OpenYard's Blog

New for 2009 - Kwik Goal Referee Jersey's In-Stock

2009-05-07T23:34:00.002-04:00

We're excited to be carrying the new Kwik Goal Referee Jersey's. They have got a new stripe pattern,quick drying polyester material and as always, Kwik Goal's Lifetime Warranty! Get em' while they're hot!

Excitement Fills 2009 Spring Season

2009-04-10T10:02:00.002-04:00

It's been a little while since our last blog post. We try to make posts every few weeks or so but lately we've been busy making sure all our customers are being taken care of and are receiving the best overall customer service.

Going into a new season with OpenYard is a lot like going into a new Soccer, Basketball or Track Season. We're all athletes so maybe this comes natural but at the start of a new season it's so important to collect our thoughts and think about where we've been and envision where we want to go.

Envisioning where where we want to go is really important. The old Indian saying goes, "If you chase two rabbits, both will get away". As a past college swimmer, I know pretty well that as you progress in sports, there comes a time when you can't go to practice everyday and expect to be the best at every event - you can't chase to many rabbits. Sure, being well-rounded is a main objective but overtime, athletes, like businesses, choose a specialty. It could be goalie, defensemen, backstroker, sprinter, long-distance runner. For a business it, it could be expert embroiderer or field installer.

For the past 4 years, OpenYard has focused on the efficient and effective distribution of high quality sports equipment - Low Price, High Quality and Good Customer Service. As we add more products to OpenYard.com's selection, we're always asking ourselves these 3 questions:

Will this product provide enough Value for the Price?
Is this a quality product which will provide service to the customer for the long-term?
Will this product create a positive customer service experience? Can we support it if anything goes wrong and ship it out effectively? Will the customer be able to assemble it easily?

So as we head into this spring season - we want to know what your goals are. How can we help you realize your vision of success? What do you need? Let's get better together!

It's a New Year and We're Ready!

2009-01-06T08:15:00.002-05:00

2008 was a excellent year because we learned a lot about customers, ourselves and our business. Tough times always have a way of increasing our capacity to learn and adjust. After 3+ years of being in bringing high quality sports equipment right to your front door, we learn something new everyday which allows us to become a better business.

We wish you an amazing 2009!

For the first part of the year we're going to be busy working on our website to insure everything is ready for the upcoming busy sports seasons. If there's anything you think we can improve to serve you better, please let us know. If you want to say hi and get to know us better before placing an order, please do!

Happy Holiday Shopping Everyone

2008-12-15T13:57:00.002-05:00

Everything is in-stock and our shipping calculators are accurate. Don't wait too long but there there's still plenty of time to make holiday purchases on OpenYard. In general, The last day to buy and recieve items by Christmas would be Thursday (Dec. 18th) before noon. After that, you'll need to think about expedited shipping to get items by Christmas. So don't rush. Buy now!

Matching Soccer Field Sizes to Soccer Goals

2008-12-02T15:37:00.003-05:00

We have published a table to help you figure out what size soccer field you'd like to build or help match a set of soccer goals to an already existing field. A soccer field can vary quite a bit for players 16 to 35 years old and even more for those outside that range. If you have any questions about your field or the goals you'll need for your field, we'd love to help you answer your questions.

Recommended Soccer Field Size, Goal Size and Team Size

It's Cyber Monday!

2008-12-01T06:55:00.002-05:00

Traditionally, the Friday after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday". It's the day when the Christmas buying rush kicks off and many retailer income statements shift from negative (Red) to positive (Black). On Black Friday, Internet retailers don't worry to much that shoppers are running through the malls instead of their websites. In fact, since most people have 'Black Friday' off, it makes sense to spend that time out and about with family and friends and offline. However, everyone is back in the office and on the web the following Monday - "Cyber Monday"!

We at OpenYard.com do our best to make it Cyber Monday throughout most of the year with great deals everyday, but none the less, happy shopping or 'price checking' and enjoy this wonderful Internet shopping day! We hope you find what you're looking for on our site and if you have any questions at all, please contact us!

Happy Thanksgiving & Black Friday

2008-11-28T07:11:00.005-05:00

We thought maybe you'd be curious if we were running any huge Black Friday blow-out sales. Essentially, we run a Black Friday blow-out sales all year. All year long, we strive to provide the best prices and customer service in the most efficient and effective way possible! If you have any questions, just contact us. All orders placed during the Thanksgiving 2008 Holiday Weekend will be shipping out between Monday and Tuesday (Dec 1st - 2nd) ! Happy Shopping!

Find Your Replacement Soccer Nets on OpenYard

2008-11-12T11:43:00.003-05:00

We just broke down all of our soccer nets into an easy to read table. You can start by finding your size goal and then by choosing the material, color, mesh width. When you've found the net you're looking for, just click on it.

Here's a link: Replacement Soccer Net Chart.

2 OpenYard Changes

2008-10-25T12:28:00.006-04:00

#1 - We've got a brand new logo.

We consulted with the guys over at Blonde Creative and they helped us out quite a bit with the process - they've got a great team over there.

#2 - We upgraded our phone system.

While we did implement a pretty fancy phone system that will help us route calls better, we made it easy to connect with customer service. There will be no need to push a number to talk to a department, unless you want to connect to particular person. In that case, you'll just need their extension.

When you call, you'll have the choice between Option 2 ( Order Tracking Request ), Option 3 ( Sales & Support ), Option 9 ( Employee Directory ). Hopefully this doesn't annoy anyone too much - we've designed the system to help us streamline our customer service processes and ultimately be better at helping you.

OpenYard Quoted in Wall Street Journal

2008-10-21T15:16:00.003-04:00

The Wall Street Journal referenced OpenYard LLC in the an article discussing entrepreneurial ambitions within the workforce".

Welcome to OpenYard Video

2008-09-02T13:00:00.002-04:00

Please, take a moment to watch a video I made to help you get a better feel about OpenYard.com as we strive to support your future sports equipment purchases.

Mobile, Track & Field, Speed!

2008-07-29T12:01:00.002-04:00

So far this summer, we've given you access to the Stackhouse product line. We've also developed a mobile OpenYard website. Another thing we've done is upgraded our servers so everything continues running fast and efficiently. As always, if you have any problems with our site or finding anything, please contact us. We look forward to supplying your with sports equipment this season!

Openyard's Prices Rise 10%

2008-06-19T11:54:00.007-04:00

We're doing our best to stay on top of everything but our prices have jumped an average of 10% across the board as we head into Summer. Our mission at Openyard.com is provide quality customer service, great products and great prices. Since we run our margins pretty low (and focus on our efficiencies), we're forced to be a little more dynamic with our prices at times. Because of this, you might notice that the prices advertised on the page are different than the prices you ultimately see in your cart. There's a great technical reason for this and you can trust that it in no way is meant to deceive you. We like to keep Openyard.com as a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' shop. We don't like running promotions or sales. All we want to be is your place online that you can count on for good customer service, great products and low prices.

The sporting equipment world has shown that it's not protected against outside economic activities. We're not normally an industry of rapid price changes. Just to give you some perspective, one of our manufacturers changed prices mid-year for the first time in 55 years of operation!

So listen up everyone! We're all into sports. We've all know what it's like to not give up and not give in. Price changes like this are very scary!!! But Open Yard is here to stay to stay and we hope you are too! We're doing whatever it takes to make sure we'll be in business for years to come and we hope you're coming with us. And just to prove it, we're offering Email Pep talks free of charge. Just use our contact box, tell us your situation, and we'll send some inspiration your way!

Calculating Truck Shipping Prices

2008-05-12T09:11:00.009-04:00

Calculating prices for truck ship products like this accurately and efficiently is a real tough problem in our industry and I imagine many others. When UPS or FedEx won't ship your item, it means you've got an unusual item and not necessarily a heavy one. UPS, for example, won't ship volleyball standards because of their height even though they are relatively light weight. A lacrosse goal comes in two sections, one square 6FT tall by 6FT wide and another triangle 6FT wide by 7FT tall. Then you've got a soccer goal with narrow posts up to 24ft long or a 10 inch wide bleacher planks or a pair of goose neck football goal posts. All these items are truck ship and all have very different dimensions and weight densities. To make matters worse, shipping these items is very expensive so if we don't do it correctly it can create negative financial experiences which go both ways.

A common solution is having you call in every time you'd like to order any item that ships truck. This might be the most accurate but it creates a lot of costs to our company and can be an inconvenience for you. A complicated order process decreases order volumes and requires additional work. Ultimately, these costs get added into the price of the product so this solution doesn't necessarily save the most money. Also, we believe a website should be full-service 100% of the time. While we don't mind taking the extra step to talk to you and calculate shipping for you, we don't like relying completely on this solution. This is why we calculate our truck shipping automatically and adjust our algorithms overtime in order to offer the most accurate and competitive shipping quotes. We believe that the efficiency produced by this method will ultimately equal a lower overall product price and a better overall customer service experience. If any of our shipping prices don't look correct to you, please let us know and we'll make changes.

As always - growing our business is about building great trust with our customers. This is why we continue to highlight the problems we face together and our solutions because all our decisions effect mutually effect us. If you've got any other ideas for us or a different solution, please let us know!

OpenYard Thanks Green Mountain Coffee

2008-04-25T15:39:00.002-04:00

Green Mountain coffee did a great thing for us a few months ago but we've been so busy, I haven't had the chance to really thank them until now. What happened was one of their employees, who happened to graduate from the same business school I did, read the Business Week article which was written about Openyard, LLC and myself. They checked out our site, let us know what they thought about it, and sent us 2 free bags of coffee just to say thanks for plugging our school and good luck with business! One bag was Wild Mountain Blueberry and the other was Hazelnut Cream. Both flavors were amazing and every little bean was brewed and enjoyed! It really meant a lot to me that a company so much bigger than Openyard and in a completely different industry took the time and resources to send us some coffee and say 'Good Luck'. Possibly someday, we'll send new businesses a few head-bands to keep the sweat from dripping down their eyes because running a small business is hard; however, it's reactions to our business efforts like this one from Green Mountain Coffee that keep us in focus and give us just a little more energy (literally and figuratively) to keep it going strong! Thank you so much Ethan, and the rest of the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters company.

Top 5 Weird Soccer Goals on Kwik Goals

2008-04-25T08:36:00.001-04:00

We've watched this video and think at least 3 out of 5 of these 'top 5 weird soccer goals' were scored on Kwik Goal soccer goals.

Small Business Lovin!

2008-04-24T10:07:00.006-04:00

Some people love working with small businesses so I wanted to let you know that we're a very small business. In fact, it's just 1 person and although I don't plan on staying this small forever, most of our customers think Open Yard is a lot bigger, which is a compliment! No, you don't have to dial an extension to get to me. Every time you call for a quote, you get the same person. In fact, the OpenYard phone number is always simultaneously ringing in my office, the stock room and on my cell phone so if sometimes you call and you think I'm in a car, I probably am ( but I always have a notepad ) . I read all the email and respond quickly. I also develop and maintain the entire website so if the site is not working for you or if you'd like a new feature added, please let me know. It's hard staying on top of everything, but I love it.

When you're a small business, you can re-invent processes and make changes so quickly. We'll always stay focused on our core-mission of selling sports equipment, but if there's something that you believe our business should do, such as carry a particular brand or handle a customer service issue, anything at all, let me know. We'll try and make the changes and over time OpenYard.com will go from being 'just a business' to 'your special business'.

So bring on that small business lovin! "We're" waiting for you!

Free Shipping isn't good. Here's Why!

2008-04-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

"There's no such thing as a free lunch and there's no such thing as free shipping". It might work well for DVD's and apparel, but it doesn't work so well when you're selling sports equipment to sports teams. There's just to much money to be saved when we ship items out together. Take for example, the pugg soccer goal, which people love and demand free shipping for. All our competitors offer it with free shipping and we lose business when we don't give free shipping for this item - so that's why we have free shipping - but just on that item, at least for now.

But think about this! Most of our customers order more than one set of Pugg Goals and at the time of writing this, the cost of a Pugg Goal is $84.50 with free shipping. The real price is actually $75 with an average shipping cost of around $10 but instead we show $84.50 (Free Shipping!). This works great with 1 item, but how about when someone orders 2 Pugg Goals. Instead of showing $75 x 2 + $15 for shipping ($165), we show 2 Pugg Goals for $84.50 x 2 ($169). It's definitely simple to calculate with free shipping but customers actually loose $4 dollars with free shipping when they order 2 or more items. When a customer orders 4 Pugg Goals, they are losing up to $20 because of free shipping.

This issue gets progressively worse as you deal with heavier item and larger orders. We've done lots of research and free shipping is clearly not the way to go when you're buying items sold on Open Yard; which is why we've invested a lot of time developing shipping calculation software to help us ship items all around the country from all around the country. So, when you see our little 'calculating shipping' icon pop on your shopping cart, relax, because it's our little way of helping you save money and proof that we're doing our best for our customers.

Below is a little chart which shows how you save money without free shipping when ordering in multiple quantities just with one fairly cheap item. Unfortunately, we still sell more Pugg soccer goals when we offer free shipping but if you'd like us to change it back, please let us know! Let us know how you feel about shipping prices in general because with the continual swings in fuel prices,shipping and our perspective of shipping, is an increasingly important topic. We love hearing from you.

Just a side note. If you drive a car that gets an average of 20 MPG ( not even close if you're driving a classic "Soccer SUV") and you drive to the local sports show to get a scrimmage vest. At the very least, you'll spend around $4-6 in fuel and spend $4 on the vest, making that vest cost $10. Of course, you'll bring down the price if you buy more items all at once. To put our shipping prices in perspective, even for the small items, we charge $3.12 for this scrimmage vest and shipping is around $4.60 making the total $7.72. It doesn't seem like it when you see a little scrimmage vest with a $5 shipping fee, but our price is actually lower than if you were to get in your car, drive to a store and buy one. Cool huh! See you online and thanks for reading!

Kwik Goal & David Beckham on Snoop Dogg's reality show

2008-04-03T18:16:00.004-04:00

The famed rapper Snoop Dogg has a reality show which spotlights himself and his family. On one episode, he tries to get his kids to play soccer so he asks Daivd Beckham to help him out. David invites them over to his training acedemy which happens to be full of Kwik Goal items. Below I've listed some memorable scenes where you can clearly see that Snoop and Beckham are chillen in Kwik Goal world! You can click on the last image of this post and it will show you the full video.

Look at how graceful Snoop moves left the ball around the Kwik Goal coaching sticks!

And moves right!

Here Snoop gets shot on by David Beckham. You can see to the left of Beckham, there's a Kwik Goal Tom (Training Opponent Mannequin ). We don't sell ones that look like this so I think they are either older or special but they are definately Kwik Goal because the logo is clear.

Here's a good shot of Beckham, Snoop, some Kwik Goal coaching sticks, a Kwik Goal lineup and Kwik Goal soccer goal!

It's official. The Kwik Goal logo doesn't come out more clear than in this scene

You can see our full line of Kwik Goal soccer goals online! I'm sure Beckham and his academy have most of them. I think that speaks very highly of how respected Kwik Goal is in the world of soccer field equipment. I like to consider them the L.L.Bean of Soccer Goals. A lot of that has to do with the Lifetime Guarantee. Any Kwik Goal item you ever buy from us is covered from defects for life. "[That's just] one more reason you can feel good about Kwik Goal!" - Kwik Goal.

We're back to Blogging

2008-03-26T16:51:00.006-04:00

It's been over 1 year since our last blog post. "What have we been doing!", you may ask. Well, we've spent all our spare time, day and night, for the past year, making incredible changes to our website and business so that we all can benefit. We're officially ready for a more sustainable climb up the mountain of online retail perfection. Attached to this blog post is an article that I did with BusinessWeek. Hope you enjoy and see you soon!

Openyard Supports Tour De Cure : Fight Against Diabetes

2007-03-06T18:02:00.001-05:00

We believe that sports prepare us for the ups and downs of life. They teach us how to celebrate during the good times and how to push-on and stay motivated through the tough times. When you play sports, you learn about not giving up without putting in your all. When you leave it all on the field, you can't not feel good about your performance!

But the struggle of diabetes doesn't end with a whistle blow from a referee or the buzz of the clock. People with diabetes struggle on and off the field. They struggle to find insurance and to find foods that meet the needs of their special diets. Diabetes is approaching epidemic levels in the United States. We have friends and family in our community who struggle with it and that's why we've made contributions to support Tour de Cure, which is sponsored by the American Diabetes Association. We also work with a couple people who will be riding in the cycling event which will be held in more than 80 cities nationwide. We wish everyone involved good luck!

It's Snowing On Us

2007-01-23T09:21:00.001-05:00

At Openyard, it's snowing in more ways than one. We're keeping ourselves busy focusing on our customers, taking care of our store and making sure everything is ready to rock-n-roll for the next 12 months. We did, however, take some time to enjoy the beauty of the fluffy white stuff gathering outside so I took a nice picture. I plan on taking more Openyard pictures now. I decided this over the past weekend when I was walking in the Boston Common (their Central Park) and saw a bunch of kids have a great soccer match with the Pugg 6Ft Goals. I wish I had my camera so that I could post some pictures of them playing on our website. It's so nice to see the products we sell being used on the Open Yard's of life!

OpenYard Supplies the 2006 Bayou Classic

2006-11-19T23:04:00.000-05:00

[Taken by Justin Pfister]

Our Field Goal posts are in the Louisiana Superdome!

This year OpenYard is an official supplier of the 2006 Bayou Classic which is being sponsored by State Farm insurance. State Farm asked us to make custom field goal posts with their logo on them for this event. This is by far the largest venue that OpenYard has had the opportunity to equip. We are so thankful and wish the best luck to all the players, staff and fans. We'll be watching this on NBC Sports on Nov. 25. We'll try and record it and show a video of the goal post pads in action!

Most Threatening Soccer Player in the Country

2006-11-03T20:18:00.000-05:00

[Taken by osbock]

This is one great picture from Halloween!

So who thinks they can dribble around this monster without getting their foot chomped off? I'm sure there's no soccer ball in this picture because it was eaten 5 minutes ago. It's a shame we can't allow monsters in the World Cup or else maybe we would have won!

Best 5 Funny Soccer Goals of all the Time

2006-11-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

You need to see this video!

We love finding fun things for that OpenYarders' might enjoy. We'd love it even more if this video was filmed by someone in the Openyard community. "Our Yard is Open to your stuff!". If you ever make a video or take a picture of a great goal or an experience with one of our products, please send us it so we can display on our blog.