UPDATE 3
Angel investor helps
Line Drive Sports
to first break-even year
by Beth Ewen
?We had our first break-even year,? says Tom Imdieke, president of Line Drive Sports in Lino Lakes and one of three winners of last year?s Upsize Growth Challenge. ?Most people wouldn?t get excited about a break-even year, but considering where we?ve been??
Line Drive lost $60,000 the year before, and more than $100,000 the year before that. Last year as Imdieke worked with the contest?s experts, retiring debt was one of his main priorities.
The saving grace for Line Drive was a relative who had loaned money to Imdieke, but agreed to convert to an equity stake, and invested another $65,000 as well.
?He?s a 25 percent equity owner,? Imdieke says, adding that the company saved more than $30,000 last year in interest charges. He was able to pay off one credit card, for example, with a $20,000 balance at 28 percent interest.
?Basically, it?s a zero-interest loan. He did it as a favor to me, and to help him on his personal taxes.? When Line Drive broke even, however, ?he didn?t get a tax break? after all, Imdieke says.
Now Imdieke is working to purchase a facility, a domed, 33,000-square-foot building owned by the Minnesota Sports Federation in Spring Lake Park. His current building is 15,000 square feet, and is leased. The cost with improvements will be just over $1 million, and he needs $150,000 for a down payment, then a bank and the Minnesota Sports Federation would finance the rest.
An ex-professional football player may invest, and wants to start football passing and kicking clinics in the new facility, Imdieke says. Plus, 11 high schools are within a 10-mile radius of the new building, compared with about five at the current location, including Totino-Grace, which needs space.
Indoor softball and baseball training would be available, as well as indoor Little League, things that three or four new competitors to Line Drive do not have, Imdieke says. He hoped to close the transaction this summer.
?That?s what it took for me to get over the hump,? he says about the investment in his company. ?It got us to cash-flow positive during my slow season,? so when business picked up he could actually capture the profits.
Tom Imdieke, Line Drive Sports: 651.490.7898; tI1025@comcast.net; www.linedrivesports.com
