5 minute read
A Revenue Share Revolution: Posh Outdoors
Following the launch of Posh Outdoors, a scalable, boutique luxury glamping platform, International Glamping Business spoke with Nick Purslow, its Co-Founder and Director of Business Development, to learn more about his strategy to bridge the gap between ultra-luxury resorts and midrange operators.
What is Posh Outdoors and what does it offer?
In a nutshell, Posh Outdoors supplies luxury, year-round, unique glamping structures to landowners at no up-front cost to them, in return for a split of the revenue. In doing this, we significantly reduce the capital requirements for landowners looking to get into glamping.
We’re primarily looking to partner with existing outdoor businesses such as wineries, wedding venues and ranches. The revenue share model will allow us to scale significantly faster than if we pursued a traditional groundup development model. Instead of spending months finding raw land, doing due diligence and negotiating a purchase price, the land comes to us, usually with infrastructure in place.
We recently announced our big crowdfunding raise, and more than $100k was invested in the pot within two weeks. We’re speaking to lots of potential investors, and we’re always on the lookout for more as we seek to raise a minimum of $1.2 million.
Providing upscale accommodation to operators with no upfront cost on a revenue share basis sounds too good to be true – how do you plan to make it work?
To give an example, we have our first deal signed with a glamping site that’s already being built in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. Provided we raise the capital, we’ll be sending 20 units and receiving 30% of their projected $2.4 million annual revenue. This would generate a tidy $720,000 in revenue per year for Posh Outdoors – and that’s just one project. The cost of buying and sending the units to our landowner partners will quickly be repaid with the revenue from these types of luxury glamping projects, which is a segment that offers incredible ROI in general.
The luxury glamping segment itself sometimes sounds a little too good to be true, but it’s very real. Our board member, Ben Wolff, exited his 11-unit boutique glamping operation in Fredericksburg, Texas, after just 14 months of operations at a valuation of $7 million. He’s been able to charge incredibly high nightly rates (easily upward of $500) with very few on-site staff. This model of employee-light, boutique luxury glamping is the future, and offers returns that simply aren’t available in other asset classes.
What are you looking for in the businesses that you will partner with? Will they have to be existing tourism businesses?
The good news is that we have plenty of potential partners in the pipeline, as my glamping consultancy (Glampitect North America) and our structure supplier’s business (EJH Distribution) generate a ton of landowner leads. So we can afford to be selective with our partners and locations. We’re primarily looking to partner with existing tourism businesses, as they’ll usually have zoning, infrastructure and footfall in place, but we’re open to any properties that are ‘iconic’ and where the landowner partner is the right fit.
Will they carry the Posh Outdoors brand?
Posh Outdoors will be more of a soft brand. Our name will be a form of quality assurance, and we’ll be able to provide marketing benefits to our partners by having our own listing site, for example. But, because we’ll be operating in such a wide variety of locations (from winter glamping operations in the Rockies to tropical agritourism sites in Florida), we don’t want to impose an overpowering brand on our partners. As long as they’re providing a sufficiently high-quality guest experience, we’ll be giving our partners freedom to develop their own local feel. They know the area and their target audience intimately, after all.
Will you expand beyond North America?
It’s absolutely a possibility, but our early focus will be on the US and Canada, where we have plenty of partners in the pipeline.
Tell us about your first project in Canada?
Provided we raise the capital in a timely fashion, our first project will be called Skyridge Glamping. We’ve partnered with the leaseholder of a truly stunning property in the gorgeous Kananaskis region of the Rockies (very close to Banff), and we’ll be sending 10 “Skybox” tiny homes and 10 Tubbo units. The latter is a truly unique structure, which will be the first of its kind in North America.
Who is behind the Posh Outdoors brand?
It’s a mixture of serial entrepreneurs and experienced glamping industry professionals. Our CEO, Kevin O’Brien, and CFO, Lee Pritchard, have had several multi-milliondollar exits between them in different industries, and have been working on getting into glamping for some time. The team members with a glamping background are myself (owner of a glamping consultancy), Ed Haynes (owner of EJH Distribution, the company supplying the luxury glamping structures) and board member Ben Wolff (owner of Onera, the 11-unit operation valued at $7 million). We also expect to add some exciting industry players to the board in due course.
It truly is a bit of an all-star team assembling in the right industry at the right time.
Posh Outdoors is actively looking for investors. To get involved, head to posh.dealpage.io.
