Should you discount your martial arts fees in tough times?

Over the last few years, times have been tough in New Zealand and Australia. Many martial arts schools have struggled to grow their membership base as pressure on household budgets has meant that people have prioritised their spending elsewhere. And because we often see ourselves as being in the “discretionary spending” category, we worry about losing students.  

Some schools (ourselves included) have held their fees during this period, absorbing increasing costs, while others have cut their fees. Both methods are effectively a form of fee discounting.

In the “old days,” running a martial arts school was more of a hobby. Nowadays, it is far more costly and complicated, so it must be treated more as a business, whether you do it for personal profit or not.

As somebody who started running a school in the early 90s purely as an amateur club, changing my mindset to treat it more as a business was tough. I still struggle at times. Holding our fees for the last 3 years in the face of ever-increasing operating costs forced me to rethink what we offer to our students and the wider community and why we should value what we do.

At its core, martial arts are about self-defence. While most people will never face a serious life-or-death situation, there is still a reasonable chance of having to use these skills in lesser ways. If the skills we teach can save people from harassment, bullying, assault, injury, or worse, then that is priceless.

However, self-defence is not the only benefit that martial arts training offers. Increased fitness, improved mobility, learning new skills, developing as a person, relieving stress and meeting like-minded people are among the many benefits that we offer. Then you add on the flow on effects that helping people better themselves has on their impact on the wider community.

When we can offer a better service through good training facilities and equipment to help spread these benefits to as many people as possible, we are no longer seen as a “discretionary” spend but rather an essential service that people are willing to pay for.

The argument against this is that many people may not be able to afford to pay if you increase your fees. If people value their training, they will make small sacrifices like buying one less coffee a week, having one less beer on a night out, etc. When I started martial arts training as a university student in the early 80s, I had very little spare money, so I made many sacrifices to afford to train. And most people today who also value their training would do the same.

So, I raised our fees earlier this year. In deciding what our fee increase would be, we also considered what other martial arts schools of our type were charging in our region and what the local gyms charged. We focused on the gyms because they are the closest industry to us. Ironically, most gyms charge more than what most martial arts schools charge—and that is just for equipment use. I think that most of you would agree that we offer much more.

We lost no members. Nobody questioned the increase. Some people even asked why we held off the increase for so long. New members are still joining. Our fees are also the highest in our city.

This tells me that we undervalued what we offer. Our students did not.

If you are struggling, like I was, to increase your fees to keep up with increased costs, then I hope you find this helpful. Taking a professional approach and running your school like a business does not compromise our old martial arts values, provided that the business is run on the same values that we teach in the martial arts.

~ Callum Forbes

 

Callum owns the Upper Hutt Martial Arts Academy in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. If you are like Callum and have trouble transitioning your school into a business, he and the martial arts professionals he is linked to can help you transform your school.