In the trampoline park world, Big Air wants to blur the lines between fitness center and amusement park. And it’s aiming skyward.
The Ladera Ranch-based company—the franchisor operating as Big Air Franchising LLC—currently counts eight locations, six of those franchised, and two locations in Orange County.
It has plans to add another roughly 25 spots—replete with rock climbing walls, dodge ball areas, dunk-focused basketball courts and other kid and family-friendly jumping activities—over the next two years.
It costs about $1.7 million to $3.7 million to open a park, and area locations bring in between $2.1 million and $3.2 million in annual revenue, according to state franchising documents.
The franchising business got its start about eight years ago, but in terms of experience, “you’ve got to go back almost three decades,” said Big Air CEO and President Kevin Odekirk.
“The history of Big Air is the history of one of the most profitable water parks, Wild Rivers. Our team was the same team behind that entity.”
The Irvine water park closed in 2011 after its lease with Irvine Co. expired, prompting the ownership group to first buy a Redlands water park and then, in a bid to diversify beyond the seasonal summer revenue stream, install a trampoline park.
The group “almost instantly realized that the trampoline park was the industry you wanted to be in,” said Odekirk, who works with Big Air founder Greg Briggs, a former Wild Rivers vice president.
The trampoline group isn’t related to the team now looking to build a new Wild Rivers at the Great Park in Irvine.
Gentry-Backed
The first Big Air location was built within a few months of 2013 in Laguna Hills, at a spot near a popular shopping corridor just off the San Diego (5) Freeway.
The owners banked on the fact that they’d be different amongst other operators of trampoline parks that simply converted empty warehouses into attractions with no air conditioning—and not much in the way of branding.
“Our team realized from three decades of actual amusement park operatorship that [strategy] was incomplete and we could do some things that were extremely unique in the industry,” Odekirk said.
That team also includes Evan Gentry, an area executive behind several real estate and investment vehicles over the years, including Ladera Ranch-based M360 Advisors, a commercial real estate debt fund, G8 Capital, a buyer of distressed properties, and Irvine mortgage servicing firm MoneyLine Lending Services, sold in 2006.
Gentry serves as a finance consultant for the company, according to Big Air’s website. There’s also Josh Hunter, with the three comprising Big Air owner H2O Partners.
Odekirk’s experience is in franchising, a model he believes in, to scale.
“Franchising to me is a fantastic way to grow a business if you do it right,” he said. “I think the landscape of business is littered with businesses and models that have approached franchising from an incorrect viewpoint … They either grew too fast or grew in areas and with people they should not have.”
Crowded Skies
Big Air is one of several operating in the trampoline park sector, an area where larger players already have significant footprints.
That includes Los Angeles-based Sky Zone Franchise Group LLC, which counts more than 300 locations worldwide and more than $300 million in revenue.
One-time “Real Housewives of Orange County” cast members and former husband-and-wife duo Alexis and Jim Bellino were operators of multiple Sky Zone local locations.
There’s also Bedford, Texas-based Urban Air Adventure Park with more than 215 locations either open or under construction and $2.4 million in average unit volume.
Big Air is now going after what Odekirk said are the midsize markets throughout the country that are growing. He pointed to the company’s Laguna Hills and Buena Park locations by way of example as two socioeconomically and socially different cities and, yet, both locations do well.
Laguna Hills generated $2.1 million in gross revenue for calendar year 2018. Buena Park was $3.2 million, according to documents filed with the state.
Retail-centric locations as opposed to empty warehouses are where the company looks to be, positioning Big Air as family entertainment.
The company has certainly benefited from the struggles of some retailers filling spaces emptied by businesses such as Toys R Us across power centers and traditional malls.
“A lot of the malls are struggling right now. A lot of boxes are going dark and not a lot of retailers are willing to fill those larger or midsize boxes,” said JLL Vice President Jared Davis.
“A lot of them are moving toward the entertainment to bring the traffic.”
Indoor play facilities for children, rock climbing facilities and similar entertainment options have joined fitness centers as some of the top leasers of empty big-box space in and around OC, according to area brokerage data.
Air Time
Big Air sells one-hour jump times and two-hour jump times, with the latter being the top purchase systemwide.
The industry has changed over the course of the past decade, both from the perspective of servicing a customer looking for entertainment and working with franchisees, Odekirk said.
Those changes have forced management to adopt the philosophy, he said, of, “Your park is never finished; you’re never done. You’re always looking for what’s new and what’s next … You’ve got to always have something new and something novel. The guest today expects innovation and expects growth.”
From the perspective of franchisees, Odekirk acknowledged the competitive set pointing out there are larger brands in the marketplace, but said the focus isn’t solely on numbers.
Instead, Big Air is focused on the experience for visitors to its facilities and its franchisees (who held their most recent convention on Royal Carribean’s Mariner of The Seas, paid for by the company).
“I want to be the Disney-fication of the trampoline park brands,” Odekirk said. “We are holding ourselves to a much different standard.”
