San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
A REAL KICK
Flux: Indoor soccer field has been a learning experience for Zweatit co-owners.
The Zweatit indoor soccer field that Jacobo Rivera and Alejandro Campos operate in a downtown San Antonio warehouse building came about after their first venture didn’t pan out.
The pair, Mexican natives who became friends while living in Houston, developed an iPhone app that allowed users to reserve a time at the gym.
The idea came to them after Rivera, a petroleum engineer, complained that he could never get to the gym while working in the oil field.
“We had, like, 100 gyms already in the system, but we ran out of cash,” recalled Rivera, 36.
They didn’t give up on the app, however. Their next idea was for people to use the app to schedule a time to meet up with friends to play soccer.
“Then, we were like, why don’t we do it the other way?” said Campos, 33. “Why don’t we start with a little place where people can meet up? We learn about the business, and as we get income, we can invest a little bit more in the app.”
They opened the soccer field at 207 W. Cevallos St. in September 2019, six months before the coronavirus pandemic hit. COVID-19 forced them to shut Zweatit’s doors for a few months, but since reopening last July they’ve been forgoing salaries and plowing profits back into the business.
To generate additional revenue, they created a barbershop they intend to lease, bought a food trailer to sell tacos and obtained a license to sell beer.
Rivera and Campos recently discussed the ups and downs of starting a business and operating through a pandemic. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What did you call your original app?
Rivera: It was Zweatit.
Q: How did you come up with the name?
Campos: It’s hard to come up with a name. You just throw ideas, ideas, ideas. The other hard thing with names is most of them are taken with the apps or websites. I think one of his friends said Sweatit. You go to the gym and sweat.
Q: Why did you want to open an indoor soccer facility? People generally play soccer outdoors. Campos: More hours. You don’t get rain, you don’t get too much sun for the kids. You’re always open. More of a private space for events, parties.
Rivera: There’s not a lot of indoor soccer around. This is a different type of play. It’s more quick. If you play outside, it’s (a) bigger (field), more people. This one, people say it’s a little bit smaller (100 feet by 50 feet, but) they get tired in 15 minutes. You’re running. You don’t stop.
(The ball never leaves the field because of the walls and netting.)
Campos: On this field, we play five on five. It’s kind of getting popular here in the United States.
Q: Talk about the search to find this space. How long did it take you?
Campos: We were looking here and in Houston, because he was here and I was over there. We were about to close with some guys in Houston, and then at the end they just kind of backed out. It took us, what, four months?
Rivera: Yeah, three to four months looking for a place. We found a place in Houston, really nice place. It was big, but we needed to buy the warehouse. This one is a rental, so we don’t own it. We kept looking until we found this one. This one had a big beam in the middle of the field. So (we said), it’s not going to work. We were lucky enough that the owner was here at the time. He was like, “No, no, no, that beam is not part of the structure. It can be removed. We can remove it for you. Don’t worry.” So we signed the lease back in August 2019. We opened the place in September 2019. Campos: We had to change the zoning.
Rivera: It took us a while. We were like changing the zoning for a month and a half.
Q: That doesn’t sound so bad. Campos: This being our first business, everything was new to us. Everything that took more than two weeks I guess was long.
Rivera: Alejandro and myself grabbed a hammer and we built this place. We contracted the electric. We’re not electricians. We contracted a guy from Mexico who did the painting. Other than that, Alejandro and myself, we pretty much did the whole thing. This used to be a tire shop and then a meat distribution center.
Q: What were some of the things you had to do to get the field ready?
Campos: It was like an empty shell. The rooms were already there. Basic stuff, painting, floors. Windows. Mostly what took us longer was …
Rivera: The wall. The wall needs to be strong.
Campos: Because people crash into it. It has to be safe. We bought MDF (medium-density fibreboard).
Rivera: We cut the whole thing. We put it to the wall. It took us a while. We couldn’t afford to get contractors. We built the whole thing. We did contract somebody to put the turf (down). But all the sides, we transported everything here. We custommade the front office, pretty much. It was a lot of work. I think I lost 20 pounds. (Laughs). Campos: The turf took us like three months to pick the right one. People are like, “Oh, your field is very nice.” Because a lot of people buy used turf. That is really cheap. We thought about it because it saves you a lot of money. So that was one of the big decisions. We invested in (new) turf and on other things. We got price ranges from really cheap to really, really expensive.
Q: You said you ran out of money on the first app, so where did you get the money to do this? Campos: It was mostly this guy.
Q: So you used your savings? Rivera: We sold our 401(k)s.
Q: How much did you invest? Campos: I want to say $90,000 to $100,000.
Q: Jacobo, you mentioned you’re a petroleum engineer.
Are you still doing that?
Rivera: I’m still working in the oil field.
Campos: That’s what saves us from time to time.
Rivera: That’s how we’re living. Right now, we’re not getting income from this. We’re not getting any money. We’re reinvesting the money. For example, (in March) we paid quite a bit of money to get our beer license. (In April), we paid quite a bit of money to get this food truck. Three or four months ago, we spent a little money trying to get the barbershop going. We’re reinvesting. And finally, hopefully, in a couple of months, we’ll start getting something for us.
Q: Alejandro, do you have another job?
Campos: No. Right now, this is full time. That’s what we decided. It doesn’t look like it’s much. But it takes time to get everything running.
Q: What were you doing before Zweatit?
Campos: I was in another startup
project. It was called Doctors and Doctors. I was working with some guys in Mexico doing telemedicine stuff.
Q: How does the soccer field generate revenue?
Campos: I’ll go through the list. We have kids classes. Starting soon, we’ll have a kids league. We also have adult leagues. Right now, we have three leagues running. $400 to $450 per team. The leagues usually last nine weeks. (Open play is $7 per player per hour.)
Other income comes from rentals. People rent the field. And other income comes from parties. You come just to play, it’s $85 an hour (to rent the field). If you want to rent the whole place for any kind of event, we do $130 an hour. The difference is, when you rent for an event, you can bring like pizza or food, drinks, not alcohol. You can bring balloons.
Q: How late are you open? Rivera: We’re pretty much open 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. every day. And there are a few people who come in the morning to do their personal training. They just rent the fields to do their fitness programs.
Q: What did COVID-19 do to your business?
Rivera: It was really bad. Everybody thought it was going to be one, two, three months, whatever. We did close for three months. We didn’t want to be a part of the spread. So we did close. We talked to the owners of the place, and they helped us out with the rent. We were not making any money.
We got help from LiftFund (and the city), too. That helped us out, too. Finally, (in March and April), it’s looking better. It’s looking promising.
Q: LiftFund’s website mentions you received funding to make building renovations and implement training and standards to ensure staff and customers’ well-being during the pandemic. How much was that?
Rivera: $25,000.
Q: Do you have to pay it back? Rivera: We need to pay it back but it’s at 0 APR.
Q: When you reopened, people had to wear masks, right? Campos: We did require everybody to wear a mask. But when you play, it’s hard to breathe when you wear a mask. So you bring it down, and when you get out of the field, you’re sweating, you’re hot. It kind of complicates things. It was a struggle. We created spaces for people to stay 6 feet apart.
Q: You don’t require masks now?
Campos: When they play, no. Whenever they’re outside (the field), we do require them to have a mask. We are more lenient at the moment.
Q: Do you have plans to do other fields?
Rivera: We’re thinking about it, but we need to get this going 100 percent. Once this is going, and everything works out good, I think it’s a big possibility.
Q: Do you know yet whether Zweatit will be successful? Rivera: As a business owner, you never know, and that’s the hardest thing. You make the decision, but if you don’t make that decision, you’re never going to know.
Campos: Up in the air. At the beginning when we opened, it was like this is really going good. And then COVID happened. You never know.
Rivera: But we have high hopes.