It’s hard to believe that yet another year is coming to an end, but even with a back drop of financial difficulties in national economies around the world and the gloom seen on the TV each night, the Martial Arts industry has shown an unparalleled resilience. I do believe that the efforts of school owners to rise to the challenges presented by the current economic climate have paid off in 2011and will continue to do so in the coming year.
It is not in the nature of school owners in this industry to be complacent, and we should not. But the facts are that up to September of 2011 we saw a significant increase in customers’ annualised billing and we estimate that this growth will be around 8% on a like for like basis by the end of the year. This is an astonishing achievement for this industry and it continues to give us all confidence for the future prosperity of Martial Arts schools.
At NEST we continue to look for the best ways to assist you to market your business and in the past year we have provided marketing initiatives through a number of national brands. Through this work, it is now becoming clear that many of those brand holders who would have been reluctant to see Martial Arts as a mainstream player in the world of sport and education are beginning to change their view. Our plan for next year will be to continue to promote links with national organisations that will provide a platform to help you to acquire more students for your business – a number of these are in the pipeline and we will provide details as soon as we can.
In the last Newsletter I referred to the changeover to our V3 school management system and this is now live on all customer accounts. This is the platform that we will continue to build on during the coming year and we have extensive plans for enhancement to the marketing tools, reporting and attendance systems as well as a completely new till and stock control development.
Our primary focus in the coming year, in addition to the collection of student fees, will be continuing our efforts to provide processes and systems which will help you to get and keep students; and within the systems developments mentioned above you will see more advances in attendance methods including an iPhone/iPad App and a new bar coding system as well as a completely new marketing management system.
This is an industry with great potential for successful schools and fantastic contributions to local communities, and we will continue to invest in developments to help you.
The next year will continue to see financial issues in all economies around the world and the UK will definitely not be exempt from this. Yet if we continue to focus our efforts on the benefits that Martial Arts can bring to students and have a consistent approach to marketing and customer service, every school can grow and succeed in 2012.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and a successful New Year
Very best wishes
GDT 10/11/11
The
Martial Arts Show Live, returning for the third consecutive year at
the NEC Birmingham. Hope to see you there on 12th-13th of May 2012.
Nest Management will be at Stand 21
No comments:
Post a Comment