Turn this Season from Your Slowest Jiu Jitsu Month Into Your MOST Profitable of the Year

Is December a slow month for your jiu-jitsu school?

The Champions Martial Arts network developed a system of events and sales that transformed this time of year from the slowest to the most profitable of the entire year.

The system looked something like this:

• Building year-round expectation of the season into the culture of the school
• A grand holiday event
• Deep discounts in the pro shop and on memberships, often in the form of gift cards, paid-in-full tuition deals, or other gifts
• Retail packages on equipment and uniforms

In the case of Kristine Blackman of Blackman’s Champion Martial Arts, her team succeeded in over $100,000 in sales over this season alone!

Let’s unpack these revenue strategies below.

Membership Gift Cards

Gift cards are the most underrated offering you can have in your pro shop. 

It’s an easy buy. And it’s something that members can purchase for non-members that makes sense: trial memberships, so many months worth of classes, or credit redeemable to fitness or self-defense related gear in your shop.

• Get new members
• Generate a substantial sum of immediate cash
• Channel holiday spending sentiment into your jiu jitsu business

Do it right, though: invest in nice cards that cleanly display your branding. Don’t use generic cards. This raises your perceived professionalism and value, but it also ensures your brand is making touchpoints every time a holder opens his or her wallet.

Holiday Parties

There are several holidays over the Christmas season, the most popular including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Every single one of these is an occasion to host your own gym celebration sometime inside that month.

These and other holiday events should be planned in advance every year. The dates don’t change, so mark out the time, and make sure they happen: they boost the community and make you more money.

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday

Thanksgiving is a fantastic occasion to have a potluck, popularly called a “Friendsgiving” now. This is a great opportunity for members to get to know each other better, and even for some of them to bring along family who might become members, too. 

Overall, though, Thanksgiving is not the real moneymaker: it’s Black Friday. 

To optimize for Black Friday, offer incredible deals on both gear and services for current students as well trial and gift card deals members will want to buy for friends and family to come try your academy.

Want to make a super pro move? Participate in Cyber Monday and give members the option to shop in your online store from the comfort of their own homes. Gymdesk gives you a beautiful, easy-to-manage pro shop in just a few clicks.

Participating in Cyber Monday places your gym in probably the top 1%. 

Christmas

Christmas is a powerhouse of a holiday, combining beautiful aesthetics, charity, gift-giving, warmth, great food, and family orientation.

Unless you live in a place where Christmas isn’t celebrated, a Christmas event should simply be mandatory for your school every year. These parties are so fun and come in an infinite array of themes, such as ugly sweater competitions, bake-offs, white elephant gifts, secret santa, and anything else you can imagine.

For jiu jitsu, there are a lot of obvious or creative interpretations of the Christmas theme. Add a dash of martial arts, or Brazilian culture, or Christmas on the beach, or any number of fun, jiu jitsu related concepts. Or try to combine them all!

You can have a combined party with adults and children. If that seems unmanageable, or you don’t have the room to host everyone, you can do adult and child versions of the Christmas party–or you can rent a facility for it.

New Years

It’s up to you whether to have a New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day celebration with your current members. It could be a nice thing for morale, but coming at the end of the Christmas season, it might cost you more money than it makes.

That said, Christmas is really the holiday where gifts fuel New Year actions. To fully take advantage of the New Years season, you will want to host your own event with the explicit theme of making positive life changes and following through on the New Year’s resolutions.

This type of event can happen anytime in January, giving your staff breathing room between the events in December and the locals a chance to get home from traveling so they can attend in the first place.

To maximize this event, offer a special trial membership to attendees.

Holiday Pro Shop Items and Sale

So many jiu jitsu schools squander the holidays when it comes to their pro shops (or worse, they don’t even have one!). Not only is it the perfect opportunity to run sales, it’s a great time to stock special items and ride the consumer wave around this season.

Here are several tried-and-true pro shop plays:

• Put regular gear on sale. Depending on which programs you run, you have protective gear, gis, rashguards, shorts, t-shirts, and more stocked all year around for student purchase. Take anything that’s moved slowly or you need to turn over before the New Year and mark it down for the occasion. This is especially good for Black Friday and Christmas.
• Stock standard winter apparel from your wholesaler(s). AP, Shoyoroll, Tatami, CENTURY, and many other common wholesalers all have Fall and Winter lines. Stocking these for the gearheads is good practice at any time during these seasons, but will help you sell even more pro shop inventory when you can mark them down a little bit for Christmas.
• Stock holiday-themed novelties. Some wholesalers keep these items in their catalogs just for this. If not, you can find a place to get these cheap and sell for a healthy markup. I’m talking tree ornaments, keychains, magnets, and anything themed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and beyond.
• Sell special edition holiday apparel. This could be as simple as a single design brought back every year, or a new design every year, both create scarcity and are topical to the season and thus create desire. In fact, just about any popular holiday throughout the year is a good candidate for this.

Be sure to make your pro shop look different for this time of year. It’s common for schools to keep their pro shops organized the same way for so long that members become blind to it, sort of like the ad blindness phenomenon on Google or in magazines. 

You also need to let your students know about these sales and items before and during the sales–often. Advertise after classes, put up special signage, and send emails and text messages alerting members to the sales you’re running periodically until they’re finished.

Send Christmas Cards

Some school owners and their staff hand sign 200+ Christmas cards to send out to their members. It’s not so much about making money as it is showing your members how much you care. 

The result of this, however, is greater retention. It’s easier to keep a member than to acquire a new one. Be thankful for your members, and show your thankfulness to them in these small gestures.

There are several companies that can help you design and print tasteful holiday cards. I recommend signing them all with your own hand or someone recognizable on staff. If you can afford it, include a small gift like an ornament or a treat like cookies.

Conclusion

Is December draining your jiu jitsu school’s revenue? The Champions Martial Arts network cracked the code, transforming this notoriously slow period into their most profitable season through a calculated system of events and sales—one school even pulled in over $100,000!

Here’s the playbook: 

• Gift Cards. The most underrated offering in your pro shop. They are an easy way to get immediate cash flow, attract new members (via trial memberships), and channel holiday spending into your business.
• Holiday Events. Plan events for every major holiday. Events should leverage these holidays, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, by offering compelling deals to drive sales.
• Pro Shop Sales. Don’t squander the holidays! Actively run sales, especially on slower-moving items, and stock special seasonal apparel and holiday-themed novelties (e.g., ornaments). Change the shop’s look and advertise sales frequently to combat “ad blindness.”

Finally, send cards. No advertising or sales or offers. This is primarily a gesture of gratitude and care. But human actions also lead to greater member retention. Embody your martial arts teachings, and model them for your students.