Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jake Wolf.
Hi Jake, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Hello, I am Jake Wolf, the CEO and co-founder of WAREHOUSE, a new premiere community-driven private car and social club in Park City, Utah.
I began my career journey in Miami after graduating from Ohio State University and starting in collector-grade clothing sales, sourcing global exclusive collections and archival vintage pieces for brands such as Rick Owens, Raf Simons, Helmut Lang, and Louis Vuitton.
This expertise expanded into exotic car brokerage, enriching my passion for luxury cars, which began when I was very young. Originally, I conceptualized WAREHOUSE to open its first location in South Florida, where I saw the demand for refined car storage and created a community of like-minded enthusiasts.
Investors convinced me to open our first location in Utah due to the enthusiastic nature of Park City, endless open roads for driving, and large commercial real estate opportunities for the club and storage space. It was then, in 2019, that I moved to Utah as a full-time resident.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As the CEO of a new start-up, I see that every day is multifaceted and presents itself with unique challenges. I work closely with my amazing team to make sure our club is operating efficiently; we’re achieving goals, and, most importantly, delivering an amazing member experience.
It is my job to ensure that every detail of our offering, from the events and programming we put on, services and tech, communication, and facility presentation, down to branding, are incredibly thought out and cohesive with our ethos of providing a world-class automotive enthusiast experience, made for enthusiasts of many. It’s this understanding of our client base that my team and I leverage every day to constantly improve our offering and add value for our members, and this will ultimately allow us to scale our business to additional locations.
A few challenges that I faced with opening the WAREHOUSE were:
· Fundraising and Supply Chain Management during Covid: This project began an initial raise in November 2019, months before COVID hit, severely affecting the permitting and entitlement process.
This took eight more months than planned. Once we got through permitting, the supply chain was severely affected, reducing availability and causing our build costs to go up tremendously. I had to justify new costs by expanding the scale of our business while strategizing production orders and timing to best avoid delays and overages and then fundraise accordingly. Due to these delays and Park City Winters (last year, we got over 700” of snow), the project took a four-year turnaround from the purchase of the property to an opened facility.
· Another was selling out our vehicle storage memberships prior to opening. It was a two-person team: our manager, Nate Hedrick, and I pitched a large vision for an unparalleled automotive social experience with not much more than renderings, a membership deck, and construction site tours. Having to find, pitch, and curate 86 cars seemed daunting at the time!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
WAREHOUSE is a premiere community-driven private car and social club that recently opened Friday in Park City, Utah.
Situated just 30 minutes from the Salt Lake City airport, WAREHOUSE offers 27,000 square feet of a free-flowing showroom catering to the needs of the modern-day ultra-collector. Highlights of this world-class facility include 84 vehicle bays, 24 motorcycle bays, and club-level amenities such as a wine room, art gallery, two bars, and a Top Golf® Swing Suite and racing simulators. Examples of the rare and interesting car inventory are a Carbon Series Ford GT, Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato, Ferrari F40, and a Toyota FJ 75, which were never released in America.
WAREHOUSE offers memberships for those looking to display their vehicle on-site or those who would simply like to participate in the community. Members gain access to unique opportunities that can only be experienced through WAREHOUSE, including a European Rally culminating in the Monaco Grand Prix, an Aspen snow driving experience, in-house dining events, and private track days.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Major lessons learned from building the WAREHOUSE have been what to do, what not to do in development, the importance of seasonality in Utah, and construction timelines. I learned how powerful a clear and defined vision can be towards accomplishing your goals. Always be ready to adapt, pivot, and play to your consumer’s needs.
More than a few times we’ve tried to push offerings or services that we quickly realized were not important to our consumers, had we doubled down on those offerings we would be in a much different place. Rather, by focusing on our customer’s wants, tendencies, and usage, we’ve found viable revenue-producing services and offerings that we were either not putting much effort towards or did not offer entirely.
After recognizing demand and understanding the needs of our customers, we’ve bolstered those services appropriately to best serve our customers and create additional revenue streams along the way. These learnings will be foundational in the long term as we branch out to open new locations.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://warehousemotorclub.com
- Instagram: @warehousemotorclub
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warehousemotorclub
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@warehousetvpc
- Other: 4413 N Forestdale Dr, Park City, UT 84098
Image Credits
Andrew Ross Film, Jack Berg
