2020 Year End Review
What a wild ride 2020 has been! As I reflect on the past 12 months, a year that nobody could have predicted, I feel grateful to have the opportunity to lead under these unique circumstances.
I am grateful for my team who have so passionately executed and iterated our company plans and trusted in the decisions that have been made. Our amazing staff are the life-blood of the company, and I want to say thanks for each of their contributions.
Last, but definitely not least, I am grateful for you. Our ninja community has continued to support us in so many ways. Without you, we would not be here today.
What I’d like to share with you as this year comes to a close are two mantras that I have repeated to myself and shared with my team ever since this pandemic started:
#1 “We’ll come out the other side of this stronger”
#2 “Find the opportunity within the adversity”
These words have not only been a sense of motivation and hope for me during the many challenges that have been thrown at us this year, but have manifested into more than just words. These words have become reality.
I hope our highlights from 2020 below will help you realize that although times are tough, we will get through this time together. We will come out the other side stronger, and if we are open to it, we will find more opportunities that are born from the adversity caused by this pandemic.
Whether you’ve been to Fitset Ninja once or a hundred times, thank you for your support and patronage this year. We can’t wait for another year of fun, growth, obstacles, achievement and success with you.
Happy New Year, and I’ll see you on the warped wall in 2021,
Tim Gourlay
Founder & CEO
Fitset Ninja
This was a special year for many of our competitive ninja athletes. 2020 was the inaugural year of the Canadian Ninja League (CNL), the first official ninja league in Canada where athletes could compete in regional competitions to gain leaderboard points, as well as qualify for the Canadian National Finals in Vancouver. From the national finals, top finishers could then advance to the Ultimate Ninja Athlete Association World Championships being held in Las Vegas.
After multiple regional qualifiers locally in Edmonton and in other cities across Canada, we had just over 60 Fitset Ninja athletes qualify for the Canadian National Finals! Unfortunately due to the pandemic, both the Canadian Finals and World Championships were cancelled. We did however find out that 20 of our ninja athletes were top 5 for their division on the Canadian Ninja League Leaderboard. Make sure to check out the tribute video below!
One thing is for sure, all of our competitive ninja athletes didn’t stop training when they found out about the cancellation of nationals and worlds. They kept training. Even when the gym was closed they kept training online or at home. They didn’t stop and we know that all the hard work, commitment and discipline is going to pay off. 2021 is going to be a big year for our ninja team athletes. Interested in joining our ninja team for 2021? All details are here.
COVID-19 has put many restrictions on businesses that have forced us to do things a little differently. Although many of the restrictions in place are necessary in order to slow the spread of the virus and get back to normal, we often think about the future when we won’t have to follow these guidelines anymore. I mean who “wants” to wear a mask when doing ninja? Not many. We do it because it’s required and the right thing to do now, but we really look forward to a time when it’s no longer necessary!
That being said, there has been a silver lining with some of these restrictions. After being closed from March-June, we had many ninjas that were itching to compete. Typically, our ninja competitions are a packed house. We have all of the athletes and fans in the building at the same time and a big group course walkthrough for each age division. If we’re being honest, the typical ninja competition consists of a lot of “waiting around” for your time to run. For our very first Fitset Ninja Cup competition that we hosted Sept 4th-6th, 2020, the covid restrictions actually solved some of the challenges that we had in previous competitions. There was an overwhelming response from the athletes that this new format was even more enjoyable!
Instead of all athletes in the gym at the same time waiting around for their time to run, we staggered their entry times into the facility based on their predetermined run time. That meant that each athlete arrived at the facility, got to warm up, ask the coaches some questions, then run their first stage, rest, run their second stage, and then go home. For the athletes, it was a lot more action in a smaller amount of time with way less waiting around.
For the fans, we were able to provide a much better viewing experience and reach way more of an audience by livestreaming the entire event. I’m not talking about doing a little Facebook live on our iPhones; we had a full production crew covering the athletes from all angles, commentary during the runs, a live scoring and leaderboard system as well as our personal favourite, the post-race interviews! We are planning on continuing to develop and improve this new, successful competition format for future events moving forward. Stay tuned as we are rescheduling our Winter Classic competition for early 2021!
After being closed in 2020 from mid-March to June, we knew the last half of 2020 was going to be quite a bit different. We knew the size of our groups would have to be smaller, our birthday and team party business was going to decrease as peoples comfort levels were changing, summer camp registration would decrease and all of our training team cohorts would be limited in the number of athletes we could accept.
One thing we knew we were going to have to figure out when September rolled around was how we were going to replace our school field trips, which historically brought in 50% of our total revenue from September to June.
People often ask what happens at Fitset Ninja during the weekdays from 9am-5pm. Well, now you know. Normally, in the pre-pandemic era, we would host a variety of school field trips for grades one through twelve phys ed classes, sports performance, outdoor education, recreation & sports academies and more. This is not only a major chunk of our revenues, but also a key lead generation and awareness tactic that ensures we have a steady flow of new families hearing about Fitset Ninja. When August came and we had heard from many teachers and school divisions that all school field trips would be prohibited for the year, we knew we had a major problem.
Once again, in times of challenge like this we thought to ourselves, what is the opportunity here? How can we come out of this stronger?
After repeating those questions to ourselves, to each other, to our friends and family members, we started to gain clarity on the situation. We knew that there were thousands of families around the city that were stressed about sending their kids back to school, unsure what to do, or not able to send their kids back to school due to various reasons. While e-learning was an option, for many parents, especially with elementary-aged kids, supporting them in their school work and working full time was not going to be easy. There was a real, serious problem many were facing, and we realized we could provide a solution. Even better, we could provide a solution that could help replace our school field trip business, keep our staff working and ensure Fitset Ninja could remain financially viable!
In one month we were able to convert an additional 7,000 sq ft into a physically-distanced classroom with wifi and power going to each desk. We got our marketing together, built a new web page, hired a certified teacher and an educational assistant, and then we started spreading the word. On September 8th, 2020, we began Fitset Ninja Academy; a safe, AHS compliant space for online learning to help keep kids active, healthy and happy this school year while giving parents peace of mind that their kids will succeed in this new, online learning environment. We now have 20 families who are registered in the academy, and we still have space for a few more! Learn more about the academy here.
This has been one of the coolest projects of 2020 for us. It has literally transformed our entire gym, and we couldn’t be more grateful for AJA Louden and the other artists who contributed to the mural labs project. Here is the backstory on how this happened:
It all began in 2018 when Fitset Ninja first launched in the former Sears space at Kingsway Mall. We had hired some painters (Trevor Peters and Annaliza Toledo of Rust Magic Productions) to paint the columns in the space so it looked a little more “professional” and less like an obstacle course set up in an old empty Sears space. As the painters were completing the job, they noticed the many large blank walls all around the space. They let us know that the commercial painting business was just their side business, and that they were actually professional artists who specialize in large scale murals and graffiti art. As winter was approaching, they asked if they could paint some murals in the space. We happily said yes, and over the next few months Trevor, Anna and some of their friends (AJA, Evan and others) went wild painting epic murals in every corner of the space. As our temporary lease ended at Kingsway, we maintained friendships with these amazing artists.
Fast forward to 2020, when everything shut-down mid March, AJA Louden reconnected with me and pitched me an idea. He asked if I would be interested in him painting some larger than life portraits of all the coaches. I thought this was a great idea, and commissioned him to begin working on the project. During this time, the gym was completely closed, and once again, we had a lot of blank wall space, which I now know is a muralists dream. AJA then brought me the idea of the Mural Lab. He is always looking for ways to practice his craft, try new ideas, concepts and experiment and that is exactly what the project turned out to be. We used the Fitset Ninja space as a laboratory for AJA and a few other talented graffiti artists within the city to explore their creative boundaries and bring some colour into all the empty wall space within the gym. These artists had full creative freedom around each of the murals they painted, and the result is spectacular. Make sure to check out the murals and the background on each of the contributing artists next time you’re around the gym!
By Tim Gourlay
When thinking about opportunities that rise out of adversity, this one comes to mind immediately.
It began early April when the gym had already been shut down for about 3 weeks. We thought that this was an ideal time to clean up the gym, paint the floors and rearrange some of the obstacles. If you’ve been to Fitset Ninja pre-March 2020, you would have remembered the green carpet looking turf that we used to have all over the place. Well, this turf was getting pretty nasty, and we wanted to re-paint the floors. We pulled up the turf and just before tossing it in the dumpster thought, might as well throw it up on Facebook marketplace and see if anyone would buy it. To our surprise, in a couple of hours after posting it, we had over 50 responses and was able to sell the ~1500 sq ft of old turf in various pieces for just over $2,500! That was the most revenue we had brought in the previous three weeks since closing our doors. In that moment we thought to ourselves, “Damn, we wish we had more turf to sell!”.
Fast forward a few days, our founder Tim was browsing an online auction site and found that the City of Leduc was auctioning off an entire soccer field of this same turf material. He noted down the date of the auction, set it in his calendar, got online during the auction day and ended up being the only bidder on the soccer field turf. He bought the entire lot for $5,000 (14,500 square feet), rented a uhaul truck to load up the turf and brought it all back to the gym. In one month, we had sold the entire lot of turf and tripled our money! At that point, we thought, “Okay, let’s double down”. We sourced out some suppliers and ended up requesting turf samples from five different manufacturers overseas. After some deliberation on the exact type of product we wanted and some price negotiation, we had pulled the trigger on importing an entire sea container of artificial turf, which arrived in Edmonton late August 2020. Since then, we have steadily been moving and selling this turf out of the back of the gym, and have almost sold out of the entire container!
Fast forward to today, our gym is shut-down, our revenues are just a fraction of what we had originally forecasted and if it wasn’t for this turf revenue, we would be in big trouble business wise. That being said, we are patiently awaiting another order of artificial turf from our supplier overseas four times as large…but not only turf! We are also importing a large quantity of rubber gym flooring, hex dumbbells and adjustable dumbbells, all items that we have researched and validated as viable products for re-sale here in Canada. This time, we’ve quadrupled down and will be continuing this “side business” to ensure that our gym remains financially viable during the uncertainty around coronavirus lockdowns.
Never in a million years would we have thought that the Fitset Ninja team would be selling artificial turf, rubber flooring and dumbbells out of the back of the gym, but we did know that no matter what, we would figure out a way to survive through this pandemic, come out the other side stronger, and instead of crumbling under the adversity, rising up and finding the opportunities.
SO, if you or anyone you know is in the market for artificial turf, rubber flooring or dumbbells (hex or adjustable), please make sure to reach out to tim@fitsetninja.com!
Yes you have heard that right. We are once again working with schools, but instead of them coming to us, we are going to them! We will set up an epic OCR (Obstacle Course Racing) style course outdoors in the school field. All safe, distanced and masked up physical activity in the great outdoors. Think of a Spartan Race, X-Warrior or Tough Mudder, but in the snow and fitting into a regular school block!
This is our most recent pivot that was dreamed up after one of our school customers who was booked to visit our facility early December had to cancel due to the new lockdown. Instead of just throwing in the towel on this school, we figured out what we would need to do to bring an obstacle course to them. We had to make sure that the plan wouldn’t include us having to take down our large equipment in the gym or put a lot of time, effort and resources into setting up a course that would only be used for 60-90 minutes and then taken down before heading to the next school.
We got creative and have a 10+ obstacle course that is made up of walls, balancing, cargo nets, farmer carry, spear throws and more! We were able to set this up for 5 different classes the last week of December before the holidays and will be opening it up to more schools in January. If you know of a teacher who wants to give their kids a fun, physical challenge where students work in teams to conquer obstacles, please let them know to reach out to us!
