Established in 1995, The Castle Climbing Centre has carved a unique niche in the urban landscape of London. Nestled within a historic Victorian pumping station, the facility boasts a captivating architectural design resembling a castle, complete with deep walls and lofty ceilings, perfectly suited to its evolution into London’s best climbing centre.

Climbing was relatively obscure, at its inception, with few facilities available in London. Founder, Steve Taylor, and his partners, saw potential in the space, transforming it into a premier climbing destination. The centre's growth mirrored the sport's increasing popularity, becoming not just a place for physical exercise, but a vibrant community space where climbers of all levels connect, share challenges, and build friendships.

The venue offers more than just climbing walls; it boasts a tranquil garden space, providing an escape from the urban environment, and a retail store staffed by knowledgeable experts who advise on climbing gear and safety. Additionally, the centre offers comprehensive courses led by skilled instructors and maintains a team of duty managers to ensure safety and provide assistance.

“We have amazing courses that we offer instructors and coaches to help people progress or begin their climbing lives. We don't want to be sort of like a robotic gym space where there's no staff member at all. We have people who understand climbing products, their safety aspects, how they should be fitted, and more. It's about the interaction,” said Clive Fitzsimons, IT Lead.

Castle Climbing Centre was grappling with the limitations of its outdated and inefficient point-of-sale systems. Having used an old CRM system, which had an integrated point-of-sale system within, the shop manager decided they needed something better. Not too long after, they discovered Lightspeed.

Not only did Lightspeed provide a seamless integration with their new CRM provider, Capitan, allowing for a smooth flow of information and real-time updates and insights into customer data and behaviour, but Lightspeed allowed them to do so much more.

“Whenever we sell a product to a customer on Lightspeed, it will link back to Capitan so it just made the whole system fluid and gave us insight into what our customers are doing better,” Clive said. “Lightspeed just feels so much more slick compared to the old days. It's a product that I just trust, you set it up, it works, you don't have to think about it too much. Once I've got something set up, I don't really want to have to come back to it. You can forget about it, which is perfect.”

One of the most important considerations, for Castle Climbing Centre, in finding a new point-of-sale system was an open API that could seamlessly integrate with hundreds of different third-party platforms, especially their new CRM system, Capitan. Capitan is a modern climber CRM solution tailored for climbing centres. Lightspeed and Capitan’s integration allows for seamless management of all aspects of climbing centres operations, from inventory and event management, to payment processing and advanced reporting, and much more.

Whether that is real-time insight into both gym and retail performance through consolidated reporting, handling member sign-ups, renewals, and tracking to ensure a smooth experience for both new and existing members, or organising classes, events, and personal training sessions effortlessly from your point-of-sale system.

Clive noticed a huge weakness in their previous CRM system, brought about by COVID; “We had to book customers. Every single customer. They had to have a solid fixed time window. We had to know exactly how many people were in the building,” Clive explained. “With our old CRM system, we could walk off, have a cup of tea, come back, and it would still be loading. Once it finally loaded, it just wasn't coping with the demands. But, Capitan worked beautifully just for that simple fact that it could cope with the demands of what we needed to do. We could offer the memberships we needed to suit customers and ourselves at that time.”

“We are less reliant on the booking, but now rely more on the customer management side of Capitan that performs really well. The way they have integrated with Lightspeed means that now, if a customer has a membership on Capitan, Capitan can automatically drop that customer into a group in Lightspeed, and that group can have a retail discount in the shop automatically as an offering as part of the membership. And, we don't have to think about that. It just does it.”

Lightspeed’s inventory management features have proven to be the greatest triumph for Castle’s daily operations, as well as the quick access they have to products they sell on Capitan. With numerous small distributors and suppliers spread out, coordinating inventory was a daunting task. “All of our distributors and importers are quite small, and there's suppliers all over the place,” Clive said. “Trying to coordinate with what's going where and when can get a bit confusing. The stock management side of Lightspeed has been our biggest lifesaver.”

Additionally, the ease of access to products on Capitan has significantly improved their sales process. “We love the quick access to the products that we sell on Capitan so we can sell our day passes. We can sell a membership and it's just a quick tap on the iPad, and it's done,” Clive continued. This simplicity extends to their cafe operations. “We’re able to sell drinks, see that the customer has a membership, and automatically apply a discount again. It’s been great.”