Mana Collective hits 19.2% conversion rate with Sailia

About The Mana Collective

Mana is a lot of businesses in one building.

Jiu-jitsu, boxing, Muay Thai and MMA on the mats. Dance, yoga and pilates upstairs. A full gym. Kids classes after school. Family sessions at the weekend. And a riverside café where members grab a coffee between it all.

It sits in a transformed venue on Pier Road, Littlehampton, right on the water. It's one of the busiest new venues on the south coast, and it runs almost entirely on memberships and class passes.

The Beach came first

Mana is founder James' second venue on Sailia.

He already runs The Beach Littlehampton on the platform. He'd seen what happens when a busy venue runs everything through one system. So when Mana came along, there was no shortlist. No comparison spreadsheet. He'd made the decision the day The Beach went live.

The Challenge

When Mana opened, the team used Wix Bookings to get the website up and running.

Only 30% of bookings were made online. The other 70% came through the front desk, the phone, or messages. Every one of those was admin someone had to do by hand.

Here's what that looks like on the ground. It's a Tuesday night. Eight people turn up to Muay Thai. Seven are members. None of them have booked. The person behind the bar has the day's planner open, checking people in one by one, working out who's on a membership, who's on a pass, and who owes £12.50. That's fine once. It's not fine forty times a day across combat, dance, yoga, the gym and the café.

And a website widget can't touch the real stuff:

• Memberships and class passes across completely different disciplines, each with its own schedule, coaches and prices.

• Waivers for combat sports, signed and stored before anyone steps on the mats.

• Parents booking kids into classes.

• Coaches needing to know exactly who's turning up.

• A café running alongside all of it.

James knew what one system could do, because he was watching it do it down the road at The Beach. Mana needed to run the same way.

The Solution

Mana moved everything onto Sailia.

• Memberships and passes: the engine Mana runs on recurring memberships and class passes. This is where Sailia does the heavy lifting. Members sign up online in a couple of minutes. Payments collect automatically every month. A 10-class pass counts itself down. Members book their own classes from their own account. Renewals just happen. No chasing payments. No punch cards. No spreadsheet with a tab called "memberships v3 FINAL".

• One schedule for everything Muay Thai at 7. Pilates at 9. Kids jiu-jitsu on Saturday. Different rooms, different coaches, different prices, one live timetable. Change a class once and it changes everywhere: the website, member accounts, the coach's register.

• Waivers sorted before class Combat sports and paper waivers don't mix. On Sailia, the waiver is part of the booking. Signed before they arrive, stored securely, flagged if an answer needs a look. Nobody steps on the mats without one. Nobody at the desk has to check.

• Kids and family bookings One parent, three kids, three different classes. Still one checkout. Details and consents collected up front.

• Registers on the coach's phone Who's booked, who's a member, who's brand new and might want a friendly hello. The front desk lives in the day view and checks people in as they walk through the door.

• A booking flow people actually finish Pick a class, pay, sign the waiver. One flow, works on a phone, no account wall in the way. The number below shows what that's worth.

The Results

Online bookings: 30% to 100%.

Every booking at Mana now comes through Sailia. All of them. The front desk isn't a booking office anymore. The phone rings less. Nobody types bookings in from messages or chases payments. The 70% that used to be manual work just... isn't work.

A 19.2% conversion rate.

Nearly one in five people who land on Mana's website go on to book.

For context: conversion rates across the travel and experience industry sit between 0.2% and 4%. Above 2% puts you in the top 20%. The very best in the industry convert around 18%.

Mana converts at 19.2%. A venue that opened this year is beating the best in the business.

A membership base that runs itself.

Recurring revenue that collects automatically. Members who book their own classes week after week, this leaves James to focus on the experience not on running the behind the scenes admin.

"Service as a Service"

James has his own name for Sailia, and honestly, we might steal it.

He calls it Service as a Service. A consultancy with a million lego blocks, and a system where you put them together to build whatever you need.

He's right. There's no "combat and wellness venue with a café" template in any software anywhere. But every block Mana needed was already in Sailia: memberships, passes, scheduling, waivers, kids bookings, registers, POS, reporting. They clicked them together into a system shaped exactly like their building.

The Beach is the same blocks in a different shape.

Testimonial

"We already run The Beach on Sailia, so choosing it for Mana was a no-brainer. It's Service as a Service. Like a consultancy with a million lego blocks, and you just put them together to build exactly what you need. We went from 30% of bookings online to 100%, and it all just works. I think Sailia is the next big thing." - James Hoare, Founder, The Mana Collective

Why Mana chose Sailia

• Already proven: Running his first venue before his second one opened.

• Built for memberships: Recurring plans, passes and automatic payments as the core of the business, not a bolt-on.

• Everything in one: Bookings, waivers, registers, payments and the café in one system.

• A booking flow that converts: 19.2%. The industry's best barely touch 18%.

• Blocks, not boxes: Every venue is different. Mana built exactly the system their building needed.

One founder. Two venues. One system.

Plenty of software can win a customer once. The real test is what that customer does when they open their next venture.

James put Mana on Sailia before the doors opened, skipped the systems-shopping chapter entirely, and spent that energy on coaches, classes and community instead.

100% online bookings. A conversion rate above the industry's best. A membership base that runs itself. And a founder who already knows what venue three runs on.