Advice needed for Stone Walls Rock Gym in Idaho Falls
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Have any ideas on how to make the place better? Post it here. |
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Any more details? My rock gym in Monterey was pretty shitty- inattentive staff, boring routes, old equipment. What's your beef? And what do you want - bigger? Better? Better routes? A locker room? Fewer noobs? Better store? Better hours? |
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The owners (non-climbers) approached me and asked for ideas on how the make the place better. How to make the place generate more revenue. Kind of a topic unique to just this one gym. I do like the locker idea. |
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I have climbed at a gym that was at first run by a guy who climbed on occasion, and then later by a guy who is really in to climbing. The difference is impossible to ignore. Management needs to have the love for climbing, and that passion will bleed in to the entire gym. |
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What's their market? That would help determine what to focus on if they're not going to try to generalize. |
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Increase revenue and a better climber's gym can be pretty murky from a business standpoint from my observations. Their largest margin has to be birthday parties. So anything that caters to more parties and kid play-lands would increase volume and more than likely repeat customers. |
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I climb at stonewalls pretty regularly during the winter. Being open sundays would be great. But that is just me personally. More routes/ wall climbing space would help. Advertising would help. Most people I have invited there didn't even know it existed. |
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Not open on Sundays?!? Oh, that must be an Eastern Idaho thing. Probably won't get around that, but that would be one of my first suggestions. Partly the birthday party thing and partly for the climbers who can't get their after work and want a day to climb. Closed on a Monday seems like a smarter business practice. |
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Mike, |
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Has anyone had experience with the TRUBLUE auto belay thing? |
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I worked at a gym in Seattle that had the TrueBlue auto belay. People will love them or hate them, but I don't know of anyone who joined specifically for them. |
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I was at a gym that installed trublue devices. At first I thought it was a stupid idea, since a human belayer is so much better, but after a while I became a fan. First on days when your partners can't make it, being able to run in and get a climbing workout done on your own was great. And second, when doing that, I found I was meeting a lot of new people; if I'm climbing the 5.10 autobelay route over and over, and another guy is doing the same, it's a really obvious thing to say "Hey let's climb together so we can do some different routes." |
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+1 for auto belays |
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kevinhansen wrote:Has anyone had experience with the TRUBLUE auto belay thing? autobelay.com/rockreation in West LA has two of these. i can go in the early afternoon by myself and get my workout in. 45 minutes climbing up AND downclimbing gives me an awesome burn. in and out in 45 minutes. love them! |