Inside lane.

AuthorPETERSON, ERIC
PositionThe Inside Lane Inc., - Brief Article

KART ENTREPRENEUR COULD ADD ROAR TO YOUR PICNIC

AFTER A DAY'S WORTH OF SALES SEMINARS, THE TYPICAL attendee's brain is mush.

And not every company picnic is a barrel of laughs. John Freudenberger is looking to liven up those corporate events -- with go-karts.

As CEO and founder of Denver's The Inside Lane Inc., Freudenberger is the proprietor of Colorado's only mobile go-kart track. The premise is simple: In a few hours, his company can transform an empty parking lot into a speedway for an employee function.

"They bring high-performance racing go-karts indoors and rent them out to the general public," he explained. "There's roughly 1,000 karting facilities over there."

Wandering Europe after graduating from the University of Colorado in 1997, Freudenberger noticed a cultural phenomenon.

The United States, as you might expect from the eclipse of karting as a popular 1960s phenomenon, is laps behind Europe in the industry, It has a comparatively miniscule 50 indoor racetracks.

So, after a stint at Boeing in Seattle, Freudenberger returned to Colorado with the goal of opening an indoor karting facility. He then engineered a hybrid of the safe, slow domestic kart with its higher-performance, comparatively dangerous European counterpart.

After building four of these fusion karts, he veered off his initial course of action. "I came up with the portable design, and I really liked the idea," he...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT