Today we’d like to introduce you to Branin Boyack. Them and their team share their story with us below:
This is a story of two friends from Middle school who took $3000 in liquidated Crypto and a small SBA loan to build an emerging franchise brand in the Rage Room and Axe Throwing Industry.
The founders are Branin Boyack, and Brandon “Milly” Milbrandt. With names so similar something had to give.. So, since the 8th Grade, Brandon took on the nickname Milly. Like Cher or Prince he is only referred to by one name. Our founding members met in middle school in the year 2000. Throughout their high school and young adult years they became best friends, who kept each other in check with a little teasing and hazing from time to time.
Shortly after High School, Milly’s Mother founded an event promotion company specializing in ultra-endurance biking. She hired the two to help with the races, odd jobs, and security. This was their first interaction working together, outside of friendship.
As time went on the two worked many different jobs Branin went into construction and building maintenance while Milly went into high-end sales where he worked for many different companies. However, both kept working the 2 to 3 different events together every year, growing each other’s trust in one another in a business sense. In that time Milly had been through his fair share of business attempts which would help in the long run when starting a business together. Throughout their teens and 20’s, as all friends do, they would talk about one day owning a business together. For many years, they would bounce ideas off each other, but no idea struck real motivation in the concept until.
In 2018 Branin started doing some research on different business models and entertained everything from Auto shop to General contractor. In January of 2019, Branin came across a story about Rage Rooms and it all clicked. After forwarding an inspiring video to Milly, he called him to describe the new business. Immediately they both knew this was the one! The idea was simple: they were going to start an indoor entertainment facility that would include the growing concept of Rage Rooms. Throughout the planning process, the founders knew they wanted to add other activities to their facility starting with Axe Throwing.
Once their idea was born, they needed to come up with a name. After days and days of trying to come up with a clever name for the new business, one that didn’t suck, they arrived at Smash Labs! The team then sought the help of many friends and contacts for advice. Smash Labs was officially registered as a business in April of 2019.
From Inception, however, the goals of these long-time friends were always big. They didn’t want to build something that only a few people would know. They wanted to build something the whole WORLD would know. The idea was always to build this business concept into a Franchise.
There were many hurdles in starting a new dangerous sounding business, and finding a building willing to rent to Smash Labs Rage Rooms® was a big one. Branin spent over six months looking for a property owner willing to rent to an “Axe Throwing place”. No one had much of a problem renting to a Rage Room place, but they got hung up on the Axe Throwing. Most property owners had never heard of such a concept.
Finally, in the seventh month of failed lease attempts, the perfect location was found. It was a gray shell building in the parking lot of the big box home improvement store, Home Depot. The deal was even sweeter because the property owner was a really cool guy who owned several smoothie locations. After accepting the offer from Smash Labs, the smoothy guy received a letter it would be courteous to run the deal past Home Depot just to keep them in the loop. About two weeks after the courtesy call to Home Depot, smoothy guy received a letter from Home Depot Corporate stating the deal could not proceed. Home Depot claimed that Smash Labs would negatively impact their business and that Smash Labs did not fit their ideal business neighbor profile.
After several attempts to speak with Home Depot’s Corporate Real Estate department Branin was told that Home Depot was willing to take the issue all the way to court if necessary. Being a brand new startup and having very limited funds Branin and Milly decided not to tangle with that 800-pound gorilla and began to look elsewhere. A few weeks later Branin landed a second lease. This time for a building in an old shopping plaza with several well-established businesses one of which is a very popular pie shop. Now that they had found the right place it was time to secure the finances and build.
With Milly in business school and working a normal job, as well as Branin working a full-time job and having a family. Both had to sacrifice a lot of their time to build the business. To save money, and with Branin’s construction background, the two built out the location with blood sweat and tears. First, they had to SMASH the existing walls to the ground and then build new ones back up. This process took just about 3 months to complete. One week before Black Friday they were up and running, and fast. With a planned strategic opening just before the holiday season, they blew their initial three-month projections out of the water. Everyone loved their idea and wanted to try it out. In the spring of 2020, it all came crashing down!
Just 3 months after the doors opened on the business, the whole world came to a stop. It was March of 2020 and COVID-19 brought the whole world to a screeching halt. Almost immediately Smash Labs went from booked days to crickets on their schedule sheets. They made the hard decision to switch to an appointment only based schedule, and allow appointments with a half-hour notice. This was very hard on the two owners who had to take appointments and leave work just to make sure the business could still bring in some money.
After almost 2 months, things in Southern Utah began to turn around. With Saint George being a conservative area COVID 19 restrictions were not as prohibitive. With heavy sanitation practices already in place Smash Labs was able to reopen the doors and welcome customers back. Things were still slow going for another couple of months. However, Southern Utah soon became the only tourist destination in almost the entire Southwestern United States. This allowed the owners to collect the data they needed to prove the business concept and take the necessary steps to begin franchising. The only question was how to afford it. COVID 19 had depleted the business’s resources and due to not being open prior to the pandemic and not having the numbers needed to apply for government money the operation was running on bare bones. After a while, Smash Labs was starting to break even and even catching back up but they didn’t have the recommended assets to get started. The franchising industry recommends companies have multiple locations before franchising, they didn’t have that. They also needed more money to franchise, which normally would range from 100k to even 250k. But they had none.
With Rage Rooms being an industry in its infancy poised to explode, and Axe throwing in the middle of its boom. There was no time to waste waiting for everything to be perfect to make the big launch. Smash Labs needed to be one of the first to market with this concept before others beat them to the punch. So Milly went to his grandmother to ask for a loan of $25,000 to pay for the lawyer that would help the company create the legal documents to begin franchising.
After 6 more months of hard work and effort, Smash Labs Rage Rooms ® officially became a national franchise in August of 2021. They are still looking for their first franchisee, but are poised to take over the industry. This is one company you’ll want to be sure to keep an eye on.
What is a Rage room? A Rage Room is a room customers can go into either by themselves or in a group, after putting on full protective gear such as a hard hat with a safety shield, gloves, and coveralls. They are giving a bucket of Smashables™, items such as glassware, plates, bowls, beer bottles, and figurines, and even big things like Flat screen TVs and appliances. Customers go in this room and smash objects with baseball bats, crowbars, and even table legs. This smashing provides customers a dual purpose of an extreme amount of fun, all while relieving stress and anxieties in a safe inviting environment. Axe throwing lanes also provide for singles, groups or leagues to test their skills throwing axes, knives, or other sharp items. Similar to a cross between darts and bowling.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We have had our share of bumps in the road, some of which were finding a location to get started in. We tried a lot of property owners before finding a place on sunset in the Home Depot neighborhood only to be kicked out by Home Depot right before beginning tenant improvements.
Once we did find a home for Smash Labs, we were only open for 3.5 to 4 months before COVID-19 started shutting the world down.
All in all though, we have weathered the downs and enjoyed the ups because for us…when we’re down. We just go SMASH something, haha.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I started out working at a young age and have done a lot of different jobs from retail to construction. I spent most of my teens and 20s in construction and building maintenance. I spent about 8 years building fences and another 10 years with SkyWest Airlines in building maintenance and project management. I am currently the Project Manager for Utah Tech University by day and a full-time business owner 24/7.
A few things that set me apart from other people I know is my work ethic, my always-going drive to get things done, and my attention to detail.
What would you say has been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Just get started. If you have a goal, all you have to do is get started. Once you get started, it is much easier to accomplish something than just thinking about it.
Contact Info:
- Website: SmashLabs.biz
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SmashLabStg/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SmashLabStg/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvzHbxSB5XYgSh-K8Q6Lmog
Image Credits
Smash Labs Rage Rooms and Axe Throwing
