Opening Your Own Martial Arts Studio
If you have ever considered opening your own martial arts studio then this article may well be of interest to you. By the way, I am going to stick with the word Studio as it is non political and applies to any style you may wish.
I have been involved in martial arts, boxing, and kickboxing training, teaching and competing for over twenty six years and I have the lumps, bumps and scars to prove it. I have been teaching martial arts and coaching kickboxing for over seventeen years. As you can imagine things have changed somewhat in that time.
What I am going to do is explain to you how “I would” open up a brand new studio starting from scratch. Now I am going to presume that you will have a budget available to assist you with this project as it would be virtually impossible to do it without some kind of investment.
So I will presume that you have all the necessary qualifications, Dan grades etc that will allow you to teach your style of martial arts to the paying general public. The first thing you need to find before going any further is suitable premises. My first full time location was actually an old weights gym that the lease owner wanted to get out of. I went to see his place and I could see that once I had emptied it from all of his weight lifting equipment I would have a suitable and safe place to run kickboxing classes.
I then looked around the town where the new venue was going to be. I needed to see if enough people lived within easy driving distance of my new location to make it a viable proposition. It is no good having the best martial arts studio in the world if no one lives close enough to it to be able to easily drive there.
My first venue was just barely outside the main shopping centre of the town and there was plenty of car parking spaces around the venue, so I was ticking all the right boxes. So once I had satisfied myself that the venue was good, it had plenty people living around that could easily drive to it and they could park their cars easily when they arrived, I would move onto the next step.
The venue is the right one for me so now I need to find out if I can use it for my purpose. I was very lucky with my first venue as it was already a sport and leisure facility. However you will need to check with the local council where you live to find out all the rules and regulations. In most cases it should be easy to get a change of use as long as it is nothing too weird like a church or something like that. (Two friends of mine bought churches in the UK and turned them into martial arts studios).
So if you are as lucky as I was and you are allowed to use the venue for your purpose then move onto negotiating with the landlord. Forget what price they say they want, you need to negotiate to get the best deal for yourself. My first venue was on the first floor situated above a bookmakers shop. I know they were paying around the £5000.00 a quarter for their premises. I was paying £550.00 a quarter and my premises were nearly twice the squared metres that theirs were. I also got three months rent free to help me move in to the premises and get my business up and running. I was very lucky, but the point I am making is to ensure that you negotiate on the price.
So now we move onto the buildings, contents and professional public liability insurances. Also you may or may not need other insurances depending on your state, country, martial arts associations etc. You will have your local knowledge about this and if not you will need to get a business advisor to explain everything to you. Basically you need to ensure that you are completely legal and ready to trade.
Right, now we have the premises we need to ensure that they are fit for purpose and fully equipped to run efficiently as a martial arts studio. In my case I had approximately 140 square metres training area that I had to mat out. So that was my first purchase, get the mats in and getthem laid down. Putting mats down in any building sure does make it look great. Then you will need to buy all of the punching and kicking equipment that you will need. Or maybe you need grappling dummies or whatever but purchase all of your martial arts equipment. By the way, before you purchase any equipment from any supplier, make sure you sing up as a wholesaler now not a trade customer. This will ensure you get a great discount on the equipment.
I looked at my equipment in my studio recently and I have twenty two pairs of focus pads for punching. I also have twenty two individual, extra large hand held kick shields. On top of that I have sixteen kick and punch bags of different sizes, weights, shapes and purpose all fixed to the perimeter walls of my studio. When I opened my first studio, I probably had a similar amount of focus pad and kicking shields to use. However I only had seven kickand punch bag stations hanging from my walls. They were enough though so think about what space you have and what you think you will need.
So now you have your own premises, some fantastic equipment and you are raring to get going with your new business. So what else are you going to need? Well some students would help out with the business model I think. If you are opening up a new studio then it is a great opportunity to stage a Grand Opening Day. There are so many different things you can do here. Later I am going to introduce you to someone who can help you with tons of stuff about this. He can also continue to help you as your business grows. In the meantime here are a few ideas on how to kick it off.
As I said a new studio should have a grand opening event. You will need to get good media coverage for the opening so get your thinking caps on. I would be approaching local radio and television stations to try and get news reports, interviews and community based news that you are going to be opening a new sports facility in the local community and you are going to be helping kids, teens and adults in your new facility. A lot of this you can get for free. I recently paid for two months advertising with my local radio station at $250 a month. I got my jingle played five times a day throughout the day, but I also got three live radio interviews a week with the advertising package. That is great marketing coverage.
I would also get some flyers printed up for the opening day. You don´t want thousands of them because you want to use them for this special one off event. Then get your flyers distributed where ever you think is best in your local community. Now lest look at your local shopping mall or strip mall or whatever you have around your town or city. I have had my best ever recruitment results from getting inside a shopping mall and speaking to the general public. Find out how you can get into your to promote your new studios opening event.
Also remember to look at the local newspapers covering your community. You will definitely need to get some coverage in those. I always ask for a good price on the advertising space but I also ask for an editorial article to be placed in the newspaper. This can be a news story about yourself or your new studio, anything to get the word out there. You could even go out into the town´s shopping centre with some of your students or friends and hand out leaflets to people as they pass you by. You may have to ask permission for this, but find out.
Mass action is what is needed here to ensure that as many different people in your local community know that you are opening a new martial arts studio. Once you have pushed the marketing as much as possible, it is then time to run the event and hopefully enroll plenty of new students into your new martial arts studio. I can give you a rundown of how I have run successful opening days like that in the past. I will write it up later. However please ensure you check out my friend´s page. He has so much helpful information on how to run a great martial arts studio.
As I said I will post more information on running an open day promotion to enroll new students so keep an eye out here.
