Fri 18th Jun 2021 - Swingers makes US debut today Swingers makes US debut today: London crazy golf club concept Swingers, operated by Competitive Socialising, makes its US debut today (Friday, 18 June) in Washington DC. The opening is supported by backer Cain International – in March, Competitive Socialising announced $20m of follow-on funding to build a robust opening pipeline in the US, to follow its Washington DC and upcoming New York City locations. Swingers’ third location and debut US site is in Washington DC’s Dupont Circle, while its fourth location will be in New York City’s Flatiron District, in the Virgin Hotel. Swingers Dupont Circle is inspired by the “quintessentially English country golf clubs of the 1920s” and features a clubhouse, a patio, four cocktail bars and some of Washington DC’s best street food vendors by Knead Hospitality and Design, featuring Lil’Succotash, Kneadza Pizza, TuTaco and Mah De Zahr. Swingers Dupont Circle will feature “immersive, multi-sensory, whimsical elements”, providing guests over 21 with a theatrical and high-end entertainment experience. The venue features a 30-foot clocktower – the top of it a feature of the ground-floor Clocktower Bar, the base stands on the ninth hole of the Clocktower Course in the basement. Guests must putt past the pendulum to complete the course. Chief executive Matt Grech-Smith said: “As if the pandemic hadn’t made running a hospitality business challenging enough, we were also pressing ahead with the opening of our first US location. Our team have done an incredible job overcoming travel bans, labour shortages and all the other issues created by covid to deliver a truly stunning venue. We’re sold out for opening weekend and we can’t wait to share Swingers with the people of DC and show them some post-pandemic fun times.” Grech-Smith and co-founder Jeremy Simmonds have an extensive experience of creating and marketing events and brands. Together, they founded Rough Hill in 2004 and the company rapidly became the UK’s largest organiser of youth events, selling more than a million tickets a year, as well as becoming a youth and experiential marketing agency. Rough Hill was bought by Chime in 2012 and placed into the international ad agency VCCP where Grech-Smith and Simmonds worked on events and experiential campaigns for clients that included O2, Coca-Cola and McLaren.  At the end of 2014, Grech-Smith and Simmonds completed their earn-out at VCCP and left to set up the Institute of Competitive Socialising, coining a new term in the leisure space. Their first venture was the Swingers pop-up that ran for five months at Factory 7 in Shoreditch. Following the pop-up, which was sold-out for its entire run, Grech-Smith and Simmonds set to work on the permanent Swingers site that opened in the City of London in an 18,000 square foot site in May 2016. Swingers City comprises two nine-hole crazy golf courses, five bars and three street food vendors and turned over £10m in its first year.  Swingers West End opened in March 2018 on the site of the former BHS flagship store in Oxford Circus. The seaside-themed venue boasts two nine-hole courses, four bars, four street food vendors and a host of privately bookable spaces.  In November 2018, Cain International, the private investment firm, invested $38m into Competitive Socialising. In March 2021 Swingers announced it would open its first US site in Washington DC followed by second US site, in New York’s Flatiron district, in late 2021. Competitive Socialising appears in the Propel Turnover & Profits Blue Book available to Premium subscribers, with turnover of £12,321,051 in its most recent full year, and a pre-tax profit of £809,039. Email jo.charity@propelinfo.com to sign up to Premium. The Blue Book provides a five year overview of turnover and profit, ranks companies according to turnover, pre-tax profit and profit conversion. It also provides details of directors earnings and highest paid directors