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masterkatra42
Jun 25, 2010, 6:03 PM
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Hello,
I climb at Rock Ventures gym in Rochester, NY. The owner has tailored the gym to accommodate mostly birthday parties, which is 95% of his business. The other 5% is 160 members who really keep the climbing spirit alive in the gym. We've been having some problems with route setting, safety and member satisfaction, and the owner doesn't really want to hear it. After all, it is only 5% of his annual income.
We have managed to organize a meeting with him coming up in about a week, and I was wondering if anyone has any convincing ways of saying that it wouldn't require much work to pimp the gym out for climbers and it wouldn't scare away the birthday parties.
I want to make my home gym a respectable place for people to climb. Many climbers in this area have expressed an interest in a gym in central NY, Syracuse area. I think Rock Ventures can fill that void if it was a place people actually wanted to go.
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acorneau
Jun 25, 2010, 7:32 PM
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masterkatra42 wrote: Hello, I climb at Rock Ventures gym in Rochester, NY. The owner has tailored the gym to accommodate mostly birthday parties, which is 95% of his business. The other 5% is 160 members who really keep the climbing spirit alive in the gym. We've been having some problems with route setting, safety and member satisfaction, and the owner doesn't really want to hear it. After all, it is only 5% of his annual income. We have managed to organize a meeting with him coming up in about a week, and I was wondering if anyone has any convincing ways of saying that it wouldn't require much work to pimp the gym out for climbers and it wouldn't scare away the birthday parties. I want to make my home gym a respectable place for people to climb. Many climbers in this area have expressed an interest in a gym in central NY, Syracuse area. I think Rock Ventures can fill that void if it was a place people actually wanted to go.
Ok. 
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rschap
Jun 26, 2010, 1:28 AM
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I just bought a gym that was the other way around, 95% climbers and 5% other business and all I can say is you should try it before you give him a bunch of grief. First off climbers are cheap (and I don’t exclude myself from this), we’re always trying to find a way to climb for free, we bitch all the time about route quality and quantity, and we hate having a bunch of kids around for various reasons safety being the biggest one. Climbing gyms make their money off of beginners, groups and birthday parties the end. Now having said that the reason I bought this gym is so climbers would have a place to climb (mostly when the weather is bad as there is a ton of real rock to climb here in town) and train to make it to the next level. I am doing what I can to bring in the birthday parties and kids groups because that’s where the money is and the overhead on a climbing gym is high. Our plan is to keep the kids and the climbers separate as much as possible but if you come in to climb on a weekend you’re most likely going to have to deal with a bunch of kids. We focus a lot on keeping a balance between the two user groups and keeping them away from each other but not all gym owners look at it the same way we do. I do know that gyms that aren’t in Boulder, Jackson Hole, or other heavily rich climber populated areas can’t make it on climbers alone.
The other thing I wanted to mention is Michael and Julian Bautista started climbing after coming to a birthday party at a climbing gym.
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oklahoma
Jun 29, 2010, 3:42 AM
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If you complain too much and ask for too many luxuries most likely the owner will just increase rates for memberships since that's the only income climbers give an owner.
One thing you can try is to get the owner to buy some volume holds. They greatly increase the variety of routes you can put up in a gym. Try to get people to volunteer to set routes. maybe have a climbing club and once a month the club helps set routes.
Talk to the owner about having one night a week that people with memberships can bring someone with them to climb for free. As we all know, climbing is addictive. Hopefully, those people will start climbing and become members themselves. Thus, additional revenue.
The only thing that's odd in what you said is that you are having a problem with safety. That shouldn't be an issue regardless of birthday parties. For Obvious reasons, climbing gyms are legal nightmares if you aren't covering all your bases. It will take 1 little birthday goer that has a daddy that's a lawyer getting hurt to shut your gym down. Then no more gym for anybody.
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Gabel
Jun 30, 2010, 10:51 AM
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Hei,
I can understand the gym owner on a short term perspective (=$$$). On a long term perspective, concentrating only on birthday parties and such doesn't seem wise.
In Hannover, Germany, a gym had to shut down after two children were fatally wounded and the birthday parties, on which it mainly relied, subsequently stopped coming. The gym - as your gym does - clearly lacked diversification. If you want to be in business for the long term, you should try to satisfy a diverse base of customers, i.e. boulderers, sportclimbers, kids, birthday-parties and so on.
You should try to talk to him about that.
Cheers,
Gabriel
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j_ung
Jun 30, 2010, 12:05 PM
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Gabel wrote: Hei, I can understand the gym owner on a short term perspective (=$$$). On a long term perspective, concentrating only on birthday parties and such doesn't seem wise. In Hannover, Germany, a gym had to shut down after two children were fatally wounded and the birthday parties, on which it mainly relied, subsequently stopped coming. The gym - as your gym does - clearly lacked diversification. If you want to be in business for the long term, you should try to satisfy a diverse base of customers, i.e. boulderers, sportclimbers, kids, birthday-parties and so on. You should try to talk to him about that. Cheers, Gabriel
Tell him, "Sooner or later some kid's gonna die, and you'd better be diversified when that happens"? 
I think it might be a better choice to tell him that there's still some money to made from actual climbers, and then point out some ways he could do that, such as marketing to climbers and other adult-types, technique-based clinics, gym-to-crag classes, designated non-b-day hours, parties with slide shows, music, food, maybe a comp or two... Once he's convinced that climbers aren't quite the financial dud you seem to think he thinks, it's a short leap to a better route budget and a few training apparati.
(This post was edited by j_ung on Jun 30, 2010, 12:09 PM)
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Gabel
Jun 30, 2010, 1:55 PM
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Hei,
I know this sounds horrible. But accidents do happen. If you rely on one economical strategy, you should be aware that you run out of business if this strategy fails.
Take care,
Gabriel
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rschap
Jul 3, 2010, 3:32 PM
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If someone dies in your gym no one will go there, not even climbers.
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johnwesely
Jul 3, 2010, 3:35 PM
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I doubt the gym owner cares about keeping the climbing spirit alive when he makes most of his money from birthday parties.
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I_do
Jul 3, 2010, 5:42 PM
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rschap wrote: If someone dies in your gym no one will go there, not even climbers.
Yes they will
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dindolino32
Jul 3, 2010, 6:08 PM
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I think that it would be best to actually give the owner some ideas to help make the gym more friendly to the B-day people. First off, we have this problem at our gym. Because we set the routes, we just have the areas separate a little. BUT we have had plenty of overlap that causes distress. We are planning on adding additional things for the birthday party people. We want to make a ropes course that can include basically a slackline with another above to grab for balance, and also we want to add a rope ladder made of a static rope. This would allow easy things to hold onto for the climbers with no grip, and leave the wall space open for real climbing. The b-day people just want to be 20-30 feet off the ground, they dont care about the quality of the route. SO they might as well just have additional things to do. Instead of "taking away" their part of the wall.
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