I've talked a lot about Smash Champs, the badminton and LAN esports gaming
facility that's been under construction for over a year. And I've given you guys
some glimpses of the progress. But now that we're about to have our grand
opening tournament, maybe it's time to finally let you, citizens of the
internet, see what awaits inside. But
what is it? When will our first public gaming event be? And why is our sponsor
Narwhal trying to open the door? Come on, little fella. I'll show you around
with some help from my very favoriteest person in the entire world. Hi. Hi.
Ivonne has given so many hours to my dream project that I wouldn't dare to
give this tour without her. Also, she knows a lot more about it than I do in a
lot of cases. Welcome to the pro shop. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting this to
be as big of a deal for the business as it was. Um, most centers just they have
a few wares for sale. People walk past them. It's usually a little tiny spot,
too. Whereas, we have this pretty big expansive spot here, but it's uh I feel
like it's helped the brand overall. It feels like a premium space. Having the
big space makes it feel really welcoming and easy to shop, which I think has
helped our sales. >> But the reason it's big is not because
we intended to do that. It was because we had no idea what else to do with this
space. >> Originally, when we started Smash, it
was only supposed to be one unit. So, this whole space here was supposed to be
check-in, concession, um, >> pro shop. >> Pro shop all together
>> and bathrooms. >> Yep. And bathrooms. Yeah, I forgot about that, too. >> And now it's just pro shop and check in.
>> We offer shoe rentals and racket rentals. Or if like most people, you
prefer to play with your own sweaty racket, we also offer reringing
services. Um, a lot of people don't actually realize that the strings on
your racket are meant to be replaced. >> How often are you supposed to replace
the strings? Well, that really depends. There's two things that wear them out.
Time and also use. So, if I'm playing a
few times a week with one racket, I might replace my strings after a month.
Or if they're just sitting on there over time, I'd say after about 3 to 6 months,
they've got to go. Or the other big one is if you make mistakes like I do and
you mish hit, you can break your strings, especially when they're tighter.
>> How often do you blame your strings for poor games? >> I wouldn't. I would.
>> You would never. >> No, that is not true.
What I would of course one thing we haven't really shown much of yet is the
technology behind our center. Every one of our members gets one of these
wristbands and every time they come in they simply scan to check in for their
session
and after a slight delay
>> hey they're checked in. Also, of course,
we're using ubiquity NVRs and security cameras so that we can keep a close eye
on what all is going on both inside the center and outside the center. We have
three different colors of wristbands so that our staff can quickly verify that
you're supposed to be where you are. And we have integration between club
automation, the software that we use to manage our members and ubiquity. So that
with door access control on every single door in the facility, we can not only
say, "Okay, hey, premium members, you're allowed in these areas, you're allowed
24/7 access, but we can actually change that. So for instance, when we're
running a land gaming event on the one side, badminton people are temporarily
not going to have access to it." This is Jaquin
>> coming back out here for a second. Are is this pricing right? That's $15 and
that's $72. >> $80. >> There has been massive inflation in the
price of badminton shuttlecocks over the last five realistically about 10 years.
And at $80 for a tube with just 12
shuttles inside. >> 12. >> It's about $6 per shuttle. And at a high
level, it is pretty typical for a group of doubles players to go through one and
a half to two and a half of these per 21 point game. A traditional shuttlecock is
made out of cork with a leather or a synthetic leather cover and then
precision cut and fitted goose feather.
>> Real goose feather. >> Tradition is nice, but most modern
shuttles, especially anything below the absolute top of the line, is going to be
made with duck feather. >> The advantages of these materials are
that they fly just like a leather baseball is going to fly a little
different from a not leather baseball or football. They fly
as an elite player would expect them to. It >> is there not high-end synthetic
materials. >> They're coming. >> Ah, >> but in the meantime, the best we have
for synthetic materials is at the high end. Still a cork cap,
>> but with a just nylon skirt. I mean, when you look at them, you can really
appreciate the craftsmanship of it. So, somebody weaves all of these threads in
here and applies glue >> and fits all the feathers and then puts
it on a tester to make sure that it runs at the right speed.
>> This string isn't tied like by hand.
>> David, do you recognize this claw machine? >> Is that the one we had at LTX?
>> Yeah. >> Boom.
>> Let's go. 10% off any one purchase up to $100.
>> That's pretty good. I'll be holding on to that. All right, let's head out to the courts.
Of course, we can't get there without passing through what I like to call the
world's most expensive hallway. I actually forget the details of why this
was so difficult to do. Do you remember? >> Yes, I do. So, there's an upper floor
here. And all of that upper floor was supported by beams that went through
here. And of course, the beam went right through this spot right here. So, in
order to move that beam, we had to put in supporting beams and like strengthen
one on that side or something like that. So anyway, it cost a butt ton of money
to do all of that because they had to core all the concrete as well to do it.
>> But the alternative was to have this hallway go like out into the court area
and then back because from a business standpoint, this hallway is probably
going to pay for itself in the long term because exit through the gift shop. Uh
oh, this is our Q&A board. Um, there's actually some questions that need
answering. Mr. Lionus, what does this say? I'll let
you guys leave a comment with what you think this says. And once we've got that
sorted out, we'll get a reply for them.
Our empty concession area. We learned after the fact that if we want to do so
much as microwave a hot pocket and hand it to you or wrap a Costco muffin in
plastic wrap and make that available, we need not one but two sinks. But that's a
project for another time once we have some more money we feel like spending on
it. Oh jeez. Not actually a problem because
our sponsor Narwhal is at the ready. Check this out. The Narwhal Flow has a
self-cleaning mopping system with edge reach extension. This allows it to
extend into edges and not just push dirt
into the corners, which is pretty neat. And for bigger messes, the Narwhal keeps
the mopping water warm, which helps to dissolve any stubborn stains. And
because it uses dual water tanks, one to provide fresh water and the other to
collect dirty water, the mop stays cleaner for longer, preventing dirt from
spreading and preventing you from having to manually clean it nearly as often.
Thanks, buddy. The last thing in here is we've got a nice little counter where
you can watch your kids lesson, charge your phone, do whatever it is you need
to do. And that brings us out to the courts. On the surface, there's not
really much to it. Like any other sports facility, you want a nice open space, a
flat, unobstructed floor. But the devil's in the details.
>> You walk past one of the first details. >> Yes, I do.
>> So, right when you come into the Babon Court, you'll notice that all of these
benches are perfect height for changing your shoes. And all of the benches
behind the courts are the perfect height to actually properly sit and observe
>> and store your bag underneath. >> Yeah. The other nice thing about the observation benches is we've put USB
charging and regular power outlets next to all of them on both the badminton
only side and the badminton/gaming side of the facility
>> on half of them because on this side there isn't. But on this side there is.
So originally we were actually going to have all the benches only on one side
because we were thinking in the future we might put bleachers or something like that on this side if we're hosting
national tournaments or provincial tournaments. >> Well, I don't think I was ever hoping to have enough bleachers for like a
national level tournament, but yeah, maybe provincial level. One option if we
did want to host a highle tournament that requires a lot of seating is to
actually close off some of the courts and then only use the center courts and
put like stadium style seating here. But I'd be really worried about the impact
that that would have on uh both the vinyl top as well as the subfloor. So
this is a multi-layer sport floor that
starts with um the concrete underneath. Then you have a vapor barrier. Then you
have these rubber squishy. >> They call them pucks.
>> Yeah, they call them pucks. They don't really look like pucks. >> Yeah, they have like little teeth and
then a flat surface on top. And they just sit on top of the floor to give it
a little bit of extra bounce. >> Then you've got a layer of plywood. Then
another layer of plywood running the other way so that you've never got
anywhere where the seams perfectly overlap. Then you've got a cushion layer
and then finally a wear layer on top that gives you the grip that you need to
move around confidently on the cord. There was a whole fiasco where our first
sport floors were manufacturing defect,
you know, whatever. I want to give credit to Caliber Flooring Systems. They
stood by their product. They replaced it. They got everything installed for us
and they did what very few contractors do and even though it did cost them
quite a bit in replacing everything, they got us sorted out. So, definitely
shout out them. We switched over to Victor, not necessarily because we
thought the quality was better than Calibers's, you know, not defective
product that we initially approved, but rather it was just because they're BWF
certified and the timeline was the biggest issue.
>> Yeah, they were able to kind of move heaven and earth in order to get them to
us really fast, which was important cuz we were already supposed to be open. Um,
water fountain, tilled filtered water. It actually doesn't cost that much. So,
if you're ever in a sports facility that doesn't have it, um, you know, write
them a a polite little note and say you'd love to have something like this
installed because man, is it ever a differencemaker and it saves so many
plastic bottles. These were a fun one. The intention behind them was twofold.
One was safety in the event that anybody comes kind of like running off a cord
or, you know, trips and face plants into a wall. I wanted a little bit of
cushioning. Can't hurt. >> I don't think it was going to be likely though. If you look at how much space we
have behind the courts, >> I mean, you never know. Some of the lessons and stuff, they'll have the kids
doing laps around the facility and you could easily go flying into a corner.
But the bigger concern was actually more selfish. I get really sweaty when I
play. And two of the walls in our facility that are going to have benches
along them are concrete, meaning that if I were to be all wet and lean against
them, I'd be so cold and uncomfortable.
So, I wanted a wall cushion behind the benches. Uh for me what mattered more
was the acoustic treatments that's inside here. Uh so there was a lot of
reverb or echo in the place and these helped cut that down a ton in addition
to the spray that we put in the ceiling. >> The HVAC guys looked at me like I was
from the moon when I explained that I wanted to be able to heat and cool the
facility without causing any air currents.
They were like okay well
that's not how that works. And I was like, "Okay, but hear me out, okay? What
if we had some kind of extremely lowflow
system?" And they came back to me and they were like, "Duck socks."
>> Duct socks are perforated fabric so that the air that's coming down can be
diffused out very slowly without causing any current that's going around. And one
of the big benefits is especially when you're cooling, if you have a a big
blower that's up at the top of the unit, then it's blowing that cold air out,
which is heavier than the warm air in the facility, and it will fall. And when
something goes down, something else must come up, which will create a circular
air flow. By bringing the cold air all the way down to court level, we can
prevent that. And well, that was the theory. And in practice, it has actually
worked out. >> It's worked out great. >> Like really well. You'll see a lot of sweaty bmon players come and just stand
here because you can feel the air. >> It's pretty nice. And a big part of
keeping the air flow so low was having a ton of them. So, you can actually see
that they're positioned in between every court. And then over on the other side,
they're either between the courts or they're above the doors. That seems like
a good opportunity to talk about the wall color. >> Uh, wait, wait. You just walked by the
power. >> You can't go anywhere in this place without there being something
interesting. In between every court, we've preerrun two Cat 6A network
connections that are home run to our server room upstairs, as well as a total
of four 120 volt outlets. We don't know
exactly what we'll do with these, but what I kind of have in mind in the
future is that each courtside could have
like a TV and you know, God willing,
Jensen willing, we could have some kind of machine vision system that will
automatically scorekeep or something like that. But that's a tomorrow
problem. It's just that if we wanted to try to do this after the fact, it was
going to be impossible. cost a fortune if it was possible at all. Which brings
us finally then to wall color. Um
Jaquan, who you guys met earlier, made
10 trips to the paint store. >> Oh yeah. And then in addition to that, I
think we made another four or five trips to the paint store. >> We tried every stock color. We had them
mixing custom colors. We >> we were here literally at midnight with
all these patches. >> Midnight, please. >> Okay, whatever. even in the morning
holding birds in front of each color patch trying to figure out is is this
the best color >> and we were trying to strike a balance
between, you know, being able to see the birdie really well, but not it being an
eyesore in here. Oh, this is cool. In
between all the courts, um, some cases above the doors, some cases not above
doors, is more power and more networking. And again, uh, praise be to
Jensen Huang. We are hoping at some point to have cameras back here that
will allow us to do the aforementioned automated scorekeeping or whatever the
case may be. In the meantime, we've partnered with Playite. They've got
these RFID scanners that you can put courtside. We've actually got one that
we're triing right now, but the idea would be to equip every court with them
and then players can install their app, scan the RFID, and then they can say,
"Hey, can I download the video of my session?" So, we're working with ZCAM to
send over some of their cameras. And we're gonna get those installed
hopefully before the tournament coming up. Hopefully,
>> all of this might happen sooner than you'd think, though. This is a little project that's being worked on by just
one guy and runs off of his laptop that he uses for training. So, who knows what
the future holds. All the really cool stuff for you guys, though, is probably
on this side. spaced for tables of
gamers to go all the way down this
entire unit are these California standard power connectors that are 250
volt 50 amp allowing each of these to do about 14,000 watts. So pretty much an
entire row of computers alongside Cat 6A
networking which would be at 10 gig and fiber optic networking that we could run
at I believe what we are set up for up there is 25 gig. That would be for each
one of our rows of computers for our Whaleand gaming events which we finally
got our temporary use permit from the city for. And I am so excited to maybe
not announce. I guess we'll have announced it by the time this comes out. But the first one's September 28th.
>> I don't remember the exact date. I just know that I still need the fire department to get in here to approve the
increased occupancy. So, that's what I'm working on. >> Oh.
>> But it should be done in time. They just called me today. >> Okay. >> Yeah.
>> Getting this done was extremely difficult, and I have to take a
significant amount of the blame for that. See, the city doesn't love it when
business owners announce what they're going to be using their building for
without getting a permit for it. Anyway, I think I ruffled some feathers the
wrong way. We ultimately got it sorted out after a long and painstaking
process. I want to shout out Chase, Ivonne, Sean, Colton,
>> uh Jim, and Jaquin helped a lot. Yeah, Ivan of all people, he actually came to
the the city council reading with us to be like a like a non employee and and
talk on behalf of the what gaming means to him and and community.
>> Credit to some people at the city, the people that were a little higher up and
who were trying to increase the amount of things to do in the city really did
help us out as well. >> Yeah, the general manager, um the business relationship manager, and the
mayor were all instrumental in helping us get this over the line. So, I'm so
excited to see you guys there. And we're very happy to be here just because it's
so hard to find a building that has both enough parking and a high enough ceiling
to accommodate a high level of badminton play. Like, let's say for example, I was
playing an attacking shot towards my opponent over here. And in defense, they
wanted to Well, okay, I misit it, but one sec. Sorry, little buddy. And in
defense, they were want to they wanted to hit it up really really high so that
it was hard for me to retrieve it or I had to move all the way to the back.
This ceiling height allows us to do that. Another situation where this can
come up is if your opponent plays a really tight shot to the net. It allows
you to play it to the back without
hitting the net itself. If you have a low ceiling, the only way to get it to
the back is at an angle. But with a high ceiling, you can go up quite a lot
steeper. At the back is the place we don't really love showing people because
it's kind of where our messes go to die. There's leftover stuff from the uh
little test land that we did. There's our sign for taking pictures. Projector
screen. >> Where's the rest of the suffer lens? >> Ooh, I'm glad you asked. That's where
this comes in. Here's our cable whips that are pre-cut and pre-bound to be
exactly the right length to go from our switches at the end of the table to each
gaming station. Shout out Infinite Cables, by the way. Their cables truly
are infinite. There's also some pretty fun archaeological items here. Got a
bunch of heat guns from back when we had like a tube bending station at LTX once
upon a time. Casual Orca plushies. I
found our original sample of what the flooring construction is. So, there's
the rubber pucks. Oh, >> it's not a ton, >> but you'll feel it
>> if you kind of jump on it. >> Oh, yeah. That's way more give than just
wood would be. >> Yeah. Or even just putting like a vinyl
sport floor over concrete. Obviously, we're not just going to have everything
piled under the mezzanine forever. It was actually moved under there so that
we could acoustically treat this space because some parts of it are going to be
set up as like a crafting space. Uh, I
don't know, like run an Etsy shop. What What is it that you do these days?
>> Oh, man. Or either that or we're going to stream or do a craft channel or
something like that. We're figuring it all out right now. But the rest of the
space here is going to be all storage. So, on this side is going to be all of
LTX's stuff. So, you can see all of the chairs that they have set up. And
there's going to be hundreds of seats worth of tables, >> right? Along with all of the gear that
we have over there that we don't get rid of. And then on this side, we're going
to have uh pallet racking uh because of all of So, I think Chase told me he
wanted 10 pallets for LTX stuff. And then Smash Champs needs 30 right now
because of the container of birds that are coming. >> The supply chain for badminton equipment
has not been the most amazing from our experience so far. It's very start and
stop. So, we need to take on a lot more inventory than we originally anticipated
because we can't just draw in small amounts from a local distributor. Uh,
one of the things that won't be here in the future, although they're doing such
a great job that you might actually want to keep them around, is our army of
narwhals that are showing off their dual camera with 10 tops of NPU processing
setup that allows them to respond to obstacles that are in front of them much
more agiley and more quickly than previous solutions. Very cool, right?
>> That one just went around the cup. That was impressive. >> I know, right? >> Will it clean up all of my sawdust over
there? >> Yes. Yes, it will. Welcome to the members lounge. In theory, this is for
our premium members to hang around after their matches. I don't know, maybe watch
some badminton games on the 98 in TV. In
practice, what it is is a place for Lionus to put all of the cool toys that
he doesn't have room for in his house, like an air hockey table.
>> This is the most musical sounding air hockey table I've ever heard. But I know
>> when it bounces off it, it's like a freaking windchime or something.
>> It's so cool. We've also got a pool table. And then because people weren't
really using it in the LMG staff lounge, I moved the Super Checkex game over
here. And
we had some software configuration issues with the uh DIY arcade cabinet.
So, we moved the buy one over here. This was another Lionus has always wanted one
and doesn't have room for it at home thing. >> I think you have room. I think just
doesn't want it in the house. I I lost already.
Again, it's not because I'm good at it that I want one. It's because I need
practice that I want one. >> We even have this ice resurfacer for the
super checks. >> Uh, okay. I don't think that actually
works, does it? >> Uh, not it's made out of cardboard,
>> but not all Flo. >> We'll go look at the gym in a minute. Sorry, David. First, I figure you guys
might want to check out the server room complete with ubiquity RGB.
Let's go. Legitimately useful because it
can tell you the status like what that port is set to. Uh what else do we have
in here? Well, we got our battery backup uh courtesy of Eaton as well as just a
kind of run-of-the-mill desktop computer that's running that PlaySite stuff that
we're still in the testing phases of. We don't know if we're going to settle on that, but that's what we're using for
now. We've also got our NVRs that are handling all of the security and the
oodles and oodles of fiber as well as ample cooling for both the courtside
land events as well as any future machine vision processing that we wanted
to bring on premises corner office for our general manager. Oh, hey Jimmy. He's
in here. >> Uh we're doing a tour. >> Okay. >> Yeah, we decided the tour you did was
actually it was really good. You could see it on flow plane. This is not the
first tour of Smash Champs we've done. It's just the first to be sponsored by Narwhal. Wait a second, Jim. Do you have
your own fridge in your office? >> Yeah. No, it was the one downstairs I
brought and then we didn't eat downstairs, so I brought up here, right? It's just energy drinks, you know. It's
good. >> What? Why did you Is that alcohol? >> Energy drinks.
>> Oh, man. Okay, we'll talk about it later. Which brings us to our final
stop, the gym. It was designed in collaboration with Mr. Luke Lafrenier of
Floatplane and his goal was to have it,
you know, to address the cardio people >> of whom he is not one, but also make
sure that we had at least two options,
even if one of them is just free weights for pretty much every movement that you
would want to do for badminton. >> Cool. >> There were a few things that Luke wanted
that we didn't manage to put in. Like he wanted a grass strip. Um, and I think
that was the main one. But in general,
we did pretty much everything he asked. And when Badminton Insight came out
here, they rated it a 9 out of 10. >> This is pretty sweet. As long as it's
like doesn't get too busy, it's like, I would love to work out here. >> Well, that's why we don't allow anyone
who's not a premium member to work out. Although, there is one exception.
Even though we have enough parking according to the city bylaws and zoning
for the amount of space that we have for recreational use,
we don't. >> But we knew that. So, we worked out a
deal with our neighbors. They don't need most of their parking. They have like
half a dozen people working in their units and they're these size. So, there's like another 45 parking stalls
that are not being used, especially in the evening when they're not even an
office. So, we made a deal. We said, "Hey, I offer free gym membership for
you and your crew. I receive access to
your parking stalls without you guys calling a tow truck." >> That's pretty great. I'm grateful to our
sponsor, >> Narwhal. One of which I think I'm going to have to be taking home for uh
cleaning up kitty litter. See, we've got our kitty litter robot thing in the
bathroom that is closest to our pool, and wet feet and kitty litter is a
pretty bad time. And my kids at best I
can convince them to vacuum that room like once a week. If I had a little
robot to do it, that would actually be a perfect application for something like a
narwhal. Their Narwhal Flow has carpet focus technology that automatically
lowers the brush cover on carpet, creating a high pressure air flow zone
with 22,000 pascals of pressure for deeper carpet
cleaning and has a dualaction edge brush that adapts near corners for deeper
reach. while the dynamic zero targeting side brushes actively release trapped
hair and direct it to the air intake for easy cleanup. You can check out the
Narwhal Flow at the link in the video description. Thanks again to Narwhal for
sponsoring this video. If you guys like tours like this, why don't you check out
the first video we did on this space where it was a completely empty concrete
box. And man,
I mean, yeah, it's pretty amazing the