Now that Out Fitness is 7 months in, with 60+ participants (and several loyal regulars), I’m giving lots of thought to our pricing structure. Can you help me think this through?
Currently, our monthly revenue is covering less than 75% of our studio costs, and we’re about 50% of the way towards our sustainable revenue goal. I don’t think our pricing is working very well to encourage routine participation, even though we want our community members to keep coming back!
Current pricing situation:
Every workout or class is $6+ and pay-as-you-go for lowest barrier of entry.
Working out frequently becomes more expensive for you, which is a disincentive to build a long-term routine here.
With this model, it is also difficult for me to predict Out’s revenue and plan for future costs.
Our equity goals:
Low and flexible costs for participation, so our community can be as inclusive as possible
Opportunities for more resourced people to contribute more to the collective
Class instructors keep 100% of direct payments (tips) from their participants
Proposal for Partner Plan:
$30 /month (similar to 3-5 pay-what-you-can, private workouts), with ability to cancel and reactivate plan at any time
Partners can book unlimited private workout times and can continue to bring 1 free guest
Partners get $1 off any class (i.e. reserving your class spot is free)
Partner Plan could also be a way to make a recurring donation (i.e. you can buy an extra plan to donate for another community member)
It rewards people who have more money to pay upfront. With our booking system (Acuity), I cannot find a way for participants to “earn” a monthly plan by accumulating their pay-as-you-go workouts.
The plan pricing is not fully flexible – that is, more resourced people can’t choose to pay $40 or $50 monthly even if they’d like to. However, they can still pay extra for their private workout bookings as well as tip their class instructors more.
Partners might claim lots of class spots and then not show up (but we could implement a no-show fee if necessary).
What do you think? This would be our first pricing change since October 2022, so the more input I can get, the better the decision can be.
I like this too!
As for what to do if people miss their scheduled time, maybe there’s some penalty of losing your monthly membership if you miss X number of workouts without prior notification. This could help keep people accountable and the calendar as accurate as possible for anyone that wants to drop in.
I appreciate you point about this being more beneficial for people with funds upfront. Maybe you can offer a way to donate a monthly membership? Maybe a “BODO” offer - buy one, donate one? Not sure how to identify who could use the donated one, but maybe it goes into a bucket of more revenue for you to use so more people can workout for less.
Thanks for sharing this information - we love coming to Out Fit! The Partner Plan would be a great option for us. We are currently on a pause as we recover from a residential move, but we had about 3 months where we were going 2-3 times per week, so the Partner Plan would actually reduce our monthly costs. We are looking forward to coming back! One of our favorite things has been the lack of initiation or cancellation fees, and we like not paying for weeks when we can’t come in. So we might switch into and out of the Partner Plan if that’s okay…We did also like the bulk session purchase where we could pay for several sessions in advance and get a small discount. Would that still be available or would the Partner Plan sort of replace that?
This is so helpful, thank you! That’s exactly the kind of flexibility I want us to have that other gyms don’t. I’m thinking the partner plan would replace the six-session pack, since they’re both priced at $30. But I’m going to keep thinking about it.
All the feedback has been SO helpful, everyone had good ideas I hadn’t considered. Here’s an updated mockup, and I plan for the checkout page to ask for a donation.
