Introducing

Volume 1 Climbing.

NEWS: VOLUME 1 CLIMBING ACQUIRES HIGH SPORTS!

Volume 1 Climbing is very happy to announce that at the beginning of July it acquired High Sports Group, consisting of the High Sports Brighton facility and RockBox in Guildford

www.volume1climbing.co.uk

This is a really exciting time for the business and brings with it so many great opportunities for us to strengthen our offering in Sussex.

Owners Katie and Ben Read have the following message:

‘We are really excited to be starting this new chapter of our life and feel incredibly thankful to be given this opportunity to own High Sports.

High Sports has already played a very large part in the journey of Volume 1. It is where Ben began his career in climbing and where we as a couple met. To be taking over the ownership of the company feels like we’ve come full circle.

We want to assure everyone that although there will inevitably be some changes, we will be doing this as respectfully as possible and not rushing any of these decisions. We want to learn properly how High Sports works first and can't wait to get to know all of our new staff and customers.

However, we can say with confidence that the core of the business will not change. The name, offerings and staff will remain the same but with this new partnership with Volume 1 Climbing we believe this will bring some great opportunities to existing and new customers of both businesses.

We also want to thank exiting owners Kathryn, Paul and Michael for entrusting us with the future of High Sports and for making the sale process as enjoyable as these things can be! ’

We are sure that there will be lots of questions about what this new partnership will look like and as it is early days, we will not have the answer to all of these, but have put together the following Q&A to hopefully cover the most popular questions:

Q&A

  • Before we can consider offering a joint membership, we need to look at both centres membership offerings and can then make a decision on what will be on offer. At the moment both centres use different membership systems, so we will need to unify this first too before we offer multisite options.

    However, we do want our members to be able to check out this new facility so all current members will all get 1 free climb to use at the other site (High Sports or Volume 1 Climbing). These will be sent via email to you at the beginning of July. Please be aware that as High Sports is a roped centre, there is a different registration process to be able to use the whole centre.

  • As tempting as it was to rebrand High Sports to Volume 2, we feel that there is too much history with the High Sports brand. Whilst the companies will be connected, there will still remain as 2 different offerings and the different names will reflect this.


  • This is a really exciting opportunity for both centres Teams/Squads to access another facility. Both sets of coaches will be working on a plan in the coming weeks to give options to those that would like to gain experience from climbing at each site.

    We still plan on running the teams/squads independently but with opportunities to come together and train at regular intervals.

  • As mentioned above, we want to take our time to fully understand High Sports before making any big changes. We do however have initial plans to increase the amount of route setting and introduce new holds and volumes into the mix.

  • The plan is for the roped routes to remain with the same grading system (French sport grades) but we will be looking at implementing our shapes tag system to the bouldering area. Our tag system has worked really well for us at Volume 1 and feel that it would be a small but effective change to the bouldering at High Sports.  

  • There are no changes to the staff at either centre, however with both businesses now being joined, you will start to see some familiar faces from each centre appearing around as staff get to know each business.

    We are very happy to have Clem Simms as the Centre Manager at High Sports who has worked at Brighton since the opening of the centre in 2014 who will help greatly with this transition phase.

  • Yes, this is something that will be in place from day 1. All members at High Sports will be able to get 10% off at the Volume 1 Shop in East Grinstead.

    We will be looking at expanding the range down in Brighton in the future but our East Grinstead site will always have the biggest range so worth making the trip up to check it out.

  • Volume 1 will remain the same and there will be no changes here.

    Over the next few months you will probably start seeing some familiar faces as some High Sports staff begin visiting and working from Volume 1 as they learn all about how we operate.

  • 100% - we really want to hear from you. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you would like to see or anything else you feel like sharing.

    You can do this via our new customer feedback form which can be found in our extra menu or by clicking HERE