After the pandemic and selling our last business, we wondered what to do. My wife and I explored many tradeshows in all types of industry to see what was emerging and also something we were interested in being a part of. It wasn’t until after the third or fourth tradeshow, when we traveled to the 2023 PGA Tradeshow in Orlando, Florida; we truly started to get inspired.
Seeing how far golf simulators have come in recent years was amazing. New technologies, custom room designers and installers, training aids, and more. But what was next? We noticed something because the tradeshow was indoors with bright lights; the vendors had to control the light to display the simulators on their projection screens. Some built rigid enclosures, as seen in a commercial environment or home builds, but others had something unique — inflatable tent enclosures specifically designed for golf simulators. We had yet to see this, and not in the residential space.
When we got home, we wondered if we had space in our house or garage for a golf SIM. House? The room needed to be bigger, and the ceilings needed to be higher. Garage? Nope. It had an attic that restricted the height. Outside? Maybe but then would it only be a cage with a net and no fun, immersive video experience as we saw at the show?
What about those inflatable tents? It was worth a try. We contacted several manufacturers and started designing the perfect residential outdoor inflatable golf simulator enclosure. We shipped it over to the US and tested it for several months. We made several changes to the design and features. We believe we have something very intriguing to offer consumers in our same position with no room for a projector-based golf simulator in their home or garage — create a room anywhere. This is how Backyard 18 was created in 2023.
Toward the end of 2023, All Sports Inflatables was started from the success of Backyard 18. We decided to take that idea a step further and began to look into other sports categories to see what we could offer to residential, professional, and corporate organizations.
From there, we discovered there was a need for inflatable sports cages & nets for a wide variety of sports, which is how we came to where we are today. Through our online store, we offer baseball, golf, and soccer inflatables, as well as sunshade inflatable sports tent products. Plus, we’re working on much more!