I’m selfish

I cant lie to you, I made OpenGym for myself. OpenGym was just a mustard seed that came about when a couple of my teammates and I went to go play in a typical New York City Monday night in January five years ago — freezing. We were on our university holiday break and hoped to get together and do what we love to do — play some footy.

However, thirty minutes in, we quickly realized that the weather would not allow us to enjoy ourselves so we quickly scrambled to find indoor soccer facilities close by that were available on this short notice. I think you see where this is going. It took us about 30 minutes on Google before we found a gym that was able to accommodate us. While I left my friends to figure out the moves for those 30 minutes, I was just juggling my ball daydreaming — “there has to be an easier way to book a gym on short notice,” and five years later… came OpenGym.

I am a relatively introverted and shy individual. I am open and love to joke around with people I know well but am a shell of myself around people I don’t know. I have always feared phone calls — a product of the social media age, I guess — and feel like a burden calling a facliity to book a session. I would much rather hop online to a website and avoid the social interaction, and thanks to the COVID pandemic, work-from-home, and social media, it’s looking like the next generation is the same way. I hope that in a few years, most sports facilities will have online booking on their website and a gym management platform that makes their life easier as well.

Only company that will make your website

OpenGym is the only gym management software company that offers facilities the opportunity to create or remake their existing website with a new one with online booking built in using OpenGym’s Booking API. I hope all gyms and sporting organizations have an online presence. As with all industries, there are those ahead of the curve with a lot of capital, capable of using state-of-the-art tech above the industry standard, while there are those smaller gyms with barely any capital that lag behind. With OpenGym, we plan to bridge this gap, look out for the small fish in a big pond, and ultimately create a facility ecosystem where every gym’s top qualities are noted and highlighted and can use these unique qualities to shine.

Ditching the classic flat fees

We also understand that smaller or non-franchise facilities don’t have the money to fund performant and effective gym management software that charge flat rates by the month. Considering how seasonal the industry of indoor sports booking is, it truly does not make sense to pay the same monthly fee in non-peak season. To help gyms with this issue, OpenGym took a new approach. Instead of the classic flat monthly fee, OpenGym takes a 3% processing fee for every card transaction made through the platform. This way, a gym is never spending money outright to use OpenGym, operating with no loss whatsoever. There is absolutely no risk.

Fight Change

Lastly, we wanted to ensure that gyms don’t feel like it’s a hassle converting their processes to OpenGym. Sign up, gym registration and verification takes 5 minutes to do and importing your current bookings only takes a couple minutes more. No one wants to deal with zoom calls or long meetings out of the way to get something like this started. I personally hate change, and since a kid always preferred everything staying the way it was, scared of the future and change and variability. It’s simply being human — and that is why the commitment is minimal with no fees or subscriptions that you have to sign your life away for and the change is instantaneous and easy, so barely any change is felt and whatever change is, feels like it never happened.

We have big hopes for OpenGym here, and sharing online bookings and gym management is only phase 1 of what is to come. So join us on this fun and rocky journey, let your local sports facility know about us as we move the world of sports booking into the light and we can SIUUUU the future. 🙂

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