Swingers and the rise of ‘competitive socialising’ 

You can listen to our podcast interview with Matt Grech-Smith here.

Matt Grech-Smith and his business partner Jeremy Simmonds had an idea a decade ago that they called “competitive socialising”. They’ve created a mini-golf entertainment empire that is a thriving global business with a turnover of more than £35m. A pop-up space was vital for letting them test their winning idea of Swingers.

The pair had been in business together since their student days at Manchester and Leeds universities in the early 2000s when they set up a national network of club night events. That’s how the pair cut their teeth in business and at their peak they were reaching 25,000 students a week. They sold this business to a communications firm, which was keen to tap into their customer base.

By 2014 the pair were hungry to try out their new idea. Bowling and table tennis had established themselves as sports you could do in a licensed entertainment venue. They wanted to do the same for mini golf, which is more often associated with trips to the seaside. They wanted to reimagine it as an activity in an indoor, inner-city venue, with guests being served cocktails and street food while they putted their way around a neon-lit course.

Grech-Smith explains that the changing social media landscape influenced their thinking: “Instagram was taking off, people wanted to show off the experiences they were having. It wasn’t enough just to have the experience, they wanted people to see what they were doing because it gave them currency.”

A so-called pop-up space then gave them the chance to test their idea with paying customers. These are cheaper commercial lets which become available when a property is between tenants, or perhaps the building will shortly be renovated or demolished. Grech-Smith’s pop-up was a 7,000-foot warehouse in east London and it gave him the chance to test out the idea for five months in 2014.