weekend in 2004 – a golf course with
monsters and glow-in-the-dark wall paint
and neon-colored putters and balls was
open to the public inDanielson, Conn.
“That’s when we were ready, so that’s when
the doors opened,” Vitagliano said. “In my
head, I was feeling if I couldmake 500 bucks
a week then I’d be fine. I just didn’t want to
be stressed out and not enjoying what I was
doing, and if a friend and I could run the
business –great.”
By the end of the summer, she said, parents
coming in with kids from the nearby cities
of Providence (R.I.) and Hartford could be
heardmuttering “This place is a goldmine.”
“There was a Sunday afternoon in August,
in our first summer, and it was raining,” she
said. “We were slammed. It was this terrible
old mill in the middle of nowhere – there
were 5,000 people in the town – and I had
themout the door waiting to playmini golf.
My husband called and asked how it was
going and I told him it was going OK. He
asked if we were busy and I told himwe had
like $3,000.
“He was like, ‘You have howmuch money?’
Keep in mind, he’s asking me this as he’s
May 2014
| BusinessWorld | 107
