- CHIEF was established as a private members club for women only.
- Opened first club in London in 2022, charging nearly £8,000 a year
- The clubhouse in Bloomsbury, London is currently closed.
A luxury London clubhouse marketed as a women-only space where the city’s most ambitious people could rub shoulders with the likes of Amal Clooney and Gloria Estefan is closing just a year after opening.
The American company chief, founded in New York City in 2019, will open its first overseas headquarters in London in February 2023, hoping to attract high-flying women to its Georgian townhouse in Bedford Square, Bloomsbury. want to be. Exclusive network.
Membership costs £7,900 a year and registrants, who the company says are primarily business owners, are given the opportunity to network with other business owners around the world.
Demand for Clubhouse appears to be so strong that co-founders Carolyn Childers and Lindsey Kaplan told members, “We were able to begin our first international expansion outside of the United States over a year ago.” I was very proud and excited.”
“However, after taking a hard look at where we need to strategically focus our efforts, we have made the very difficult decision to exit the UK market and close our London Clubhouse on 31 March 2024. .”
“This was not an easy decision to make, but ultimately we believe that focusing solely on our U.S. operations, where the majority of our members (over 95%) are based, is the best next step for our business. I decided that there was.
“As founders, we take full responsibility for the strategic decisions that led us to take this step.”
After a $100 million cash infusion from Google, Chief is now worth more than $1 billion.
The club says it has about 20,000 members and a waiting list of 60,000 people. The company claims that its membership list includes executives from Nike, HBO, Disney and Pfizer, and that companies whose executives are of its ilk account for $800 billion of the U.S. economy.
The Chiefs is the latest clubhouse to be closed. Last month, the House of St. Barnabas, a non-profit private members’ club whose founding members include actors Brian Cox and Peter Capaldi, faced “too many rainy days to survive.” and was forced to close suddenly.
The House of St Barnabas in London’s Soho Square operated as a homeless charity for more than 150 years, but in 2013 it was transformed into an exclusive club for big-name fans.
The company takes pride in employing people who have experienced homelessness and has trained more than 300 people in hospitality and helped them find stable and safe housing.
St Barnabas bosses say St Barnabas is a ‘never affiliated club’, has struck a balance between exclusivity and paying staff a higher living wage than in London, and is now a ‘sustainable club’. He declared that this is a business model that he admits is “impossible.”
The Club Events Department’s financial statements from the previous year to March, submitted in January, warned that public transport strikes and the cost of living crisis posed a risk to its survival.
Membership fees are £870 per year and the joining fee is £350. Lifetime membership is available to her for £6,800.
However, in a statement published on its website and social media, the private club acknowledged that it could no longer continue to function. The building itself remains in trust for charitable purposes.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that the House of St. Barnabas Charitable Society and Member’s Club has begun liquidation and will be closed with immediate effect,” the statement read.
“The challenges we have faced throughout the pandemic and subsequent years have eroded our fiscal space.
“We invested in growth this year and worked tirelessly to find ways to make this model work. But the benefits didn’t come quickly enough.
“Then, over the summer, part of the bar ceiling collapsed, forcing us to close and losing vital revenue and momentum.
“Our business model is not sustainable in the current economic environment as our costs are increasing significantly faster than our revenues. We have too many ‘rainy days’ to survive this.” ”
In August 2020, another American women’s club, The Wing, closed its Fitzrovia operation following allegations of racism among its members, with plans to close permanently in 2022.