Come andsee us!ABC Conference
Sheffield
16 & 17 Sept
Ask a climbing wall a hard question and you usually get a shrug. Does a fresh set actually bring people back, and for how long? Does the weather move what people spend on site? Do quicker replies to enquiries turn into more bookings? Is our first aid rate high, or completely normal? These are answerable questions. Almost nobody can answer them, because the numbers sit in half a dozen systems that do not talk to each other, or were never written down at all.
You can wire all of that together yourself. It costs money to set up, money to keep running, and at the end of it you know precisely one thing: how you are doing. Not whether that is any good. PeerVantage began as exactly that job, done properly for a single centre. It is a product now, and it does the joining up for any wall, and then does the part no wall can do on its own.
That last part is why we bother. This is not about walls beating each other. A wall that knows where it genuinely stands can fix the right thing first, and enough of us doing that lifts the standard everywhere: safer walls, better run walls, more people climbing. The competition was never the wall down the road. It is the cinema, the trampoline park and the sofa.
Nobody's numbers are ever shown to anyone.A benchmark only ever publishes once at least five organisations sit in the group. You see the industry's range and exactly where you fall inside it, never another wall's figures, and never your own handed to anybody else.
How the anonymity worksThirty five years of running climbing walls between the two of us. That is the part a software company cannot hire for, and it is why every decision in here was made by somebody who has had to open a centre on a Monday morning.
Twenty years running climbing walls in Southampton, the last ten of them with Boulder Shack. Tim built the custom systems, databases and automations that ran the centre, then rebuilt them properly so that any wall could use them. He funded it himself, which is why it answers to the walls paying for it and to nobody else.
Tim writes the product and answers the email: tim@peervantage.io
Fifteen years in the industry. Sophie was the general manager who opened Boulder Shack and shaped it into a community centre, then left to found Tide Climbing in Cornwall, growing it from Padstone to a second site in Helston before exiting the business she had built. She holds an MBA, has taught A level business at a college in Southampton, and today provides business support to climbing walls across the UK.
Sophie leads business development, and is who you will deal with for onboarding and ongoing support: sophie@peervantage.io
“I have opened walls, run walls and sold a wall. The thing I never had was a clear view of the business while I was standing in the middle of it. That is what this gives an owner, and it is why I am here.”
Sophie Rearden, Business Development Manager
A stronger, safer climbing industry, built by teams who know where they stand.
We want a stronger, safer and more mature climbing industry: one that makes its decisions on evidence rather than guesswork. Most walls still decide in the dark, on gut feel or the memory of one busy Saturday. We exist to change that.
We do it by putting the right information in front of the whole team, from the newest member of staff to the owner, so that everyone knows where they stand, has confidence in their role, and can talk to each other properly. A team that can see clearly and communicate well can move its business forward together.
And when every wall moves forward, the whole industry does. That is the point. This is not about walls beating each other. It is about all of us getting better at the same time, and winning against the cinema, the trampoline park and the sofa.
A climbing industry that knows what causes accidents and how to prevent them, knows how to run and motivate its teams, has professional and consistent staff training, and takes a bigger share of how people spend their spare time. Every wall more profitable, and the industry stronger as a whole.
The mission is what we are for. These five are how we behave while we get there.
When a decision is hard, we ask which outcome we will look back on and be proud of. Firm on standards, fair on people, and no corners cut. Attention to detail is how we show respect for the job.
Privacy, security and protection are the foundation everything is built on, never an afterthought. We are answerable to our customers first, and to the bodies that certify us, and we welcome both looking over our shoulder.
Read Data & SecurityIf something broke, we say so. If we are not going to build it, we say so. If we do not know, we say when we will.
Profit funds the mission; it never replaces it. The right thing for the walls and the industry is the right thing for PeerVantage.
We put customers and each other first, and we take the happiness of the people around us seriously enough to measure it: staff and customers alike. We measure it so we can act on it.
Built for UK climbing walls, and for the industry all of us work in.
PeerVantage™