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Kulture

Ashbourne's experience and understanding of the industry, is invaluable.

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Success Stories

Kulture

Ashbourne's experience and understanding of the industry, is invaluable.

Request a Demo

From a Brand-New Gym to a Thriving Fitness Complex in Bristol...

Kulture Gym, located just north-east of Bristol’s city centre in Fishponds, opened with little behind it except the name of their three founders. Lisa, Romane and Josh had all grown up around the area, and they wanted to create a fitness facility that merged the ethos, community and atmosphere of an independent gym with the sleek, professional standards people had come to expect from a health club.

Flashforward and Kulture is now a thriving fitness complex, and we sat down with their Performance Director Kieran to talk about their journey, as well as the role we here at Ashbourne played in it from the very beginning.

The Opening Stages

"When we were first opening up, we were a totally new brand. Like no-one knew us. People knew of us and we were gaining exposure purely because of who the owners are, so we were really lucky with that…But we knew we had to do something to earn people's trust and get them to step through the door."

- Kieran, Performance Director

Reputation gets people interested, and the local reputation of the three founders did some of the legwork. But reputation alone doesn’t put the infrastructure in place required to run a successful fitness facility. Revenue had to be secured, payments had to be processed, membership had to be managed. The challenge was making the leap from ‘promising concept’ to ‘functional business’.

It is a problem Ashbourne has come across many times when an independent gym starts setting up shop. How do you demonstrate your potential when everything is still being setup? Kulture had no finished gym to show off in their promotional material. No members training on the equipment, no photos of a packed class.

"All we had was digital images, so we had to come up with an offer to get them in and commit to Kulture."

- Kieran, Performance Director

It can feel like a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, like neither will be able to exist without the other coming first. But Kulture had a plan, and Kieran went looking for a partner who had done this before.

Searching for a Service Provider Before Opening Day

But why Ashbourne? We certainly weren’t the only operator Kulture looked at, with Kieran asking around the facilities he knew best to understand who was providing their membership management services.

But as he did his research, Kieran kept coming back to the same thing. The membership management services he was most drawn to were the ones doing everything under one roof. We’ve all heard the horror stories that can occur when an independent facility starts using a patchwork of providers, with competing systems, long phone waits, and trouble interfacing across different companies and procedures.

What Kieran wanted for Kulture was one company that would be willing and able to assist with any number of issues.

“One of the things that drew me to Ashbourne was that it seemed like an all in one type of provider. There was the app that is custom, they did entry solutions, so we got the turnstiles but they could’ve put mag locks on the doors if we’d wanted that.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

"We started working with Ashbourne a few months before we opened. They were great with advice about the facility, such as how and when to initiate sales."

- Kieran, Performance Director

"We came up with the 'founders rate', it was the cheapest that Kulture was ever going to be. And we said that if you came in on this rate before a certain day, you'd lock that price in for life."

- Kieran, Performance Director

How Pre-Selling Memberships Before Opening Made All The Difference

And so Ashbourne came into play at Kulture before a single member had walked through the door. With a provider of so many services Kulture would require now secured, Kieran was able to the offer itself. He wanted something that rewarded early belief rather than early caution, so he built a rate around commitment rather than discount and used Ashbourne’s systems to secure early cash flow.

The founder tier was a great success, but the initial influx of founder membership did more than just secure Kulture’s early revenue, it gave the whole team something they hadn’t had before. It gave them proof they had a product that would sell.

The process left quite an impression, and Kieran was quick to recommend it to any independent gym or fitness club looking to setup shop.

“So doing the founding membership and the success it gave us took off a lot of the pressure. It meant that we knew we’d built something and we were talking about something that people wanted, that people resonated with, and that people were buying it because of that.”

DSC05213-1-scaled

"I would highly recommend every gym does a pre-sale. It takes off so much pressure. From when you open the door, you have so many other things going on. You want to get to know and interact with your membership base, there is managing and organising the team. There is a million and one other things that start coming up as soon as you open the gym. So having the pressure off by knowing you've already got X amount of members in, or you've got enough revenue coming in on a monthly basis to already cover your overheads is fantastic."

Signing members up early creates a different problem, though. A pre-sale generates commitments before it generates cash flow you can actually use, and a gym still under construction has plenty of places to spend money. Kulture needed capital before opening, not just a healthy membership list.

“When we started going through the sign-ups we were doing great in terms of paid-in-fulls and memberships coming through, but we needed some capital, and Ashbourne was fantastic in terms of helping us generate that cash through membership sales but then also being able to release some of that back to us so we could reinvest it in opening on time.”

By the time Kulture’s doors opened, the operation already had it’s solid foundations in place. It was launching with a membership base that already existed and revenue that was already flowing. Starting a business from scratch can be a daunting prospect but with a few systems and some advice, Ashbourne had taken the pressure off and given Kulture something tangible to work with in their opening weeks and months.

Making the Day-To-Day Easier

"They've got a dashboard that allows us to look across all the stats. Literally just everything in one, that's what I wanted with Ashbourne."

- Kieran, Performance Director

A big facility with a big membership base will always have a percentage of accounts that fail, that is just the problem with scaling. Luckily over our near-thirty years in the fitness industry, it is a problem we’ve got very good at solving.

“There was the whole debt collection side of things. Obviously with a larger facility and a big membership base, there is always going to be a handful of people whose memberships fail. That then becomes a massive job in terms of monitoring, managing, chasing those memberships and fees basically. Knowing that Ashbourne could do that for us and help with collections.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

By taking that job from a gym’s own team, countless stressful hours can be freed up to be put back into the gym itself rather than payment chasing. Kieran wanted the same principle applied everywhere else too, and it is why the dashboard mattered as much as the collections did.

Good in a Crisis

None of that counts for much if Ashbourne wasn’t there when something unexpected went wrong. After all, any systems provider can operate well in peace time, it is when a crisis forms that they really prove their worth. Kieran had a live example ready when we spoke to him.

“This week, for example, we’ve had an issue with our recovery suite and I needed to be able to communicate that to members, but also to the people who travel down and buy day passes. So I was able to get that out through an e-mail to members through Ashbourne’s system. I put out communications through our app through an Ashbourne system, and Ashbourne’s IT department adjusted what our day passes says, so anyone that is buying one will be able to see that the recovery suite is temporarily unavailable. That way everyone is aware of what is going on, there is no issue with what they are buying and it takes the pressure off the front of house team as well.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

One issue, three separate touchpoints updated within the same week, and none of it inconvenienced the front of house team’s desk. And that is what we believe the phrase “all-in-one provider” is supposed to mean.

"The feedback that we've had around Ashbourne and how they interact with members is really good. You can see it through the e-mail chains that they're really prompt in how they reply not only to us but to members. But they are also really professional in terms of how they interact with us and more importantly, with members."

- Kieran, Performance Director

The Member Experience

"Digital wallet passes are great for our members. If they are anything like me, which a lot of them are, they lose stuff and forget stuff constantly. But one thing they don't lose is their phone. So having a digital wallet pass means that they've always got their membership card with them."

- Kieran, Performance Director

Getting the back-office right is one thing, but what members actually notice out on the gym floor is another. With the help of Ashbourne, Kulture has built a system that allows them to achieve their goal of delivering a professional service while maintaining their independent spirit.

The digital wallet pass is the obvious starting point, because it solves a problem every gym owner will recognise right away.

Kulture then took that same pass and turned it into a growth tool for the wider business, using it to build relationships with local partners in and around the area. 

“What we are currently doing is building up partnerships within the local community and brands as a whole. And one of the ways we can create those partnerships, and get discounts for our members is to be able to use the digital wallet. They can’t share them, they can’t give them to their friends to go get a pass so we know if one of our members goes to a coffee shop around the corner and shows that they can get that discount basically. It has been a great way to get businesses more inclined to work with us and give our members more discounts which adds more value to our membership.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

The same pass links straight into the turnstiles, and that is where the practical and the personal start to overlap. On the practical side, it means Kulture knows exactly who is coming through the door.

“The way the digital wallet pass links up to the turnstiles is great for a couple of things. Number one, it allows us to know whether they have an active membership or whether they’ve defaulted or whether they’ve gone into debt. It allows us to pick that up straight away….We know that there’s only the right people going into the club.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

Meanwhile, on the personal side, Ashbourne’s systems ensure that every member who walks through gets recognised as a person rather than a number.

“But also from a creating a community base, they link-up straight away to the computer screen. You see a picture of that member so we can put a name to a face straight away. It allows us to address each member by their name. Creates more of a connection, helps with retention.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

None of this tech requires complicated staff training. From owning and operating our own facilities, we know that it is the simple and effective tools that can make all the difference in the day-to-day running of a fitness facility. As Kieran suspected before he even contacted Ashbourne, an all-in-one system can make every aspect of a gym’s operations run smoother, from security to small-talk and everything in-between.

“Ashbourne will help with membership collections, membership communications, membership queries, debts, freezes, all of that type of stuff…Entry points, so we’ve got a turnstile system and that works for us, and they help with our website as well.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

Training and Support

Getting a system right on paper is one thing, getting a whole team confident using it under any circumstance is another. Kieran didn’t want to leave that to chance, and Ashbourne was happy to step up.

“So I personally did some onboarding training before we opened via the phone. It was really helpful…Before we opened, Ashbourne came in and did some in-person training with myself and the larger team and that was incredible. Without that we wouldn’t have been able to open as smoothly as we did.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

Different people learn differently, and Kieran was clear about what worked for his team specifically.

“Ashbourne really helped the team get to grips with the software. All the team are visual learners, so being able to see something, go over it (helped).”

– Kieran, Performance Director

Of course, training on opening week is one thing, but support three or six months down the line matters every bit as much. Skills decay and nuance can get lost in knowledge transfer, which is why Ashbourne’s support team is always on stand-by to help out.

“When Ashbourne came in they were super patient with everyone, and even after that if it was a case of ‘oh I’ve forgotten how to do this’ someone from the team knew how to do it. Or it was as easy as picking up a phone and asking.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

The Power of an App

That same instinct for keeping things simple for the team carried through to how Kulture built its member-facing app. Kieran didn’t want six different places for members to check six different things.

"We've got our membership updates in the custom app, we've got class information and updates on there. We've got stuff that we sell in the coffee shop and any information around the coffee shop. We've got membership perks on there so that when members go on they can see what businesses we're associated with and what perks they are entitled to with that…

...And any communications we need to get out instantly to members around any issues going on in the club, any events we are putting on, we can put out there. Also got our trainers on there. Class timetables. There is just so much information on the app."

- Kieran, Performance Director

The same app also solved a problem specific to a facility of Kulture’s size. A big, multi-section gym can be intimidating to walk into for the first time, and Kulture built that concern directly into how new members are welcomed.

“Kulture is such a big facility and there’s so many different sections of Kulture, it can be a little bit overwhelming to new members, so what we’ve done is we’ve broken down the sections into inductions…Each induction is 30 minutes long, free and can be booked via the app. It’s been great for retention and making members feel comfortable and confident in the club.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

Is that a Recommendation?

Kulture’s story is a story we’ve seen play out countless times before, but that doesn’t make it any less special. A group of driven, talented individuals identified an opportunity in their local area to make a difference.

Long before their doors opened, they knew the type of service they wanted to deliver, the service of a professional health club chain with the soul and equipment of a local independent gym.

And so to conclude our interview, we asked Kieran what he’d say to a gym owner who was still weighing up whether Ashbourne was the right call.

“If somebody is on the fence regarding Ashbourne, I did a lot of research in terms of providers out there that do similar. I would honestly go with Ashbourne, they’re super friendly, almost come off with like, a family vibe, a family environment. Someone’s always available, whether it is on the end of a phone, an e-mail, anything like that. They’ve got all different types of departments, from IT to Customer Support, and they’ve got experience within the industry so there is always someone who can give you proper, sound advice.”

– Kieran, Performance Director

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