[woodcote]

Bill - that's a big question! I'll have a go...

   

First, our club: Worthing HO Racing (aka WHO Racing), on the south coast of the UK. We'd been running ten years and two months when Covid closed the doors. Our website (with an archive of all our events) is: www.whoracing.org.uk and our Facebook page is here and YouTube Channel here.

In a nutshell, we race 24 times a year in a church hall, designing and building a different track each time. Half our racing is HO scale 4-lane analogue and the other half 1:32 scale Scalextric Digital. Our attendance at each event is routinely somewhere between 20 and 30 racers of all ages, genders, backgrounds and abilities. We've always attracted a lot of 'dads and lads'. If the club had a mission statement it would be something like "fun, friendship and low-cost racing for all".

Now on to your specific questions...

1) What do you do to attract new members?  We do a lot of things, there isn't one magic solution. The main reason for people joining us for the first time is 'word of mouth' - a recommendation of current or former WHO racers. Our active presence on Facebook does attract a few people, as does the occasional (free) article in the local press and using (free) local listings and 'what's on' websites. Each year we produce around 250 full colour A6 fliers (costing about £20) which find their way into local libraries, shops, schools - but are mostly distributed by WHO racers to friends, family, colleagues etc. They have the following year's schedule on the back, so get stuck on racers' fridges and noticeboards.

   

Most years we run either a beginners' series (usually team races in the holidays) or a single very public event. In either case, we publicise these widely, using every free method we can find - media releases to local papers, radio and TV stations etc. If the series or event is pitched with the right amount of imagination and flair, it can get plenty of coverage. We also invest a small amount of money - including the annual flier (one side ad for the beginners series, the other side the year's schedule) and a Facebook promotion. The most we've ever spent in a year on publicity was £50.

We also pick two or three 'outside' events to do during the year - a community festival, library event, slot car show etc. These are hard work with no guaranteed returns in terms of new racers. So we pick events we'll enjoy, which will be busy and might create links that benefit the club in the longer term. We get a lot of requests and we turn a lot of people down. We could be doing public events 52 weekends a year, but that's not what the club is about. If we get one person or one family involved each year from public events we are very happy.

However... The success of any promotional work - or word of mouth recommendations - is what the potential new racer then sees on our public platforms (website, Facebook and YouTube). Does that match up with their expectations? And if it does - and if they decide to come along - does what they experience on their first night match up with what we promised?


2) (Maybe more important) What do you do to keep people coming back to play?    The most important thing is the experience on the night (or during the day on our occasional Saturday events). There's the fun and the friendship - that people can walk through the door, be welcomed (we have a welcome desk just inside the door), get on track with a competitive club car and controller and have an exciting first event and feel they are fully involved in the race and the group. We have a subsidised club shop, but no pressure to buy. There are the club cars and controllers, but WHO racers are likely to loan cars and controllers - and often sell good used kit at ridiculously low prices. And there are offers to help tune cars and occasional tuning sessions at people's homes.

We take email addresses of all racers and email them links to the race report, pictures, video and updated championship tables. These are also ready to view via Facebook. We aim to have all the post-race coverage finished within 24 hours after the race has finished. That creates an exciting buzz for a brief period of time... then back to ordinary life, although we do continue with daily Facebook posts - and then begin to ramp up for the next event with another email 6-7 days before and build-up on Facebook. We have no private 'inner circle' Facebook or WhatsApp groups. What you see is what you get - we are all equal members of the club, whether we've been there ten years or ten minutes.

Another thing that might work is that we keep things stable. Classes hardly change, dates are set in October for the following year and don't change (until the pandemic came along). We avoid the situation where someone might invest in new cars and then they are obsolete the following year. It's slightly different for our digital racing, but we guarantee a new digital class will run for at least three years. In our HO racing we have three classes: boxstock Nascar, boxstock F1 and a 'modified' class more or less equivalent to the US HOPRA Super Stock. Many of our race winners and champions use standard Parma or DS resistor controllers. In the digital racing, almost all our classes are non-mag standard Scalextric, with the only exception a Slot.it Group C class. The modifications we allow stretch only as far as a change of tyres, ballast and body rock. Our Wednesday night digital events start with a club car team race and the Saturdays include a club car 'rotation' race. Fun, friendship and low-cost racing for all...

   


3) What makes your club "special" - so that people want to be involved?   There have been numerous people who've told me our club isn't for them. I have been told we should have one permanent track (like most other clubs, instead of having to learn a new track every time), that 'kids' shouldn't race as equals (they should have their own separate category or events), that the importance of 'banter' means slot car clubs should be men only (we have always had racers who are women and young girls - including race winners and champions) and that because we race HO / digital / Scalextric, we can't be considered a 'proper' slot car club and are no more than a "youth club". Personally, I think all those things make our club special and are reasons why many people want to be involved... although I do accept others want something very different. There are nearly a dozen other slot car clubs within a 100 mile drive  - and choice is always a good thing...

The reality is there are many different types of slot car club. When we were sketching out plans for Worthing HO Racing back in 2009, me and Robin spent important time discussing what we wanted - and what we didn't want. We did want a club that was part of the local community, welcoming to dads and lads (and daughters, mums, granddads etc) and was accessible to people from all backgrounds, especially people with limited financial means. Then we went all out to create that club - and we did a pretty good job of it, I think. It is important we have stuck to our guns and - in the early days - the club was run as a 'benevolent dictatorship' to keep its development on track and ethos coherent. There was plenty of advice and hundreds of ideas that would have made a committee system of running the club very difficult (as I have seen at other fledgling clubs). Now that we have a very clear ethos, structure and routine at the club, we have a 10-person 'organising team' (including women and young people) who help run WHO Racing. On the night, race control is almost always run by a junior racer (under-16) or former junior racer. They do a much better job than us oldies.

   

I hope that helps. Do let us know about your club - or plans for one