The holder of the Westchester County franchise for a swim school isn’t necessarily treading water when it comes to expanding.
Owner Gillian Graves said that after opening a second Westchester location at 14 Weyman Ave. in New Rochelle, she and her husband are on the lookout for other potential Goldfish Swim School sites.
Their newly opened New Rochelle school joins a school at 92 Triangle Center in Yorktown Heights in offering year-round swimming instruction for children from four months to 12 years of age, in addition to opportunities for child- and family-oriented recreational swimming, parties and water safety programs.
The franchising organization, Goldfish Swim School Franchising LLC, is headquartered in Troy, Michigan. The franchiser reports that there currently are more than 250 schools open or in development with about 150,000 swimmers splashing in their waters each month. In Connecticut, Goldfish Swim Schools are in Stamford and Norwalk.
“We are hoping to build out at least two more across Westchester as well as Rockland County,” Graves told the Business Journal. “There’s an ongoing market as children are being born every year.”
The schools feature an indoor pool that’s heated to 90 degrees to be exceptionally comfortable for children while also offering an air-conditioned gallery where parents can relax and watch what’s taking place. The facilities have snack bars and prop shops along with changing rooms and amenities such as dryers for swimsuits as well as hair.
“We have three little boys ourselves, all under the age of seven,” Graves said. “When we got into thinking about this, our first child was our only child and he was just learning how to swim. He was probably two or three at the time and we had him in various swim programs in the area and none of them were working for various reasons.
“They all had their issues,” she continued. “They weren’t necessarily geared toward kids, or they were in hotel pools that were cold or catered more toward adults, or they were not inviting spaces. The model of Goldfish really made a lot of sense to us as parents.”
Graves said that under the franchise model, local owners are building their own facilities. Some are standalone sites built from the ground up while others involve renovating existing commercial space.
“The pools are very site-specific, geared toward children,” Graves said. “They are no more than four feet deep across the entirety of the pool, so there’s no deep end. For both of our locations, we put the investment into the space that we’re leasing. We took down multiple storefronts to combine to create these spaces. You need to find spaces that don’t have a lot of columns because you’re building a large pool.”
Graves said that in addition to office, classroom and amenity space, equipment needs to be accommodated, including ultraviolet lights for disinfection, water pumps and chlorination mechanicals.
“We’ve always been following guidelines set by the Westchester County Department of Health and the state of New York in terms of what we’re doing in the facility from the standpoints of personal protective equipment and Covid precautions,” Graves said. “We were open in Yorktown through the pandemic with the exception of about three months. Now we are in a better place and our student-teacher ratio is no more than four to one.”
Graves said that the membership and payment concepts under which the schools operate are similar to what is found at health clubs.
“On the first of every month, our members pay for their month of swimming. People aren’t constricted to a session-based activity. It’s a very flexible program,” Graves said. “The idea behind it is that swimming isn’t something that just should be done for a couple of months. It’s really necessary to not only just learn the skills to be safe in the water but to maintain the skills.”
According to the website for the New Rochelle swim school, weekly 30-minute group lessons for children start at $144 a month, with private one-on-one lessons at $432 a month. An annual membership is $1,753 and features one year of group lessons plus a family swim pass for a year, a two-hour private pool party and more.
Graves noted that the teachers at Goldfish are required to be certified to Ellis standards, which she said are more demanding than the requirements for American Red Cross lifeguard certification.
“It’s an amazing feel-good business,” she said. “It’s a sweet spot when you go through the entrepreneurial aspects of building a business and then watch the enthusiasm of the staff and receive amazing community response.
“We have so many kids that are swimming with us from all over Westchester,” Graves added. “Everyone’s having a good time so it feels good to be running a business that has been so well received but also is teaching something that’s lifesaving as well. This has been a really positive experience.”
