Born from the ashes of the popular popup fitness startup Kiwi Sweat,
is looking to reinvent the pricing structure of the fitness world — again.
“The days when you just could get someone in and not give them value are over," Alicia Thomas, CEO and founder at Dibs said. "The hurdles to entry at this point for businesses are much lower than they were. So, the bar for producing value to your customer is higher.”
Not too long ago, you'd simply sign up for a gym membership. That would, inevitably, come with a contract requiring you to pay the gym for a number of months or years. That model incentivized gyms to spend a lot of energy acquiring new members, but not giving a whole lot of attention to their needs after they'd signed the contract.
That model was challenged by the yoga studio/Soul Cycle model that required users to pay for every class a la carte. Because there was no contract, the studios had to ensure a quality product or their clients would simply go elsewhere. They spent a lot of time and effort ensuring they had the best instructors with dedicated following, and made sure their clients' needs were taken care of. And then ClassPass happened.
Studios that were making $30 per client per class, suddenly found their base switching over to ClassPass. Sure, the studios may have got full classes, but they were getting significantly less from each client and their clients were no longer loyal.
That’s where Dibs comes in.
Dibs is a service that prices classes in real time. If a studio has a class that is incredibly popular, say the 6 p.m. class with their star instructor, Dibs' software will price the class as high as the market will bear. Meanwhile, if a studio wants to try out a new time or instructor, Dibs' software will price it accordingly low to incentivize people to give it a shot. Not only does it hold studios accountable, it makes it painfully clear which classes clients really value.
The service is being tested in a handful of studios in London, New York, Boston, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, with plans to role it out to a larger user-base in the near future.
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