Today we’d like to introduce you to Christy Howden.
Hi Christy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Our business all started with a new year’s resolution in 2017 to lry a quirky sport – Pickleball! When ai showed up to play, I was told I was too young and needed to purchase a senior in training card. Unbeknownst to me I showed up to play at a senior center time at the local school. They graciously let me join them and I was hooked. From there my friend and now business partner wanted more people to play with our age and younger more competitively so we started running community ed programs and renting school gyms for events. After a couple of years of that, we found an industrial warehouse in the Fall of 2020 (still COVID) and converted that to 4 pickleball courts with the help of our community, painting and learning to create pickleball courts from 2000# of silica and several 55 gallon drums of acrylic coating. We were the speakeasy of pickleball, no frills, people suffered to play to there in the drafty warehouse and minimal parking. We made it a thriving community and expanded to 8 courts when our neighbor moved out. Behind the scenes we were finding land, changing zoning, working on financing and gathering investors to build our dream pickleball facility. We are pioneers of the pickleball centric facility which opened in Dec 2023 is one the top facilities in the world for pickleball and community.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
So many struggles, told so many times no one will pay for pickleball, no way you will make money, turned down from multiple banks since there were no comps or history of others doing this. We were doing it, we had waitlists and overwhelming demand, With so many doubters and many not knowing what pickleball during this time, we were always explaining our vision and asking so many questions to make it happen, since we were learning everything, how to change property zoning, finding builder, architect, engineers, designing a building, financing, investment packages, investor pitching, liquor license, building process and the list goes on for how any things we needed to learn and figure out roadblocks.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Wolverine Pickleball is more than just a pickleball facility; it is a community. This is captured in its tagline “It’s not just Pickleball”. It has become a gem on the our community for people to mix and mingle through all sorts of activities. Besides top notch pickleball, outdoors we have 6 sand courts for beach volleyball and beach tennis, 6 bocce lanes, which we convert over to curling in the winter. Also firepits, cornhole, yard games, food truck space for just a cool out door hangout space. Indoors, we have private event space and lounge where we host unique events like trivia, puzzle competitions, cookies decorating, speed dating ad goat yoga to name a few and our crown jewel is a self serve tap wall with beer, wine and cocktails which adds to the interacting of our clientele.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
We took many risks along the way, but we felt we had always researched and knew our clientele so we minimized any downside and always had a plan B and the willingness to adjust as needed and always improve our experience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wolverinepickleball.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolverinepickleball/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WolverinePickleball/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christy-howden-4961885/
