Business Strategy

Goldfish Swim School seeks to teach kids in a fun and safe environment while emphasizing on their core values. GSS creates an environment where children are brought to their greatest potential as swimmers through activities, interactive classes, and close-guided swim lessons.

Porter's Five Forces

Rivalry - Low

There are only a few places that offer similar services to Goldfish Swim School. These places include the YMCA and New York Sports Club. GSS stands out amongst these options due to it's facility size, intimate reaction with students, whereas places such as the YMCA and NYSC are not focusing on a specific goal or age group. These facilities are more diverse in what they offer and opened to adults more often than children. 

Customer Bargaining - Medium

Goldfish Swim School is lenient towards members of the facility. Allowing members to bring along friends to swim at discounted pricing. The number of children enrolled by each parent also allows for Goldfish Swim School to apply a discount to their membership as well. 

Bargaining Power of Suppliers - Low/Medium

Although the facility may order from only one supplier, the supplier does not have much bargaining power over GSS because they would not be the only suppliers in the industry to sell swim attire and accessories for children. These suppliers would include wholesale and local shops in which kids are able to bring their own swim gear. 

Threat of New Entrants - High

Goldfish Swim School relies on the loyalty of their customers and memberships. It is recognized that there would be other schools offering better pricing and a more flexible schedule than what GSS has to offer.

Threat of New Substitutes - Medium to High

Although there is no exact substitution for swimming, other athletic/physical activities such as soccer, football, karate, gymnastics, etc can be considered an alternative choice for sports-like activities.

Competitive Strategy

Goldfish Swim School uses focus differentiation when providing services to children and their parents. What makes GSS different is their target audience and customer service approach. By only accepting children aged 4 months to 12 years old, they are able to alter their customer service to fit the needs and wants of children. Children rather than adults require much more patience, caution, and attention. In contrast you would handle a child who is approximately 1 year old differently to that of an adult 20 years older. In addition, they also are a swim school that offers modern training equipment and tools that supports their proprietary curriculum. 

As a part of their business strategy, they work hard to keep our customers loyal while accommodating these customers as best as they can. GSS has integrated into their business switching costs which include group lessons by allowing your children to bring along friends for a discounted price, casual every day lessons, and birthday parties to be celebrated at the facility.

Although there are other options parents may choose when enrolling their child for swim lessons, Goldfish Swim School prides themselves on the interaction and the experiences created for the kids by offering swimming lessons through guided play for beginners from 4 months to 12 years old (including infant and toddler swim lessons), as well as offering year-round lessons with a low 4:1 student to teacher ratio. These are ways in which Goldfish swimsuit separates themselves with competitors in the area.

Sales and Marketing Business Process

Goldfish operates in a structured process for sales and a dynamic process for marketing. Their structured process consists of scheduling, make-up classes, inventory, POS system and registration. These are achieved through a software system called physical forms to be completed by a guardian and iClass Pro. The dynamic process is marketing to customers through the social media information systems such as Facebook and Instagram. The sales process is a structured process through the iClassPro software system used for registration and the Scorpion database information system that connects to the POS system for sales. The sale is closed when Goldfish initiates registration through written forms and the iClassPro software used for swim lessons.

How the Information Systems Supports the Strategy

Scorpion and iClassPro support Goldfish Swim School’s competitive strategy because Goldfish Swim School is successful in digital marketing in enticing customers to register for lessons and to appeal to the emotions of a customer who clicked on the website. The objective of Goldfish Swim School is to educate the public, build brand awareness, capture and convert leads by launching the company and its franchise websites. As a result, Goldfish updated its digital marketing strategy to support its network systems worldwide. Goldfish Swim School uses Salesforce as a shared information system in cloud computing for customer relationship management.

Business Intelligence

Goldfish Swim School uses business intelligence through their information system: The Wave. The wave is an application that helps us identify, contact, and sign up new families to take swimming lessons. It also lets us know whee and how people are finding us and in what locations we are most popular.