Flip Out Brand Guidelines: The 2012 Sydney Trampoline Park Franchise That Spread to the UK

A founder, one park and a franchise model.

Flip Out started in Australia. In March 2016 the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National named Brent Grundy as the founder and chief executive of Flip Out and reported that he opened the first Flip Out park in Sydney in 2012. The UK company’s own history agrees that the brand originated in Australia in 2012, and says the founder wanted a family experience that parents could share with their children and that did not shut children out by age or height.

Growth was quick. The National reported in 2016 that, two years after launching at home, the company already had 39 locations in Australia and six abroad, and described it as Australia’s largest network of trampoline parks. That article covered the opening of a Dubai park in the Al Quoz district in March 2016, which a director of Flip Out’s Middle East and North Africa business said would cover 40,000 sq ft with more than 200 connected trampolines. The paper set the opening in context: indoor trampoline parks had spread from the United States, where the International Association of Trampoline Parks counted 345 parks by the end of 2014, and two rivals, Bounce and Jump Boxx, had already opened in Dubai that year. Flip Out, it reported, planned 11 more sites across the region.

Flip Out spread through franchising. Local operators open and run parks under the brand, which means individual venues can change hands, close or reopen while the name carries on. The Canberra news site Region reported in March 2022 that Flip Out first came to the Australian capital in 2014, with parks at Hume and Mitchell, that the former local owners closed those parks in 2019 and 2020, and that new operators were reopening Flip Out in a larger format at Majura Park.

The Australian website today says Flip Out has 30 stores open across the country, and describes its mission as inspiring “joy through active play, adventure & sociability.” It lists four core values: Never Stop, Happy Kids, Challenge Yourself and Aim High.

From trampoline grids to adventure parks.

The format began with trampolines. The UK website says Flip Out started with outdoor trampoline parks in Australia and moved to indoor venues of between 14,000 and 65,000 sq ft, with a reception and briefing area, a main arena, party rooms and a café or diner.

Over time the parks became adventure parks. In a March 2021 feature, the attractions trade site blooloop spoke to Richard Beese, a co-owner of the UK franchise business, who described freerunning areas with stunt boxes linked to trampolines, padded life-size models of cars and a giant robot head, and interactive assault courses in which customers wear an RFID wristband that tracks their score and links to an app. He said the London E6 park added a near-vertical drop slide and an indoor caving system.

Region’s 2022 report on the new Canberra park described the same direction in Australia: a large Ninja Warrior course at the centre, a junior trampoline arena, climbing walls, mirror mazes, a ramp-and-slide feature called “the volcano,” arcade games and party rooms, alongside a main trampoline arena. The operators also planned instructor-led trampoline sessions for adults, called Flip Fit, and visits by school groups, so that the park served older customers as well as children’s parties.

The brand is built around a character. Beese told blooloop that Flip Out has a mascot, the Ninja, and that children should feel almost as if they are stepping into a comic book. The brand’s language follows that tone: the Australian site promises that guests can “flip, dip, jump, pump” and laugh, and signs off with lines such as “Let’s Flippin’ Go.”

How the category presents itself.

Bowling, competitive-socialising and indoor-leisure operators sell an evening out rather than a product, so their identities live mostly in rooms and on screens. Their own websites lead with venue interiors: lanes lit in neon, bars set beside the games, and photographs of groups mid-throw or mid-putt. Some build a whole venue around one period theme; Swingers, according to The Caterer, styles its crazy golf clubs on 1920s English country golf clubs.

Naming does a lot of the work. Swingers names its venues after their districts, such as the West End or Back Bay, and operators give house names to games that turn familiar pastimes into branded attractions: an arcade called Carnival, a shuffleboard called Supercharged Shuffle, a shooting game called HotShots. Kingpin’s 2017 identity, Mumbrella reported, put a bowling spare mark inside the name and adopted the line “Roll like a Royal.”

Booking is part of the identity too. Kingpin’s website, for example, opens with a venue picker, a date selector, party packages and gift cards, placed ahead of any story about the company. Some operators add a scoring tool inside the venue; Time Out listed a scorecard app among the features of one Swingers site.

Behind the venues sit owners that are often less visible than the brands. Kingpin belongs to TEEG, a group formed in 2017 by the family company behind Timezone and Quadrant Private Equity, and it is TEEG’s corporate website, rather than the venue site, that sets out the timeline and the brand list. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand, from founding and ownership to how it presents its venues, and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

Stoke, Lakeside and former department stores.

Flip Out reached Britain through franchising. Beese told blooloop in 2021 that the concept came over from Australia in 2014, when there were only a handful of trampoline parks in the UK, and that the first UK Flip Out opened in Stoke. The UK website dates its own adventure-park format to 2015. The UK business says it has expanded through franchising and that there are now more than 85 Flip Out parks in nine countries; its website lists about thirty UK parks, from Aintree and Ashford to Watford and York.

Flip Out has moved into space that shops left behind. blooloop reported in 2021 on a 45,000 sq ft Flip Out “super-centre” in a former BHS department store at the Friars Square shopping centre in Aylesbury, with ice skating, bumper cars, mini-golf, laser tag and an arcade beside the adventure-park elements, and Beese said the operators had also taken on a former BHS store in Aberdeen. He named the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex as an example of a scheme where Flip Out sits beside other leisure operators.

The Australian and UK websites run as separate operations with their own domains, flipout.com.au and flipout.co.uk, each listing its own parks, while sharing the Flip Out name and the Ninja character.

For a design guide, Flip Out shows how a franchise brand can hold together across many independently run venues through a mascot, a loud colour set and a playful verbal style. Compare Gravity Active Entertainment, a UK trampoline-park group in shopping centres, and Urban Air. For this guide we use black, a warm orange and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Flip Out’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.