It’s no secret that climbing gyms are growing in popularity as people look for unique ways to achieve physical fitness.
Spurred on by documentaries like Meru and Free Solo, gyms have popped up in Colorado, offering an inside option for those not quite ready to scale big walls.
When she wasn’t at her day job at TeamSnap in Boulder, Mary Cornfield found herself at these gyms prior to Covid-19. When she got to the gym on her first day, she was surprised to see the person at the check-in desk hand her a paper form to fill out.
Cornfield had spent three years on the sales and design teams TeamSnap, developing solutions to help sports organizations streamline operations and take paper forms out of the equation.
“Getting handed a paper form was kind of jarring,” she said with a laugh.
So, she began researching a solution to help optimize the industry. What she found was that nearly all of climbing gyms in the U.S. and U.K. used the same platform and little innovation was being done to improve the user experience.
She dug deeper and began working on an alternative platform. Then in March, as Covid-19 hit the U.S. and gyms shut down, Cornfield decided to take the project full-time.
Cornfield and her co-founder Wesley Verne built Capitan, a platform designed to streamline operations, improve the customer experience and reduce customer churn in climbing gyms.
While their initial goal was to build a climbing log for gyms, they quickly pivoted as gyms were forced to prepare for a reservation system whenever they were allowed to open. Through some connections, they landed an initial trial with a climbing gym in the U.K.
From the first discussion to the initial rollout, it took Capitan a month to develop the first prototype of its scheduler. In the first month and a half of use, the scheduler facilitated approximately 14,000 reservations and handled roughly $300,000 in transactions.
Since proving its viability, Capitan has been piloting the full platform with gyms in the U.S. and U.K. for nearly a year as they prepare for a wide scale release. Capitan also recently completed Venture for America's startup accelerator; a non-profit organization started by Andrew Yang.
The scheduler is only the tip of the iceberg for Capitan, as Cornfield said they hope to develop a platform that reduces the friction of opening and operating a climbing gym.
One of the key features they’re working on is a Peloton-style engagement feature that recognizes client achievements.
“Nobody starts a climbing gym to be behind the desk and dealing with data entry, but they do start it to build that community. While technology can’t replace community, we think it can augment it,” Cornfield said. “Giving those little queues about someone’s 50th time or even their second time in the gym can help the owners understand their customers a little better.”
Capitan doesn’t bill itself as a one-stop-shop for climbing gym management, instead offering an open API that allows other solutions, like payment processor Stripe, to be used in tandem.
Ultimately, the company wants to be an innovative resource for climbing gyms looking to take their operations to the next level.
“Our goal is to make it easier to manage a climbing gym,” Cornfield said. “We’re building a strong foundation of a platform.”
