Reflecting on 2020

I would be remiss if I didn’t start this blog with: “And what a year it has been…” Despite everyone saying it multiple times this year, it doesn’t make it any less true.

Gearing up for change

Even without COVID, 2020 was always going to be a year of transition for Phnom Climb. Mary and Christoph’s (our founders/owners) departure from Cambodia (to move back to Switzerland) was fast approaching, and the gym’s future was somewhat up in the air. Whatever was decided in terms of ownership and management, transition was looming.

The year started out normal – strong actually. The team had reached a milestone of 100 members in February, and 2020 was projected to be the best financial year of the gym thus far. We also hosted the first-ever Sva Prey Bouldering Competition! This brought together competitors from Thailand, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, not to mention an awesome route-setting team from Malaysia!

March was definitely the turning point!

In the span of 3 weeks, 4 major things happened:

• Shermaine (that’s me!), the new CEO, started working full-time.
• COVID hit Cambodia and the schools closed immediately. Several businesses (i.e. cinemas, spas, KTVs and gyms) soon followed.
• Mary and Christoph flew to Switzerland one week earlier than expected.
• The gym closed. 

​Now, the questions were: What do we do to ensure the gym survives this closure, and what would the team do in the meantime?

Answers:

• We started a Go Fund Me Campaign to help pay for rent and staff salaries during the time of closure. This was extremely successful due to the support from current and past community members, many of which donated from abroad! We were able to keep everyone on a full-time schedule and 100% pay! If we haven’t said this enough, THANK YOU to those who donated!
• The team immediately went into project-mode at the gym. We repainted all our bouldering and top rope walls, decluttered and reorganized our storage room, talked through improving systems and processes, wrote out clear job descriptions, and came up with individualized professional development plans. It was a time to focus inward. ​

Happy, happy summer!

Summer was another drastic 180! In the past, summers were always slower months for the gym given that school programs had ended and many expat families and adults would leave for summer vacation. COVID obviously changed all this, and our summer months were packed with kids coming to climb every day! Our coaches regularly had to double up on shifts! ​

Working alongside our long-time partners, Coach Andy’s soccer club and The Fly, we were able to organize one of the most popular summer sports camps in the city - every day, tuk-tuks would shuffle children to all 3 locales. This led to July being the best financial month of business ever!

​We were also able to start several building projects that had been discussed pre-COVID - all of which were focused on better space utilization within our warehouse structure. One of the more notable projects involved building our second floor seating area (a place long overdue), so that it could be used for birthday parties and as a viewpoint for climbing competitions! We also re-designed and moved our pull-up bars and changed up the kids wall in the back. ​

Cambodia’s “second wave”

Things were relatively "normal" for a few months, although the biggest challenge was not being able to run after-school programs as schools were still highly cautious. The gym decided to pivot and focus more on adult memberships and activities, such as team building events with corporates and NGOs.

Many businesses were gearing up for Christmas fairs and pop-ups. We had specifically built a new “moveable” kids wall, so that we could have it stationed at different locales for marketing purposes, but all of this came to a very abrupt halt with the consecutive November 3rd and 28th COVID resurgence in the country!

Much like April, the same groups of businesses were asked to close down. The streets emptied in Phnom Penh. Events were postponed, and schools closed for Christmas Break early.

Closure meant that we did what we always do - stay busy with projects. This time, we focused on building the extension of our bouldering wall, designed by our very own Seyha! This was yet another pre-COVID goal for this year that we weren’t sure was going to happen, but it did!

Bouldering Wall Extension Project

And now for 2021…

Three closures in one year would make anyone nervous, and I was often asked by our community members: “Are things back to normal?” My response was always to awkwardly laugh-shrug and say: “I don’t know what normal is…I started this job and COVID immediately hit. THIS is my normal!”

But if anything is clear, this was a year of change and milestones - good and bad, often so intertwined you couldn’t tell the difference.

• We closed, but we got a hell of a lot done! COVID meant losing a lot of adult members and school programs, but it also meant families travelled less and were looking for new activities to do in-country.
• Even after losing almost 30% of our adult memberships in April, by October, we were able to get back up to that original milestone of 100 members again (and had more Khmer memberships than the year before).
• Our toddler class expanded from once a week to three times a week!
• We built, built and built!

2021 is uncertain - there is no point of reference, no baseline, no crystal ball. We can only continue to work our a$$es off and be cautiously optimistic (aka. realistically hopeful). Moving forward is the only way to go, and we’ll have to wait and see what new milestones lay ahead (alongside a few obstacles...just to keep things interesting)!

Climb on!

Celebrating PCCG's 5-year anniversary in October!