Today’s tourist op-ed is from Phil Andrews, Chief Executive Officer of USA Fencing.
We all know the pleasures of activities.
For USA Fencing, that included threatening Italy in the gold medal last of Women’s Team Foil, a time characterized by” sticking to a plan”.
In a crucial moment, we swapped out Jackie Dubrovich for quarterback Maia Weintraub. With the game in hand, it’s similar to choosing a young high draft get for your team’s starting forwards. We had invested in the research and knew it was the right choice for Coach Ralf Bissdorf to make, so it was a proper choice against a crew on whom we were familiar.
Every swordsman in the USA and beyond will remember this moment in history as what we are known for.
But how can we create that kind of time off the decking strip and carry forward the speed of this breakthrough moment?
We had to establish a clear strategy, pay attention to our story, and combine innovative business strategies, specifically to generate industrial revenue.
Through advertising, marketing, influence programs, activations, and eventually bringing those people up to the game “flame to flame,” we had to be ready to take advantage and make fencing a viable business for the following four years.
Given the global recognition of sports, you’d assume that if you have a national approach, you’ll be effective, right?
As we know in sports, that is n’t always the way it works.
I have served as the CEO of both National Governing Bodies ( NGB), and I am aware of the reality that there is a lot of planning and hard work, especially for niche sports like weightlifting and fencing.
So, how does one go out, develop a niche activity, and get enough business income to make the business bite? The answers are two-fold: Knowing who you are, what you can market and who’s going to buy it, and
keeping a constant eye on the important things that affect change.
Our problem: USA Fencing is seen as a specialty game, with a membership foundation of a color quick of 50, 000—mostly under 18. 40 miles from New York City, about a third of our people are there. It’s also a game with a large family money, a large Eastern American people, and is among the fastest-growing activities in the USA.
The trouble was that two years ago, our revenue was over, our faith from our stakeholders—including athletes —was over. Nearly all of our team had left while we were in the throes of a leadership crisis.
Working with our board of directors and creating a new strategic plan that would promote progress, reputation management, and providing quality service to our membership was our first step. In other words, we had to get extreme! To strengthen our relationships with the base, we conducted a listening trip, actually observing the actual fencing at locations like the traditional Fencers Club in New York City, the LA International Fencing Center in Los Angeles, and many others.
Then we moved on to rebuilding our base, introducing the U.S. Fencing Foundation banquet, and promoting innovative ways to support landscaping.
From there, we took a site out of McLaren F1’s book and created a CEO advisory committee full of blue-chip, growth-focused professionals who helped us opened gates for expansion, and for business relationships. We need that connection and buy-in because no one has a fencing budget.
A data analysis company, as luck would have it, was one of those people who could really help us understand who we are, from the fundamentals of how much money we make to how many people speak Korean as a second language.
A second member of the group’s family helped us gain knowledge of many of the people we knew so we could start systematically pursuing relationships that needed to develop, show potential clients the value of a partnership with a niche sport, and gain access to those contacts ‘ backgrounds.
We sell products that have a direct connection to the consumer. We ca n’t sell eyeballs; instead, we must sell that direct ability to reach a very specific demographic. At times, we’ve even been confident enough to guarantee a brand’s revenue.
We needed to expand the base because participation is a key revenue driver for us and similar Olympic and paralympic sports because membership is a key revenue driver. In order to do this, we needed to increase the base.
By the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic & Paralympic Games, according to our current strategic plan, we will almost double the number of participants.
The Olympic &, Paralympic Games reach on NBC’s networks helps us, but we have to harness it, and we needed to do more.
With just over 35, 000 people taking the sport each week, we did something for the NGB to give citizens of all countries the opportunity to experience it at 15 important sites across the country, including the Grand Central Terminal in New York City and the Mall of America in Minneapolis.
What happens next?
To take them to training facilities and clubs. To support individuals who want to start fencing clubs in their communities, we created the Club Incubator Program. We’ve moved quickly to open new facilities across the U. S., with the first in Madison, Wisconsin, to add capacity and more participants that start over this whole cycle.
By knowing where we’re going, thinking outside the box, and trusting our data, we’ve introduced a seven-figure commercial program ( from nothing two years ago ), seen record membership, earned record medals on the field of play, achieved record revenue, and seen record customer satisfaction. And we’re not done yet!
In August 2022, Phil Andrews took over as CEO of the United States ‘ national governing body ( NGB ) for the Olympic and Paralympic fencing competition. Andrews served as the CEO of USA Weightlifting for nearly ten years before he joined USA Fencing.