Tapping into the lucrative sporting market has long been a popular path for budding business owners, but breaking through an untapped sport is extremely rare, and often twice as tough.
It may be only two years old, but 9 degrees has quickly established itself as Sydney's chief climbing spots. It is one of the city's first bouldering-only gyms, moving away from traditional indoor rock climbing.
"Rather than having a rope tied to you, you actually have your safety provided by big mats on the floor,” explains founder Dr Martin van Eijkelenborg.
“So it's indoor climbing but it's in a much freer way than the usual way. You're free to walk around, you can climb anything you want, you can talk to anyone you want."
Bouldering: in a nutshell
1) 'Bouldering' is rock climbing without harnesses or ropes, and is both an indoor and outdoor sport.
2) Rock climbing will make its Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020.
3) More than 200 people visit ‘9 degrees’ in Alexandria daily.
4) Climbing paths, or 'holds', are changed every week to keep climbers challenged.
5) The tagline for 9 degrees is 'where climbing makes you happy'.
Bouldering: starting from the bottom
Martijn van Eijkelenborg first moved to Sydney in 2000 from the Netherlands. He used his PhD in Quantum Physics as a university researcher, before returning to Holland to run a bicycle recycling business. But the man of many talents quickly wanted to reinvent himself.
"I love climbing, I'm a really keen climber, just recreationally I’d done it for about ten years,” Mr van Eijkelenborg told Small Business Secrets.
“I moved (back) to Holland for a while, and in Holland the indoor climbing gyms were transforming into boulder gyms, all these boulder gyms. Everyone was doing these boulder gyms and they were a great hit, and all the conventional climbing gyms - with ropes - were actually getting really quiet.
“But then whenever I came back to Sydney, because my wife's Australian we'd come here for Christmas, I would just see that there was nothing happening in the industry here, nothing comparable to Europe. So it was pretty clear that there was a hole in the market."
Mr van Eijkelenborg needed the support of seven other investors to found 9 degrees, needing what he described as “half the price of an average Sydney home” to set up.
Dr Martijn van Eijkelenborg, founder of 9 degrees. Source: SBS
"Basically opening this gym was the most stressful six months of my life,” he detailed.
“It's very hard to run a project like that and still have time for your family, and the stress gets quite, all your savings are in it, and other people's savings are in it, like this has to work, and if you go over budget or if your timeline doesn't match up, there's going to be big consequences and that was very stressful."
Tapping into a growing market
Australia's climbing community is growing, and growing fast, with 9 degrees able to strike on the market at just the right time. More than 200 people visit the Alexandria gym daily.
"It's been remarkable that since the day we've opened, we have the same number of new people come into the door every week. I would have expected much more fluctuations based on seasons, but from day one it's been the same - several hundreds of people per week coming through the door, completely new to climbing,” Mr van Eijkelenborg said.
“We do all our marketing to new people, not to existing climbers, mostly through social media, Instagram is very powerful these days so we use that a lot.
"Climbing is not like a fitness gym, it's a sport but also it's a lifestyle, you will not say ‘I'm a fitnesser’, but you will say ‘I'm a climber’. The climbing is part of your being, it's actually similar, maybe, to yoga, which is very centering and empowering. Climbing has many similar effects, where you can build a lot of confidence and really be present."
9 degrees became so popular that in May a second gym opened closer to the lucrative western Sydney market. Competitive climber Jack Masel was put at the helm, having impressed Martijn with his work in the Alexandria gym.
Source: SBS
"Climbing's always been a passion of mine, the last 10 to 15 years or so,” Mr Masel told Small Business Secrets.
“I moved to New South Wales (from Perth) to pursue my rock climbing, and there was an opportunity to do some 'route setting' at 9 Degrees in Alexandria. And I jumped at that."
“(Route setting) is what we call putting all the holds on the wall in a way that's exciting and fun for people to climb. I was lucky enough that he (Martijn) gave me a shot, and when I went in there he liked what I did enough that kept me coming back."
“As the time went on I just got a bit more and more involved, and I think he saw that maybe I was the right person for this position here."
Passion for success
Like Dr van Eijkelenborg, Jack Masel is a passionate climber, and said he is always exploring new parts of the country to climb. It is a passion he has brought to his role as manager of the Parramatta gym, which is beginning to build its own clientele. He called his role a “dream” which he “jumped at” taking.
“It's a slow build, it's going really well. Seeing more and more people come in every week and we have really good member retention,” he said.
"I think it's about trying to get people who aren't necessarily rock climbers and introduce them to this growing sport. The way this climbing community is it's really tight-knit. People, pretty much everyone knows that this gym exists. As soon as we opened we had a lot of people coming in to check it out. And we're just trying to build the community and introduce others to this sport that we love so much."
Like novice climbers, most new business owners face a rocky path before getting a good grip on their target market. But for 9 Degrees, focusing on their passion for bouldering and their customers put them on the fast track to success.
Jack Masel, manager of 9 degrees Parramatta. Source: SBS
"The market is growing so fast that in the two years since we first opened and introduced this concept, there's now four boulder gyms in Sydney, a fifth one's going to open in two months, so the markets growing very rapidly, so we'd be crazy not to open more gyms because the best locations will get snapped up," Martin van Eijkelenborg said.
Expect 9 degrees to open more gyms across the country in the coming years.
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