GB Ski Company Looks to the Future
8th February 2021
Last modified on May 20th, 2021
The Tech start-up Maison Sport has launched a crowdfunding campaign in a bid to raise £400,000 as part of a larger £1.4M financing drive. It wants to go global. The company connects skiers and snowboarders with independent instructors, challenging the existing system of ski schools.
It is hoped the funds will enable the independent ski instructor platform to grow, evolve and expand into new countries.
Maison Sport raised £1m at the end of the summer 2020 from a collective of investors, the additional crowdsourced funds will complete their fundraise.
Maison Sport was created to connect people with the best independent and passionate ski/snowboard instructors
- Reducing costs to the customer and improving the learning experience.
- Providing a more profitable practice for instructors, affording them more control over their earnings and teaching schedules.
It saw an antiquated way of booking lessons and spotted an opportunity to solve a problem for customers and ski instructors – using a technology platform to connect the two parties together directly.
Maison Sport offers reduced costs to the customer of as much as 50%, plus provides a more ethical and profitable practice for the instructors, who keep up 93% of the cost of the lessons.
One of Maison Sport’s key selling points is its unique instructor reviews, only left by past customers, which enable new customers to make informed decisions about their lessons.
Maison Sport
Here at PlanetSKI we have been supportive of Maison Sport since its early days as we believe it represents the future and challenges the norm:
It also produces a series of information, interesting and useful feature articles that we have posted about in the past.
Here are a few of them we featured last season:
Top Resorts Off The Beaten Track
Four Top Ways For Kids To Carry Their Skis
Top Tips For Skiing With Children
The tech company started in 2016.
It was founded by three former British ski champions – Nick Robinson, CEO and Co-founder and his brother Olly Robinson, COO and Co-founder, and Aaron Tipping, CFO and Co-founder.
It has 350 resorts on its books and over 1,000 trusted and fully qualified instructors across France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria.
It is now looking to expand into Scotland, Norway, Sweden and Japan.
“We are all passionate ski instructors at heart, which is why it’s so important to us that this business grows but grows in the right way to ensure the best possible experiences for our customers and for our instructors,” said co-founder and CEO Nick Robinson.
“The funding we’ve secured to date, along with the funds we hope to secure on Seedrs, will give the business the boost it needs to go truly global, and importantly, support independent ski instructors who have been hit hard in the current climate.”
Maison Sport raised £786,000 from a combination of an initial Seedrs crowdfunding campaign in 2018 which exceeded target by 135%.
It has had two angel funding rounds in January 2016 and December 2016, which allowed it launch its innovative concept and facilitated early growth.
In the past 6 months, the business has gone from 7 employees to 15 and expects to grow to 21 once further funding is secured.
As the only platform dedicated to independent instructors, Maison Sport has proven to be a game changer for ski and snowboard instructors who can significantly increase their earnings using the platform.
The marketplace has recently surpassed 20,000 hours of lessons taught and prides itself on the site’s 3,100+ individual instructor reviews left by over 70% of customers.
They are placed on instructor’s profile after their lessons and more than 90% of which are rated 5 stars.
See here for more about www.maisonsport.com
And here if you want be part of the crowdfunding project and join the journey: www.seedrs.com
Here at PlanetSKI we’ll let you know how they get on…
