Not about being secretive - We know we are one of the more expensive gyms. And you also get better facilities, mat space, bathrooms, weight rooms, etc that you don't get elsewhere. Not gonna try to sell you a Mercedes on the phone when you're only looking for Kia prices. It's not intended to be rude or secretive, but it's how higher quality items are sold...
I respectfully disagree - withholding information essential to the transaction is the definition of being secretive. That's your prerogative, but it might lose you my business. If you feel like your facilities are an important part of your value proposition, put up some good photos along with your price. I wouldn't go into a Mercedes dealership that didn't provide pricing guidance, either. Just because I want to know the price doesn't mean I'm shopping at the bottom of the barrel.
And don't kid yourself. You may consider your school to be on the higher quality end of the spectrum, but you're still just selling a gym membership. The kinds of luxury goods and services you're trying to compare yourself to are orders of magnitude more expensive than BJJ and are not aimed at a mass-market clientele.
And if you don't have a little bit of time to check out the gym in person, then we don't feel you're taking the idea of training all the seriously. Put some effort into it and check out the gym in person.
I'm a brown belt and I'm in this art for life. In my pre-BJJ TMA days I helped run a 100+ member school for a decade. I've had enough experience with different gyms to realize that obfuscation around the financial costs is a good indicator of cultural problems in the school. Maybe that's not the case with you, but IMO you're grouping yourself with a suspect crowd by withholding pricing information.
Next level down is a grocery store. You can't drive by and see the prices. The prices are clear once you go inside, but unless you stop and go in, you probably won't know the price of eggs. The casual passerby won't know the grocery store price unless he takes time and effort to go in. This makes comparison on price much harder..
Yes, but we all know that grocery stores compete primarily on price and you can reasonably expect the price of eggs not to vary by more than a few percent between competing locations.
Last level down is the typical price obfuscation hard sell, high pressure fitness contract tactics we all fear. Even once you physically step into the place, you still can't know the price. You have to go through a sales pitch presentation, and even then the price isn't totally clear... The problem is that everyone is naturally assuming if it's not the public website posting top level, that means it's the hard sell bottom level. There's quite a bit of room in between.
Maybe, but there's enough precedent in in the BJJ community that I'm not willing to extend the benefit of the doubt any more. I've trained at famous schools that ultimately alienated me over their one-sided, myopic approach to the business relationship.
I just don't understand how transparency is a negative. I see how there might be some perceived customer acquisition benefits for the owner, but that's really not my problem as a customer and I suspect it's not even in the owner's net best interest as they have no visibility in to the lost business of reactions like mine.