PuttPal swings into the mini-golf market
Logan Craft unveiled his latest software, PuttPal at "The Pitch" competition in Johnson City, where he secured both first-place, and the audience choice award!
If you’ve been in the tech space long enough, you’ve probably met your fair share of developers. Many learn through school, others are self-taught, some develop for companies, whereas others go on a coding quest of their own. Very few, however, have struck gold as many times as Logan Craft has.
“I got into computer science and built my first mobile app for the iPhone at age 12. It ended up making $20,000 that year. So ever since then, I’ve kind of been addicted to programming and entrepreneurship,” he said.
Imagine that… 12 years old with an income of $20,000 based on an app that you created from scratch. At the time, Craft had created a deer movement tracker that would calculate how the deer were going to move for that day based on the barometer.
From the initial app’s success, Craft spun off several more animal tracking apps, which all gained traction in some form or fashion.
“I did that for five or six years, and probably sold 20-30,000 people apps on the app store,” he said.
It didn’t end there. In total, Craft has built about 50 apps through the years, from games and utilities to animal trackers and most recently a mini-golf assist app.
Why mini golf? That’s always the first question.
Craft said it’s his and his wife’s favorite pastime activity. Anytime they travel, they seek out the latest and greatest courses – and that includes the time they booked a trip on a Carnival Cruise ship.
“There were no scorecards at all. With the wind on the ship, they would just blow around, so they didn’t even bother to print them. So, I went to the app store to find a scorekeeper, and I found a basic one. It took six minutes to download, it was clunky, and overall, just not the best experience,” Craft said.
Later that night when they got back to the room, he came up with a better, more efficient, and simple idea: PuttPal.
“This could be an interesting opportunity for courses because they can attract Google reviews, track metrics, and promote sponsors while players use the free website to track scores. It’s a win-win for players and courses,” he said.
So, he created PuttPal, which is a custom website for each mini-golf course. It can be accessed through a URL or a QR code at the course, with no delay waiting for an app to download. It then populates the scorecard with accurate pars and allows different companies to sponsor each hole. Additionally, once the game is over and the final score is submitted, it redirects players to Google to leave a review for the course.
The final scores can also be added to a daily leaderboard on display at the mini-golf course, to promote friendly competition between players.
“I started by sending out five emails, and four of the courses responded, three of them are now PuttPal customers,” Craft said.
He custom-coded and branded the site to cater to each specific course’s needs. So far, the Google Review prompt has been the biggest selling point for the courses. Since most people use Google to search for nearby mini-golf, the highest-rated courses typically rise to the top of the results.
“It makes it simple. Of the three courses that are using the app, I think we’ve gathered about 40 reviews so far. It is a 250 percent increase from what they received before. It’s by far the biggest selling point of the app, so far,” Craft said.
Additionally, the PuttPal app can also prompt players to play a second round at a discounted rate, which Craft said may help generate more revenue and touchpoints for the course.
Being in such a niche industry has its perks. So far, Craft doesn’t know of any other companies offering this same service for mini-golf courses specifically. Surprisingly, it’s a very big and profitable industry, too.
“There’s a ton of courses just in the U.S. alone, about 3,000 total. About 1,500 of those are targetable customers in high-tourism areas,” Craft said. “The profits on these places are high. They may have 30,000+ people playing each year at $10 per person and limited upkeep. Also, you must consider all the people that buy snacks and drinks too.”
Craft’s next step is to bring more awareness to PuttPal and market it to more courses across the nation. Given his track record of success and three customers signed on within a month, we trust that Craft’s technology will gain momentum in the industry rather quickly.
Read more about PuttPal at the website.
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