Monuments to
Sports Culture
Prototyping a clubhouse that stands out and shows up for sporting communities.
Transactions. Experiences. Communities.
This has been the evolving role of brick-and-mortar sports retail, as relationships with brands deepen and people seek greater meaning from the activities they love.
Most sports shops live in the transaction space, explaining product specs to make a sale. The step from transaction to experience started with specialty retailers, whose proximity to sporting playgrounds meant they could curate events and show (not tell) a product’s advantage. Over time these experiential methods were picked up by major sports brands and became ingrained in stores themselves.
Then came the leap from experience to community: Rapha. They tapped into the pre-ride-coffee and post-ride-beer to blend apparel store and cycling cafe. What started as orchestrated experiences quickly became a lifestyle for people to rally around. A community to be part of.
Today we’re seeing dedicated community spaces, like Knees Up for runners, and Moi Outside or Usal for outdoor enthusiasts. These new ventures are a format that brands are clearly trying to figure out how to collaborate with.
There are now clubhouses for running, cycling, hiking, climbing, skateboarding, skiing and even driving. At forpeople, we helped realise NIO House, the EV brand’s antidote to cold automotive retail. This social meeting space was designed to welcome people into the lifestyle of the brand.
The clubhouse is now a model. It’s the current way for retail spaces to build meaning and community around their purpose. Whilst there’s room for more communities with more subcultural dedication, there’s no arguing the model has become saturated.
We’re already starting to see patterns in the visual language of these houses. There’s an emergence of brand-push (marketeers forcing culture) instead of genuine community-pull (driven by the purpose and passion of individuals coming together). And then there’s over-reliance on the same ideas (events, food/drinks, workshops and other usual suspects).
This leads to a zeitgeist of clubhouse pastiche, and a feeling of sameness that ironically misses the point of community: a place to embrace your niche with like-minded people.
But if sport clubhouses and communities are emerging everywhere, what’s next for belonging? And how can we meaningfully serve these communities?
→ Building a vital community.
→ Building beyond the core activity.
→ Build a lab ethos.
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Building a vital community.
We need community now more than ever. In this era of social fragmentation around a quarter of adults report that they feel lonely. Given the strong link between loneliness and general health, there’s an urgency for connection. People are simply seeking a place where they feel welcome, where they can connect with others.
Our vision for such a space is rooted in shared ideas that bring people together. It cannot be brand-led. It comes from an authentic understanding and connection with a community ideal; a sport, an idea, an ambition, a sexual orientation, an age group, a local fascination. It gives space for people to be who they are, feel heard and cultivate genuine relationships.
This new house is non-elitist. It gives back more than it takes, organising events around sport and the subculture in equal measures. It democratises its culture. It is about promoting values, sharing cultural knowledge and expertise. It might not even sell products at all.
One of the hardest parts of finding a community is knowing it exists in the first place.
It shouldn’t be a best-kept-secret or closed-off to other ideas — we need to get the word out and invite others in. Diverse interests can exist in the same sphere, in a polycultural exchange. Consider the Strada Athletics Club for art lovers, or the singles run clubs emerging in cities across the UK and US. There are sports clubs for women, trans and BIPOC communities. For metalheads, ravers and DJs. Sharing and expanding ideas about sport furthers all communities, in an ongoing evolution that leaves them richer than before.
The sport brings people together, but it’s the friendships and shared experiences that bond a community.
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Building beyond the core activity.
Modern sport is a holistic practice. Whether an individual is striving for professional athlete status or they fancy a more social pace, knowledge beyond the core sport helps everyone improve their enjoyment of the activity.
It’s wellness, but in an ever-expanding sense. Specialist food and supplements, quality sleep, microbiome health, adjacent fitness techniques and mindfulness all attend to sporting performance. The house doesn’t have to do this alone, it could be about building a team of outside experts who offer this knowledge and guidance, incubating a holistic lifestyle within the community.
Then there’s wellness beyond the body – stewardship of our playgrounds. Taking care of where our sports take place builds awareness about our impact, and knowledge on how to tread lighter and improve the quality of our environment(s). Expanding our sense of community to include the environment supports investment in the space – both emotional and practical. This could include the house making sustainable supplier choices, and hosting events like litter collection, or limestone restoration for climbers. There are product challenges that houses and their communities can explore too, like prolonging the life of sports gear or giving it a new purpose.
Developing knowledge can be for now (increased performance, better mental health or reducing post-action aches), or for future generations (protecting spaces to play, and imagining considerate ways of playing).
Building a lab ethos.
While identities used to appear more fixed, we now see people viewing their lives as a series of eras, creating and shedding identities. This can make it harder for brands to grow if they’re anchored in subcultures.
Equally, a community is an evolving entity. Its membership changes, mindsets shift and knowledge develops. The sport evolves, or is challenged by outside influences.
A modern house is a litmus to this. It helps to understand, to open up, to learn from and guide change. A clubhouse is a lab for the future.
This is an opportunity for brands to understand a community through the data it generates. The best times or days of the week to gather, the safest, most fun or challenging routes, or where a product could solve a problem. Testing future concepts is also a huge opportunity. Working with members to understand their needs can lead to product innovation, new in-club experiences or prototyping events. This ushers in new forms of loyalty – where knowledge shared is of greater value than money spent — and unlocks opportunities for the founding athlete to influence their clubhouse’s direction.
Ultimately, the lab ethos can influence the space itself. Finding those signature community experiences and finessing the visual language around them moves a house from sameness to something that feels unique. The community can shape the look and feel of the space, setting their own trends and co-creating its visual identity. Clubs are often setting new sartorial trends, creating killer content or dreaming up their own merch.
This is all about collaborating with a supportive community that gives feedback through words, actions or sartorial choices. It’s inspiration and activation all at once. Tapping into this collective direction will help to build the track ahead.
Whilst there are lots of ways we see the future of the clubhouse evolving, the foundation of everything is the community the house represents.
Understanding people and their passion for their sport unlocks everything else. Too many brands miss this. The next iteration needs a deft combination of human understanding, strategic thinking and co-created experience design.
Our hope (and focus) is to help brands find the lovely idiosyncrasies of their communities. This is how the future clubhouse space will inspire belonging and further the sport itself.
Written by
Simon Daniel
Simon is a Creative Director in our London studio and leads The Body mission – exploring the potential of our bodies through holistic wellness and self-expression, performance sport and bodyhacking.
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