Hello Sharks, My name is Ron Tramontano. I am from Boca Raton, Florida. I am a Martial Arts Master and focused martial arts entrepreneur.
Q... What is your business product?
My business is the development of an online virtual martial arts competition that when properly implemented will produce revenues in the tens of millions per year for its partners and an equal amount for industry leaders.
Q… How do you make your money?
Sharks, my business model has many revenue streams. However, to keep things simple; I will just discuss one today.
There are approximately 18,000 brick and mortar martial arts schools in the United States today.
Martial Arts school will have an average of at least 150 to 200 students enrolled for the school owners to maintain a store front and pay normal monthly bills.
Shark, martial students are dedicated loyal individuals School Owners, would only need to inform students of intentions to run or participate in a tournaments held online on our websites.
1. School Owners, all over the country would receive our services free of charge.
2. All martial arts students around the country, would pay an annual fee of $25 to compete on our website.
3. Sharks, as in any tournament, there are entry fees, students pay to compete. These entry fees are paid at the martial arts schools or to a PayPal account belonging to the school owner. School owners have the ability to make their entry fees whatever they want in any month.
Entry fee, to tournaments will be the way school owners will generate new found revenue for their schools. From these new developments, advertising dollars, new markets as well as new products and services will ensue.
Student Procedure Is As Follows;
1. Students will use their YouTube account to send videos to; or use the Schools Owners YouTube account, created for this purpose.
2. Students will then create a video under 4 minutes. This can be done anywhere, home or at the martial arts school. If help is needed, making videos or using school facilities, this can also be another revenue stream, for school owners.
3. The student will then want to get their videos off the camera onto a computer. Another option would be to use a smart phone to create and upload students videos.
4. Students will now upload the video to YouTube. Play the movie on YouTube to make sure it is working properly.
5. “Right Click” on their "videos URL" at the top and copy it. Take the copied URL to www.virtualmaschoolowners.com and upload it to the competition.
The whole procedure is fast and streamline.
There are a number of ways your School Owners can choose to find the winners of monthly tournaments.
1. The winners of a tournament can be the students with the most star points, combined with the most views. Each view will be worth a half of a point. For example, if a competitor has 17 stars and 20 views. The competitors overall score is 27 (17 + (20/2) = 27. For this reason, you will want to have your videos on our website as soon as possible to get maximum exposure.
2. School Owners, can designate school instructors to act as Judges by selecting them in the school owners admin. At the end of each month on the 28th instructors will log-
3. As a third option School Owners can opt to choose both options, 1 and 2. In this case, each category can have two winners.
This is just a clickable option in the school owners admin.
Sharks, The Parents love this, no traveling, no buying food, spending money on gas and no time wasted. Overall it’s less expensive and the student is creating something that belongs to them. A video archive of their training.
Students love it! Because, it’s really high-
Sharks, This program, is a monthly “Lead Generating Tool for school owners. Student’s use Social Media, Facebook, G Plus, Twitter to get family and friends to vote for their videos.
Reports are then generated at the end of each month that tell school owner of local friends and family that live in the area but may not have an association to their school at this time.
Monthly estimated income for school owners just depends on what school owners charge as their Entry Fees and how many students they get to participate. Best guess projection show school owners running virtual tournament quarterly will generate revenue between 8,000 and 10,000 dollars per year with an entry fee of just $25.
I am asking for $250,000 for a 30% equity partnership in my company.
Q...How will the money be used?
The money we are seeking will be used to beef up our infrastructure, create our brand, hire employees to develop marketing strategies to teach school owners how to engage to move our success much faster.
Q...What is so interesting or unique about your business?
What makes us unique is my message today and that is to convince you, as a potential partner, the martial arts community is worth embracing. That’s not even to mention our WOW factor and that is, all of our martial arts videos will be shown in 3D theaters sponsored by international companies that have an interest in international markets. The buzz on the Internet now becomes, "hey you have to see this".
Sharks, the Virtual Martial Arts Competition has already taken steps to market our brand to major international corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Sony and LG, to name few.
We are at the next stage of our business plan. Websites have been constructed, and martial arts community awareness has been somewhat established.
Q… Do you have a patent?
I have a patent pending in place.
Sharks, I have test driven and tweaked this model through four tournaments that I have run at my school in Boca Raton, Florida.
Since June of last year, I am happy to say; I have recouped close to $2000.00 of my $20,000, development investment using just my school as a test market with a minimal amount of student volunteers.
Q... Who is your market for this product?
Our market is potentially every Martial Arts Enthusiast around the world.
Q...How did you come up with this idea?
I first started thinking about this in the beginning of 2011.
I watched the trends; it was easy to see everything was moving to the internet. The question became, why should the martial arts or Dance and Gymnastic schools for that matter, be any different?
And I am also happy to say in a recent new development, the board of education may be-
Making it here to Shark Tank is the icing on the cake. I now know whatever happens heretoday, just because of the exposure, this project will fly.
Q... What are your goals here today?
My goal here today is to get all the sharks in a frenzy... getting me more money than I asked for and getting them to take a smaller equity percentage then I had offered.
Q...Tell us what your biggest challenge was so far.
Our challenge will be to teach old martial arts hero’s new tricks.
Q...What does your family and friends think of your business.
I can honestly say that there has not been one person I have explained this business model to that did not feel that the idea is ingenious in concept and execution. A win, win for all involved.
Q...Tell us something interesting about yourself?
As for me and who I am. I like to think of myself as a person who gets things done.
I am an Author of four books. Three of which pertain to the martial arts and one other that deals with the on going problem of Obesity in children in this country. That books' title is “ It’s NOT a DIET, it’s a SAVE it “.
I am also a screenplay writer. I have created three full-
Sharks, I have had some amazing jobs throughout my life.
I have done things like, follow the Pope around New York for week in 1965. I was there when the hostages returned from Iran in 1981. I have even attended a number of Presidential Elections all because I worked for a specialized section of the New York Telephone Company. An area of the company that handled all studio to transmitter links within the State of New York.
But what I enjoy the most is what I do today. I go to work and make a difference in people’s lives, just like you guys do. Every martial arts instructor out there; has students who are dedicated and loyal, and this is what makes this industry worth embracing!
I presently work at West Boca Karate in Boca Raton, Florida; a business I have owned and operate with my wife, Linda, since 1986. Sharks, I am here to make a deal.
