Story
Ex-cop bought Skip Barber out of bankruptcy, runs a $15M traveling race school
Sam paid $2,500 for a race-car driving class at Skip Barber. The school is owned by an ex-NYPD cop who bought the famous racing brand out of bankruptcy and grew it into a $15M/year business, with a stated goal of $100M in five years.
“It does like $15 million in revenue. Crazy interesting, kind of cool. It was an ex-cop owns it, like a, like a New York cop, like, and this is like his, was his, he's like, I'll just try it because I don't work as a cop anymore. It turns into a thriving business. He told me his goal is to hit $100 million in revenue in the next 5 years.”
Tactic
Buy a dead famous brand, run it as a 'traveling circus'
Skip Barber's owner bought a famous 1960s racing brand out of bankruptcy for likely low six figures, owns the website that generates leads, then rents tracks ~20 days at a time and shows up with a trailer of Mustangs, moving location to location like a traveling circus.
“He bought it out of bankruptcy. I imagine he paid like low hundreds of thousands of dollars. He bought the brand name. It's basically a website where they get leads. So Skip Barber, if you're into cars, it's like a famous racing school. He owns the website. And so people go and submit leads at where they want to go and they go and find like tracks throughout the country and they rent like 20 days at the track and they show up with their tractor trailer with like 20 Mustangs that you can— that they drive. And then it's like a traveling circus.”
Steal thisAcquire a defunct but beloved brand name cheaply, own the lead-gen website, and run an asset-light traveling operation instead of fixed locations.