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Letter from the Editor
To reach our editorial staff with questions or comments please write to:
Lyle Fitzsimmons
Managing Editor, North America
Once it’s laid out in front of you, it makes perfect sense.
After all, who wouldn’t consider it a blast to take one of the world’s all-time best leisure activities – miniature golf – indoors and mix it with feel-good pop
music from the 1970s and 1980s, along with cool visual images of monsters and other imaginary creatures and beasts?
But as interesting as I found the concept, I concede that I’d have never come up with it on my own.
That’s why I’ve got so much respect for people like Christina Vitagliano, who told me she came up with the idea for Monster Mini Golf while driving back
with her husband from a night on the town in New York City to their home in Connecticut. She’d been looking for something different from her previous
gig as the owner of an antiques business – as far away on the different scale as she could imagine.
“I was like ‘I want to do indoor mini golf,’” she said. “And he said, ‘Why? Why would anybody want to do that?’ I said, ‘Well, because it’s the exact
opposite of what I was doing. It doesn’t have any inventory.’ The antique business had all inventory, and every time you sell it you have no inventory and
you have to get it again, and it was insane. There’s no inventory to sell, so all I’m doing is just standing there handing out putters and I’m making money
and people are coming in and they’re happy.
‘’It’s their entertainment.”
Ten years later, it’s also Vitagliano’s way of life.
From the humble opening of the first indoor course in her old antique space on Memorial Day weekend in 2004, the business has swelled to 29 franchised
locations across the United States and Canada, alongside a corporate-owned location in Las Vegas that’s co-branded with the rock band, Kiss.
The boost in business has also yielded a 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Providence, R.I. and it’s got Vitagliano thinking these days about the idea of
taking on investors to make Monster a household name.
“We’re 10 years old. We know what we’re doing now,” she said. “Is it time to bring an investor into this and really blow it up? We’ve done all of this on our
own – including building the Vegas venue – so now we’re like ‘we’ve got it, but what are we gonna do with it? Do we want to keep growing three or four a
year and work until we’re 90?’ Probably not. So it might be time. I think we are leaning toward that.”
Take a look at Vitagliano’s Monster tale on Page 114 as well as others items in the May issue, as well as supplemental content in the form of interesting
business-related Top 10 lists, the Executive Summary and month five of our newest interactive feature – “One Last Question” – located on the final page.
As always, please feel free to contact me with any comments or critiques, as well as suggestions for ways we can continue to provide a publication that’s
pertinent, educational and entertaining.
Until next month…
Regards,
