Cape Catfish seek success on and off the field

Cape Catfish opens its 2023 season Wednesday, May 31, and Glenn Campbell has joined the Capaha Field-based wooden bat team, featuring NCAA college-eligible players, with a directive to make the operation off the field as successful as it's been between the foul lines.

Glenn Campbell is president and a minority owner of Cape Catfish baseball. Campbell joined the organization late last year tasked with improving the club's bottom line finances.Submitted

Glenn Campbell is president and a minority owner of Cape Catfish baseball. Campbell joined the organization late last year tasked with improving the club's bottom line finances.Submitted

The Catfish joined the 17-team league in 2019 and immediately made its mark.

In the three seasons since — with the 2020 schedule entirely canceled because of COVID-19 — the Catfish have finished as runnerups once and as champions in 2021.

Campbell, who lives in Cape Girardeau, is a retired cofounder of Hat World Lids.

He's a Notre Dame Regional High School graduate who was a member of the Class of 1987 at Southeast Missouri State University.

Campbell stepped in late last fall to take a minority ownership stake in the team and become its president.

His mandate is to improve the team's bottom line.

In remarks earlier this month to attendees of Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee, Campbell talked about challenges and possibilities for the team.

The Southeast Missourian asked Campbell to drill down on those comments.

In your First Friday talk, you referenced the impact of inflation on team finances. Would you tell us more?

I am constantly looking at budgetary items and thinking, 'How do we make {the Cape Catfish} a profitable venture?' This is a privately-held business, and it's not high volume. I was with Lids, and we had stores which did a billion dollars in revenue. The Catfish are a business that's going to do $500,000 to $600,000 in a good year. So that's what we think about. This is more on the scale of owning a successful Dairy Queen.

You have a certain amount of revenue, a certain level of costs and expenses, and then what is left over at the end of a balance sheet. Our goal is to be at least a revenue-neutral business. The Patels, our majority owners, didn't come into this to make a lot of money, because you're not going to make a lot of money with this venture.

I've looked at this thing nine ways from Monday. My directive is, 'How do we get to a break-even status and then into the black in terms of cash flow?'

When we talk about inflation, let's look — for example — at our bus expenses, getting players to and from away games. The first year, we had 30 away games, and in 2019, our bus cost was $42,000. This year, it's going to be in the neighborhood of $70,000. Over a four-year period, that's a significant increase just for transportation. The minimum wage has gone up, and I'm sure insurance has, too. Look at the cost of diesel fuel. In 2019, it was $2.50 a gallon, but at one point it went to $4.10.

Also, when we have a home game, we feed all these kids — ours and the visiting teams. It's a courtesy thing for the home team to do the feeding — whether it be pizza, Diet Coke or what have you. Let's say for a single game, we feed 70 kids. Four years ago, it may have cost $350. Now, it's $700. Our food costs have doubled.

Let's mention uniforms. The last time we ordered them, the cost was $17,000. Now, it's $25,000. Everything seems to have gone up exponentially in four years.

Let's go further. All of our original sponsorship deals were three-year agreements. Yes, it's been four years since 2019, but we lost an entire season in 2020 to the pandemic. Those deals had all ended by the time I came in last year. You go back to everybody and ask them to re-up. We may tell a sponsor a sign they purchased for $1,000 now will cost $1,500 because of inflation. A business or individual who came alongside us originally will tell us they've been hit hard, too, and all they can offer is $800. So, it means the Catfish has to find more sponsors.

We must be more creative with what we're doing. Tickets started out at $7 in 2019, but went up to $9, and we can't get any crazier with that price. So the question becomes, 'How do you get more fans in here?' You've got to do more giveaways, more fun stuff, better food, and colder beer.

Really, for me, when you boil it down, costs have gone up 30%. How do we match that with revenue to keep Cape Catfish a revenue-neutral deal, at a minimum? That's the challenge.

Are there some other costs worth mentioning?

How about this? Medical supplies have gone through the roof. They used to cost us $1,300 for a season, but now it's about $4,000. We whittled that down to $3,100 by using an app. On game day, we were charging $4 for beer before inflation, but I can't raise it to $12 as is the case at Busch Stadium. When you're a small operation, there are limited ways to get creative. If we do a giveaway, we want that to attract an extra 30 people to the ballpark. If you do that, you've raised another $270 that night plus an additional $200 a game in beer sales. Multiply that over 29 games and you've just brought in another $14,000. We're affordable and we offer safe family fun.

Would you say a word about Catfish management before you came on board?

We've been blessed with Mark Hogan, Cindy Gannon and Jim Limbaugh. They started from scratch without one stitch of apparel. They had to find a reliable ticket vendor, plus a guy to make uniforms. They didn't have anything, so what they put together in three seasons is incredible. Where they all got to last fall was seeing how costs have gone up dramatically thanks to inflation and deciding to bring in someone with some business acumen to really push on sponsorships, on doing food and beverage a little better, on improving merchandise sales and making it all a little more profitable. That's sort of where I came in.

Do you have affection for baseball?

I love it. Lou Brock was my favorite Cardinal and I'd sit in the stands as a kid and watch him. Later, I got to meet {Brock} and golf with him. Mark Hogan, our general manager, sits with me about every night and we talk X's and O's, discuss strategy, and that's been fun. When we start talking business, just know they've already done an incredible job here. What we're trying to do is raise the bar a little bit. We met with Adam Kidd, for example, and we'll be selling his popcorn this year. We met with Dairy Queen, and we'll sell Dilly Bars. We've got 15 different food truck vendors to sell desserts during the games. When we put this out on social media, we expect it may inspire 10 more people to come to Capaha and get a game-day ticket. Some of those people may buy a dessert, someone else a T-shirt, someone else a beer. When you add it all up, it's about how many people you can get out to a game.

Are there some ancillary staff in addition to your year-round employees that folks may not realize support your on-field product?

We've got a person doing public address announcing. (Former Southeast Missourian business editor) Jay Wolz will be doing some stories for us. We have a photographer we pay and some bartenders. We have unpaid interns who we will probably flip $200 to $400 per person at the end of the summer, if they've done a decent job, as a thank you. If we could figure out how to do $1 million in this business, then our cost issues are resolved. We're interested in raising the volume and we're putting our heads together to see what we can do at Capaha to make it a little more fun for the kids, for a wife to come out and hang out with her husband, for families to come out and have our players sign autographs, see friends and watch kids compete.

What is your personal bottom line?

I consider myself a winner; I like to win. On the field, if you score more than the other team, you won. Well, I'm keeping a report card, too. If we're in the black at the end of this thing, then we won.

Of note

Andy and Anissa Patel are majority owners of the club, with Jim Limbaugh, Mark Hogan and Campbell holding minority stakes.

The original notion for Cape Catfish grew out of a proposal for minor league baseball advanced during the 2004 Leadership Cape class.

Do you want more business news? Check out B Magazine, and the B Magazine email newsletter. Go to www.semissourian.com/newsletters to find out more.