Meet Duane Gurule of Battle Zone in West Denver

Today we’d like to introduce you to Duane Gurule.

Duane, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
In 2015, while a Computer Info Systems student at MSU-Denver, I develop a business plan for an Entrepreneurship course. Through this project, I created this business idea and performed the market research necessary to prove feasibility and support my plan. The assignment was turned in I received a grade and you would think that was that.

Well after doing all that semester-long research I actually convinced myself that this business was viable and would be a fun business to lead. On March 3, 2015, at about 8 pm, I registered the business with the State and by 5 am the next morning I had all of the company logo and letterhead designed, business cards, flyers and t-shirts ordered, and had a fully functional website launched.

Within two or three weeks we had our first event booked and on April 14th we hosted our first event at Cook Park in Denver.

Since then we have expanded to four service locations across Colorado: Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo/Arkansas Valley, and Pagosa Springs. We have seven year-round employees and another five seasonal employees and mainly employ high school and college students. Over the last 4.5 years, we have hosted over 2,500 events with over 20,000 players.

We’ve had many memorable experiences with our groups and different players such as playing with Wooly the Colorado Mammoth mascot, Singer the Colorado Rockies mascot, doing overnight glow-in-the-dark events, and even hosting a Nerf battle in New Mexico with over 250 players.

We’re looking forward to expanding into Northern Colorado and Grand Junction to bring our unique experience to all parts of Colorado, and in 2020 we’re planning on hosting Colorado’s largest Nerf battle to compete with a World Record held by a YouTube celebrity from Dallas, Texas.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It’s been an overall fun ride. There have been some challenges in working with different parks and rec offices in different cities, and finding ways to streamline the booking process for our customers and also finding a way to make the overall cost more affordable.

It’s also been a challenge expanding and being able to show people in a new area how much fun our games are. When we first started in Denver and Colorado Springs we were able to capture audience from the healthy competition of Dart Warz but other areas had no clue what organized dart tag (“Nerf wars”) was so educating customers through marketing was necessary to grow in those markets.

Please tell us about Battle Zone.
Battle Zone is Colorado’s premiere mobile Nerf dart tag (Nerf war) company and currently the longest-running dart tag company in Colorado.

We specialize in organized dart tags for birthday parties and youth groups. We’re unique because we’re mobile and can bring the fun and excitement directly to our customers.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I could start over I would go ALL-IN. I started Battle Zone as a crazy idea side-project while I was in my senior year of college and while I was working as an IT admin for a local wearable tech company, and once I graduated I joined a national finance company as a Systems Administrator. My career goal was to obtain my degree and dive into the world of IT. Along the way over the first four years, I struggled with divided attention between Battle Zone and my IT career. Finally, in April 2019 I resigned from my corporate IT position to focus on full time on Battle Zone. So if I could do it all over again I would go All-in on Battle Zone sooner!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bznerf.com
• Phone: 3032199776
• Email: info@bznerf.com
• Instagram: battlezone_colorado
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bznerf
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BZNerf
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/battle-zone-denver-6

Image Credit:
Photo by Battle Zone

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