, whining and complaining or not.  I wrote something up about treating the pro shop like a business, but some people don't seem to get it.  You wouldn't walk into a grocery store, get a bunch of stuff, and then offer them a price for it, they'd laugh at you.  AND, these same people who are asking me for a discount wouldn't even THINK about taking a pay cut themselves at work, they'd scream bloody murder, and probably sue.  

I DO agree with the consistency though.  My boss right now has a bad tendency to fluctuate depending on the mood he's in.  He hardly ever charges anyone the same price for the same thing twice, and I can't remember the last time he based a price on a ball, bag or shoes from the price on the wall.  

It's just a really fine line to walk between good customer service, and like you said, dropping my pants.  I really want to make sure stuff is done when I say it'll be done, and stuff will be here when I say it'll be here.  I don't want to go "oh, it'll be another day on your ball, I didn't have time to finish plugging it last night," or "it'll be another day on that ball you ordered, I didn't have a big enough order to qualify for the free shipping."  

It's also kinda hard sometimes because Rick Benoit lives here.  He'll be in during the summer, and people kinda hit him up for free or really discounted stuff.  Then they bring it into the shop to have us drill it . .  Anyway, thanks again.
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Hey, I am NOT Michael Jackson.  I like little GIRLS, not little boys . .

Rock on kitty.

I’d stick with your software. Correcting the inventory shouldn’t be a big issue. I would assume a complete inventory would be done for the sale. Keeping accurate measurement data on the customers is the biggest thing it can do.

For any fliers we just used Microsoft Word or PrintShop Deluxe.

Software, signs, displays, etc isn’t really what you are selling. Service is the biggest thing. Whether you measure and fit properly. Are your dillings accurate. Do you complete your work when promised? Do you stand behind your products?  

Weigh and balance every ball before drilling and after.

Be there when your shop hours say you are open. Don’t close because you went to tournament, or fishing, or whatever. And your customers will want you not your $7 an hour flunky. If they wanted the flunky they could go to any proshop.

Fix a fair price and stick to it. Don’t give discounts. It just creates hard feelings that some get it and some don’t. As stated above sales create some of the same hard feelings. Don’t give away your services.

If a good ball is discontinued and you can get it cheap enough buy a bunch and then offer a good deal with you still making your normal profit.

Your less than 100 miles from major distributor, so carry a line of products that will cover everyone’s needs but don’t try to carry every product. If you don’t have a particular ball in stock you can get it in a day.

We carried all weights in a low price offering either from Columbia or Brunswick. The high price balls we might only stock a few and then only in 15 and 16 pound.

Carry 3 or 4 colors of plastic balls in all weights, 6 to 16 pound.

Keep plenty of inserts and slugs onhand. They are relatively cheap but a pain if you run out and it looks bad to the customer.



 

Lol at the $7 an hour flunky, and ouch.  It was actually $7.50, and I was it for a year or so.  I REALLY do get that concept though, even now that I'm basically his equal, and honestly "the man" now this summer.  It's gonna be hard for a little while to step out of the shadow, even though I do most of the stuff behind the scenes.  If he sells them a ball, or gets one to plug and redrill, I do the drilling (most of the time) and the ballwork.  Unless he drills it on the spot with them watching, it's me doing it.  But he's the one they deal with, so he's the one that gets associated with stuff.  Sucks for me, cause he gets the credit, but I somehow manage to be the one there if a ball isn't done or if something hasn't been ordered yet, lol.  

Totally agree on the grips, nothing is more frustrating than when you're out of grips.  It's as small as somebody wanting a specific color and having to settle for something else, or not being able to have the same color slug as their grips.  

We can't really afford to stock the higher end bags and shoes, because of obvious reasons.  The high performance stuff is also too expensive to stock up on.  You can easily have a couple thousand bucks worth of one ball if you keep 3 or 4 of just 14, 15, and 16.  Even just one of those three weights adds up when you do that for a couple balls for each company.  

We do have one good thing going for us though, we don't really have any competition as far as other pro shops go.  There's a senior that does stuff out of his basement basically, but the seniors aren't that big of a "market," and there's another guy who runs a backdoor pro shop out of a center he manages.  These guys are terrible drillers though, and a lot of times we'll get "fix it" work.  They'll screw something up, and we'll fix it.  Makes us a lot more than actually selling something would, lol.  

No joke, here's a great story.  This lady had the center manager guy order her a ball and drill it.  This guy had some other woman that worked at the center throw the ball first when it was drilled to see how it'd react.  He didn't like it, so he plugged it and redrilled it before the lady that ordered it had even SEEN it, let alone tried it.  Naturally she didn't want it then, but the sad thing is that she still has her stuff done by this guy, lol.  That's the kind of people I have to deal with!  I think it'll be great though, more thanks for the advice.  Keep it coming, I love having stuff to think about!
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Hey, I am NOT Michael Jackson.  I like little GIRLS, not little boys . .

Rock on kitty.