Management the Sonoma County Crushers

Management The Sonoma County Crushers was founded by Bob Fletcher in 1994 based in Portland Oregon. After Fletcher retired from IBM in 1994 he and his wife decided to open their own business. At first he was thinking of owning a tennis club, but after much research he discovered it was not very profitable.

It was while reading the Wall Street Journal that he came up with the idea of owning a baseball team, he came across a team for sale in the Journal and began to research the start up of a Western Baseball League. Although this would be Fletcher's first business, he felt more comfortable having partners in his new venture. With mutual friends and two attorneys from San Francisco the new adventure began. Fletcher considered many locations for the team and after much research he chose Rohnert Park.

Fletcher had many reasons in choosing this location, the lease was inexpensive, the county had a high per capita income, the setting was around wine country, but most importantly it was the community that enhanced his final decision. The community support for the team was high based on surveys and research. "Before we started the Crushers we talked to the people in the community.

If you have a venue where you are drawing people then people want to have a presence with you at the ballpark." (Page 2 of Case Study) The name of the team was also important to Fletcher. He wanted to tie the name into Sonoma County, with the wine industry being the major economic force in the county he chose the "Crushers," the theme would tie in the community interest and bring sponsorship from the local wineries.

The attorney's helped with the initial started- up costs, which included $50,000 for a franchise fee. Other expenses included stadium renovation, improvements, computers, infrastructure, offices staff and insurance. Research to the financial aspect also included why a former team, Redwood Pioneers, had previously failed at the chosen location. "We wanted to try and find out why the Pioneers failed so we wouldn't make the same mistakes. We researched other successful teams and found out what they charged for their inventory and adjusted it to our market.

We had to question, 'do we have a stronger economy than this team.' Will we have more fans than this team?' By taking these things into consideration then you can change them to fit with your marketplace." (Page 2 of Case Study) One of the most difficult decisions Fletcher had to make was whether to operate the team as a major league affiliation or as an independent minor league team.

The benefits of being a major league affiliate included paying all of the team players salaries as well as those for the scouts and coaches. Also included was the paying for insurance, workers compensation, travel, housing etc. As an added bonus was the stability, confidence and some prestige however, all of these benefits of being a major league affiliate proved to be costly. Fees varied from hundreds of thousand of dollars to millions of dollars.

It was evident that becoming rich in a minor league team was extremely hard to do. With the combination of a low price in the independent team, market trends rising and the freedom of non-affiliation, Fletcher decided to keep his team independent. Through research he discovered the market for independent teams were rising, there was possible growth and profit potential.

He also had more freedom and creativity by being independent for example, freedom was given to the sales force when selling sponsorship deals or in taking the chance to sign on an aging ex-major league player. These proved to be the best assets that came with being an independent ball team. (Page of Case Study) In the eight years of having the baseball team Fletcher was able to keep the Crushers with a positive cash flow, break even every month, and live comfortably.

However Fletcher also realized that minor league baseball was an unpredictable industry. There were numerous problems. The players getting injured on a regular basis and filing for worker's compensation, and having to file applications with immigration for the foreign players to get visas. Tickets and merchandise were being sold out of the same small building that player negotiation and trades took place. This placed pressures on the teams' front office having to deal with customers on a daily basis.

Also fans were open to agree or disagree with the plays of the team, quality of the team and even the costs of tickets. The only way Fletcher found to deal with these issues was to make himself available to customers and take in their suggestions. Customer service soon became a high priority to the team. Among other issues Fletcher had was in his staff and partners. Before the opening of his team, his partners withdrew from the deal.

This caused Fletcher to have no choice but to assign his first manager Paul Deese to double as a partial owner. Deese made the call as to baseball decisions and Fletcher made the business decisions and this worked out very well, but after the 1996 season Deese sold his share back to Fletcher and left the company for personal reasons. Fletcher became aware after years of running his business that the rest of the league did not have good leadership.

Many thought it would be fun to own a baseball league but didn't want to be bothered with the business aspect of it. Others didn't realize that it was a business not a hobby. These aspects caused the organization to suffer. There were great aspects to the company. The Marketing division had great success. They were limited to media resources and Kevin Wolski, director of sales marketing and promotion, found this to be a challenge.

He overcame this challenge by making a connection between the sponsors, the team, family and baseball as a whole. Have promotional items that the people care about especially if you are putting a sponsor's logo on it." (Page 8 of Case Study) This proved to be a success as the Crushers drew crowds of 93,000 per year. Now Fletcher had some major decisions to make.

At the end of the 2002 season Some of the other franchises were having to close down due to financial issues and could not continue to be teams, even the most successful team The Heat would no longer be able to play. Fletcher was facing this same problem. Fletcher considered himself to be business.