Adapt these best-in-class industry practices to optimise your concept
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to optimize your enterprise – just borrow these best practices from other industries.
1. Dynamic pricing
We all intuitively know that a flight to sunny Portugal is going to be way less expensive during term time and not in the middle of the school holidays. That is because the airline industry has been utilizing dynamic pricing– the practice of flex-pricing based on varying consumer demand for the same product for decades.
Like the airlines, the action sports industry has a service product that has an expiration date. The airlines can’t sell a last minute seat on a flight to Portugal that left yesterday, nor can you sell a session to a consumer for yesterday. Your inventory, as it relates to the volume of saleable sessions is static and built around your opening hours. The value of that session can fluctuate however – to you and your consumer. Leverage the value in whatever direction you need, to make the most of each opportunity.
2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
The phrase exists because it is such standard practice. The museum and attractions industry (and Duty Free shops) always steer foot traffic via a mandatory (and meandering) path through their merchandise. This configuration increases the opportunity for increased sales by all of their customers and places the gift shop as the coda to the customer’s journey.
Footfall can be well-designed architecturally and easily modified in real-time with the appropriate placement of mobile fixtures, merchandise racks, displays, or signage. Configure your enterprise to maximize merch sales opportunities, and display your merch in the eyeline of your customers: on your employees, in the café, above Reception. Merchandise can be an integral revenue stream and its placement is just as important as the choice of what you decide to sell.
3. Join Today!
Going back just a few years, people could count their memberships on one hand: gym, athletic club, church, social club. Now everyone offers a membership or subscription service (coffee, razors, vitamins, etc.)
Subscriptions and memberships create loyalty, which in turn creates ambassadors for your enterprise, as they want to bring friends along. It also creates a culture of belonging, which if you strike the right tone, can build community which again will only strengthen your organic outreach.
Though we wouldn’t encourage this tactic, it is an unavoidable fact, that fitness centers often oversubscribe their facilities, knowing that a majority of its members will not use or underutilize their membership. Prior to the pandemic, 67% of paying members for fitness centers were not actively using their membership. Subscriptions can offer steady cashflow and subsidize the experience for more active users.
4. Learn to Tango!
Cruise Lines employ thousands of employees for months at a time. Their operations are so numerous (and repetitive) that they cross train their staff within and across departments. Your dancing instructor may also be a fully qualified paramedic ready to answer an emergency right as the bossa nova beat kicks in.
Action sports enterprises are best served by a smaller core team of cross-trained individuals. Cross-training, upskilling and flexibility offer an adaptiveness that will help absorb the fluctuations of demand across the day and season. Coaches should be trained baristas, capable of hopping behind the bar during high demand periods in the café. Baristas should be trained to register customers, getting them out and enjoying the activities before they come off for a rest and a brew.
