Keele University
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Putt&Pins - Kat Halsall and Kris Rodway
Kat - Human Resource Management and Marketing (2008) Kris - Physical Geography and Environmental Science (2009)
Summary:
Business Type: Portable mini crazy golf and skittles company, established alongside Physical Geography and Environmental Science graduate 2009, Kris Rodway
Website: www.puttandpins.co.uk
We are a portable mini crazy golf and skittles company, designing and manufacturing crazy golf courses and skittle alleys, which we take to various events so people can ‘pay to play’. We also hire out our products and sell them to places such as pubs, hotels, children’s play areas.
We joined the EFS programme in October 2010 and have recently completed the 40-week scheme, where we were given access to a business training programme, mentoring with business experts and funding for our business.
About us:
After graduating from Keele University and finding it difficult to find work, Kris and I spent a year teaching English in a university in China. While there we fell in love with their entrepreneurial spirit and their drive and decided that we wanted to run our own business at home. Coincidentally, and luckily for us, it was at about this time we received an email from our Alumni Officer at Keele University, asking for interested participants to apply for a scheme that assisted students, recent graduates and staff in starting up their own businesses.
About the business:
We both love crazy golf and have been playing for years on holiday with our families, and we were surprised we hadn’t seen any courses on our travels around China. After talking about it we realised that it’s not that common in the UK either, whereas bouncy castles are at almost every event. We found there was a gap in the market for portable entertainment that the whole family could enjoy, which fitted nicely with our love of crazy golf.
With the help of the EFS programme, we established Putt&Pins and we are now attending as many events as possible to gain market presence and to increase exposure. We will soon be focussing on selling to children’s play areas and to pubs.
How Student Enterprise has helped us:
We have been helped hugely by our support from the SpeedWM and EFS programmes. We have benefitted not only from the business lectures, which gave us invaluable information and practical business knowledge, but also with the brilliant contacts we have made; giving us on-going support at every stage of the business life cycle. We have also had great comfort from meeting with like-minded individuals each week and forming a support network within the course.
We received £7200 worth of funding from the EFS scheme. This meant that we could: purchase all the materials we needed to start producing on a greater scale, have our website set up, get polo shirts embroidered with our logo, have business cards printed, buy a trailer so that we could travel to various events, pay the entry fees for events, insurance and for our company incorporation, amongst other things.
Future plans:
In the not too distant future we will look to expand our product range and widen our target market and outsource production. Ultimately, we would like to have our own permanent crazy golf course in a prime location.
Website: www.puttandpins.co.uk
