Goldfish Swim School Brand Guidelines: A 2006 Birmingham, Michigan School and SwimPlay

A husband-and-wife school in suburban Detroit.

Goldfish Swim School opened in Birmingham, Michigan, in 2006. Franchise Times describes it as founded by the husband-and-wife team Chris and Jenny McCuiston, and Swimming World gave the same founding year in 2021. Birmingham is a suburb north of Detroit, and the company has stayed a Michigan business since.

In a 2022 spotlight for Small Business Trends, Chris McCuiston, the co-founder and chief executive, said the idea began with Jenny. As a girl she had swum with a friend whose family owned swim schools in California, and after college she worked as a coach. Back in Michigan she wanted to start something similar. He said the couple spent two years writing a business plan before the first school opened in Birmingham in 2006.

The model was a dedicated building rather than a rented lane. Each Goldfish school has its own indoor pool, kept warm and shallow, and teaches children only. In the same interview McCuiston described what the company calls a “Golden” experience: bright colours, warm and clean shallow pools and tropical décor, repeated at every location.

Franchising followed three years after the first opening. Franchise Times dates it to 2009, and the 2024 article explains that one of the earliest franchise groups was formed that year by a former club-swimming teammate of Jenny McCuiston who had taught at the school. McCuiston told Small Business Trends the system reached 100 franchise locations in 2020, and in December 2022 he said it had taught more than a million children since opening.

Play, levels and a 90-degree pool.

The company sells its lessons under a named method, The Science of SwimPlay, which it registers as a trademark. It describes the approach as guided, play-based learning in a supportive setting, and McCuiston told Small Business Trends that every school uses this “proprietary philosophy” for children from four months to 12 years old. Franchise Times gives the same age range. On its website the company says the curriculum was designed “by parents, for parents,” and that a child moves up a level on demonstrated readiness rather than on age alone.

Classes are grouped into levels with short, plain names. The company’s website lists Mini for babies and toddlers from 4 to 35 months, Junior for three- and four-year-olds, and Glider and Pro for children from four to 12, with a further group called Swim Force. Around the lessons sit family swims, parties, short clinics and school presentations under an acronym, W.A.T.E.R. The company says it runs a four-to-one student-to-teacher ratio and keeps its pools at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which it calls “shiver-free.”

The building is the brand. In its 2024 award story Franchise Times reported that Goldfish requires franchisees to build or buy a pool, or, if they lease, to renovate the site to Goldfish standards. That makes the concept capital-intensive, the magazine said, but it also means each school can be fitted out to one recognisable pattern of colour, décor and signage. The magazine set it against British Swim School, whose owners rent space in pools that belong to others.

Campaigns carry the brand outside the pool. In May 2021, Swimming World reported, Goldfish ran a month-long “Safer Swimmer Pledge” for National Water Safety Month, with a donation to the USA Swimming Foundation for each pledge and a promotion with Speedo USA. The company also publishes a blog and a franchise website and asks parents to start with a swim assessment before choosing a level.

How the category presents itself.

Children’s swim, music and activity franchises sell a weekly class rather than a product, so their identities are built around the session itself. The swim schools present their lessons by age band: Turtle Tots divides its programme into baby, toddler, preschool and independent stages on its website, and Water Babies described parents in the pool as “assistant teachers” when Sports Management profiled it in 2016.

Photography carries much of the brand work. Water Babies sold underwater baby photography alongside its lessons by 2016, according to Sports Management, and pictures of parents and small children in the water are the companies’ own material. This guide reproduces none of those photographs and names no child, parent or teacher.

Naming does similar work. Programmes get names of their own: Turtle Tots calls its pregnancy yoga classes Turtle Tums, and in 2016 Water Babies called its programme for before and after birth WaterBumps. Mascots stretch the brand name further, and Turtle Tots introduced a turtle mascot and asked families to suggest its name. Booking is handled online, through lesson finders, regional location pages and customer portals of the kind on Turtle Tots’ website.

The corporate side speaks in a different register. Founder stories sit on “our story” and “about us” pages, and in the cases of Water Babies and Turtle Tots they begin with founders who were new parents themselves. Franchise pages set out territories, training and head-office support for prospective owners, while trade titles such as Startups.co.uk, TheBusinessDesk and Sports Management record licences, territories and changes of ownership. This guide keeps what those independent titles report apart from what each company says about itself.

More than 160 schools by 2024.

Goldfish grew through franchising while staying founder-led. Franchise Times reported in March 2024 that the brand had more than 160 locations in 30-plus states, and the magazine’s Zor Awards named it the winner of the “Dive In” swim category, ahead of finalists British Swim School and SafeSplash. The judges pointed to steady new openings, with no closures between 2020 and 2022, and to the financial information the company discloses to prospective franchisees.

The same article reported franchisee comments on the brand’s systems. Owners said the franchisor had hired a new chief technology officer after they asked for better IT support, and that they were changing how families book lessons and what the app can do, because more customers prefer to book online than by phone. The company now describes itself as serving families across North America and says it teaches more than 200,000 swimmers each week with more than 6,500 instructors.

The company calls itself a swim school designed for children, and its visual identity is built around that promise. The name is a pet fish rather than a person or a place; the bright colours and tropical interiors that McCuiston described are part of the franchise standard; and the level names stay short and friendly. Unlike a franchise that works in rented pools, Goldfish controls the whole room, from the water temperature to the décor, and its public material leans on that room.

A name trap is worth noting for designers. “Goldfish” is also the name of a well-known cracker brand, which has its own guide on this site; the swim school is a separate company with no link to that snack.

For a design guide, Goldfish Swim School shows how a franchise can make the building itself carry the brand, repeating one warm, colourful pool hall in every town. Compare British Swim School, which works in rented pools, and Aqua-Tots, another children’s swim franchise. For this guide we use goldfish orange, reef teal and a deep lagoon with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Goldfish Swim School’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.