What Contemporary Private Members Clubs Tell Us About Modern Membership
Mayfair, 1974. As The Naval & Military Club, colloquially coined The In & Out, housed its usual mischief — fuelled by fine whiskey and the retrospective luxury of indoor smoking — the IRA, at the height of their campaign against Britain, launched a bomb into the Clubhouse.
In the (casualty-free) destruction and subsequent silence came one clear demand: “Another pink gin please, Robbins.”
Members’ clubs have always been places to gather, plot, indulge — mostly bomb-free although we can pinpoint a fair few explosive scandals along the timeline. But the members’ club of 2024 would be unrecognisable to habitués of the Club even half a century ago. Thanks to financial instability, demographic shifts and rapidly advancing tech, the ways we come together have changed.
There’s an intriguing tension to membership these days. Generally speaking, brands experience incredibly low fidelity from their clientele compared to previous generations, but once prospects have committed semi-concretely (usually in the financial sense) the dedication is near frenzied. A survey conducted by Intuit and Canvas8 found 69 per cent of consumers express a preference for brands they're already loyal to. Very much a case of once they're in, they're in.
State of Play: Private Member's Clubs in 2024
In an episode of The Stanza – a podcast exploring fashion, real estate and hospitality from an investor's perspective – Annabel Schwartz, former west coast memberships manager at Soho House and now founder of hospitality consultancy House of Talana, gives a unique insight into the state of play of private member's clubs:
Demand for members clubs isn't as high at the desire to create them. It seems every hospitality brand is wanting to tack a members club onto their product – after so many were in the midst of haemorrhaging money during multiple lockdowns looking at member's clubs who continued to collect membership fees.
Thanks to their growing prevalence, the bubble is beginning to burst. Too many new players make it nearly impossible for all to survive and thrive in the current climate. However, our intrinsic need to belong to a community alongside a huge and ever-growing demand for access to versatile IRL 'third spaces' poses massive potential for the clubs that were built for their members and brands, rather than as an extra revenue stream.
By 2027, the market is expected to reach $25.8bn, representing an annual growth rate of 11.2%. At first glance, outsiders might perceive clubs' main challenge to be attracting members. But, although prospects are a key component of the business model, existing members are the lifeblood. A high turnaround rate is a debilitating statistic for a concept founded in client retention. Especially one whose origins go back centuries.
A Short History of Members’ Clubs
Before tales of pink gin-sipping naval officers infiltrated popular myth, the goings-on of gentlemen’s clubs firmly sat behind closed doors. Of course rumours vibrated from St James’ Square to Soho and Mayfair — Oscar Wilde was famously victim to broken confidentiality — but for the most part club happenings remained under lock and key.
It’s an opulent and bizarre history in equal measure.
Traced back to late eighteenth and nineteenth-century London, private members’ clubs derived from the coffee houses loved by the upper classes a hundred years earlier.
Impenetrable for anyone who wasn’t an impeccably-dressed wealthy white man, Clubs with a capital C were places of traditional luxury, complete with revered artworks, intricate architecture and the finest champagne money can buy.
The usual blueprints included a porter’s lodge, a pearly gates equivalent guarded by a likely more disgruntled version of Saint Peter; a Main Hall, frequently featuring a grand staircase; a Salon and/or Smoking Room; Dining Room; Coffee Room; Billiard Room and, crucially, the Bar.
They were the private spaces for ironic vulgarity and uber-ostentation among the elite classes, where ‘gentlemen’ could lose the top hat and tails façade well into the early hours. Hedonistic veins certainly track through to today, even having a resurgence in certain parts of the world for a more inclusive clientele.
White’s — London’s oldest gentlemen’s club founded in 1693 — sits in the heart of Clubland, established by the English aristocracy as a place away from the female-dominated domestic sphere. A place of gambling and sexual scandals, other establishments followed their lead. While White’s was for Tories, Brook’s was for Whigs and Boodle’s was for middlemen. During this time London was home to around 400 gentlemen’s clubs.
They were the woke brigade’s most hated phrase: a product of their time.
Reinvention: Inclusive Exclusivity
Dotted within the sprawling topographies of the world's coolest cities, members’ clubs — new and of age — are seeing somewhat of a renaissance. But tradition rarely fares well in modern revivals.
In the current climate, an admission board’s indifference towards the number of zeros on a prospective member’s salary isn’t exactly revolutionary, but Schwartz struck a truth when she said: "The same way sex sell, exclusivity sells." What's changed from then to now, however, is exclusivity is becoming less demographic. Instead, club communities spring from a shared spirit, values or a collective culture. Perhaps they're united in one specific vision or lifestyle. Whatever the USP, plenty are reinventing the club as we knew it in innovative ways, in turn, giving ideas of membership a modern makeover.
Cultural Institutions
Hard not to credit Soho House here. Founded in 1995, the club now boasts nearly 200,000 members worldwide across 43 Houses as well as 9 Soho Works spaces. They're the blueprint many newcomers base themselves on, having reinvented how private clubs were perceived. Though many people (SH members included) would argue their original 'community of creatives' brand has been diluted, the global organisation have closed applications for multiple properties in the interest of maintaining exclusivity and reliability for existing members.
Moving to fuse every aspect of our lives, Jolie’s cohesion-focused community model pedestals curiosity and creativity. The club consists of nine separate spaces for working, drinking, dining, entertaining and creating.
Upended by the pandemic, their 2021 launch highlighted members’ clubs as safe spaces to gather in frightening times as well as catering to India’s expanding luxury cohort.
The Reading Club in San Diego follows a similar ‘third space’ approach, branded as a place that transcends the boundaries that separate aspects of rest, work and play.
In London, Black’s — a long-established Supper Club founded as the antithesis to White’s — relaunched in 2019 under new ownership. Taking a leaf from the Matter Of Form playbook, Black’s new co-owners are determined to strike a balance between honouring heritage and finding relevance in new times.
A regular haunt for a roster of famous artists including Sam Smith, Laura Mvula and Dave, the club is one of many arts-focused establishments which have emerged following the universal success of Soho House over the last two decades.
Still, in the British capital, Marylebone nightlife monument BEAT was a speakeasy in the sixties that attracted icons from Hendrix and The Beatles to Bowie and Sir Elton. Now a private members’ club, BEAT takes patrons on “weekly musical and artistic rituals”, continuously cultivating “a community of the tasteful few.” It’s elitism not so much founded in class but cultural categorisation.
Bastions of The Wellness Boom
Increasingly adopted as a necessity, wellness is no longer a 'nice to have' in hospitality offerings. It's paramount – and it's about to change the way we approach private members clubs in tandem.
In September 2023, the well-known Manhattan private members' club Core moved to 711 Fifth Avenue from 60 East 55th Street. Members can now enjoy 60,000 square feet of bookable work and leisure suites, spa treatment rooms, a salon, a barbershop, and specialised anti-aging services at the Dangene Institute, which transforms stressed-out skin.
Maybourne hotel The Emory opened their membership offering in spring 2024. Located on site, Surenne is a club dedicated to longevity and wellbeing. Four floors of immersive health, fitness and beauty services, spearheaded by world-leading experts and in partnership with tech pioneers Virtusan – hoping to co-create a "global first advancement of hospitality and human health".
South Kensington residents’ club The Other House are blending the belonging of members’ clubs with the service of branded residences, but wellness offerings are their standout touch points.
The Other House’s dedicated wellness concierge oversees and curates therapies tailored to members and guests, from reiki and hypnotherapy to sound baths featuring Europe’s largest gongs.
To the other side of Hyde Park, Mortimer House in Fitzrovia is a club in hot pursuit of holistic wellness for its members. “Engendering the ideal balance of body, mind and spirit”, the amenities include a high-tech gym with private sessions and communal classes, a plant-laden meditation room and dedicated workshop spaces for a wellness series with experts and gurus.
THE WELL in New York acts as a one-stop shop for wellness in unprecedentedly stressful times. They're building a community of like-minded individuals focused on making wellness part of their everyday. Alongside the expected health services, THE WELL offers sleep therapy, treatment for undiagnosed illnesses as well as long COVID.
Clubs at The Cutting-Edge
Despite the concept's long history, in 2024 clubs would do well to incorporate innovative digital and tech concepts to their offerings – especially if appealing to a younger, digitally-nomadic crowd.
In Camden, The House of KOKO has made waves among the city’s club scene. Set in a 123-year-old building, the site has a long social and cultural history, debuting as The Camden Theatre then becoming a music venue later in life. Rivalling Soho House in aesthetics thanks to a £70m overhaul, the revamped club opened in the spring of 2022 to a near boiling over of anticipation.
Set ‘backstage’ of the original theatre, the members’ club spans four floors and is arguably one of London’s most immersive iterations due to their slick incorporation of tech. To solidify KOKO as the epicentre of the capital’s music scene, livestreaming tech is embedded in seven rooms, including the penthouse studio.
Taking tech a step further, Singapore’s Mandala Club released 250 NFT-based memberships named the Genesis Pass in January of this year. Aiming to create an even smaller, hyper-engaged community from their current 2000-strong membership.
Leaders in the world of digital membership, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) –colloquially called Bored Ape – is an NFT collection built on the Ethereum blockchain featuring profile pictures of cartoon apes, generated by an algorithm. They've been bought by the likes of Snoop Dogg, goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow and former teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber. The NFTs themselves function as a membership card to Yacht Club, giving the owner access to private online space, exclusive merch and members-only live events.
Architecting Modern Membership
Membership models aren’t what they used to be. It’s undoubtedly far easier to pander to an upper-class audience of exclusively white men in the nineteenth century than to appeal to a wildly diverse, discerning audience of the twenty-first. And as members and prospects are only going to become more enlightened, what do club decision-makers need to keep front of mind going forward?
Cultural Resonance
With so much to stimulate us, we’ve all become cultural vagabonds. No longer to content to neatly slot into a pre-set category, we want to invent the category. And members’ clubs can help. The implied status that came with private membership historically has shifted from class signalling to cultural signalling — a show of values. Whether it’s a commitment to subversive art or social activism, members’ clubs must now be places for those who dare to deviate from the mainstream.
Distinctive Service
Just as there are limits to fostering authentic human connection between club and member, there are caps on how much organisations can do to elevate service. Where House of KOKO are investing in digital enhancement, Jolie’s are honed in on culture-rich experiences. Since their inception, private clubs have operated their own dining culture and plenty of houses are reinventing themselves at those touch points.
Decentralisation
As we’re all about what’s next, leaving out the impact of web3 on members’ clubs would be a disservice. For the crypto elite (it’s a larger cohort than you may think), members’ clubs will be built on the blockchain. And it’s not a far-off reality. NFTs or a DAO’s digital token will be the black card and clubs will be funded by communities — it’s a wise move for brands to begin pinpointing touch points where web3 can elevate the experience, sooner rather than later.
Cracking the membership equation isn’t really formulaic at all. It’s about understanding people. That’s what we do for our clients. We tap into mindsets and behaviours, mining insights to form a strategy that works — so everyone can get behind it. Get in touch with one of our consultants via hello@matterofform.com to find out more about our services.
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