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General

How are you different from your competitors?

Fundamentally, our mission is to empower the box owner and entrepreneurial coach with the tools and knowledge that are required to run a world class competition and serve the community. We don’t want to sell you something. We want to partner with you in a way that delivers great value, and we want you to feel that the fees we charge are a fair and equitable exchange of value.

Experientially, we understand our market and its needs. We’ve been in business for almost two years and have worked closely with dozens of competition organizers to streamline and build a quality product that’s easy to use at an incredible value. Professionally, our background is in software development, but, personally we are avid CrossFitters who participate in and organize competitions ourselves.

Philosophically, we think and act like a startup, continuously learning and improving the product with every new customer and event. Most of our best features are the result of working closely with customers to evolve the product.

Last, but certainly not least, we are a veteran-owned small business, and customer service is our priority. We know what it means to serve, and we fully believe that providing quality service is essential to creating a great customer experience, and it’s the only way to build a successful business.

 

Can you come to my live event and help me run it?

Our flagship product is a highly economical solution that provides fully-integrated registration and scoring for anyone with a DIY (do-it-yourself) mindset. The registration system eliminates a tremendous amount of complexity that’s involved in getting your event up and running, and our scoring system saves you a ton of time and energy in the actual execution of your event by streamlining one of the most complex workflows.

In combination with our complimentary consulting sources and other promotional resources, you’ll be able to run your own competition and turn a far greater profit than if you hired us (or anyone else) to come and do it for you.

 

How long does it take to get up and running?

We’ve designed our system so that it takes approximately 15 minutes to get up and running once you’ve decided to move forward. There’s a 6 minute instructional video that we provide, and it takes less than 10 minutes on average to customize your competition’s template after watching the video. There’s very little learning curve.

 

Can athletes update and manage their registrations?

Yes. Athletes can fully manage and update their registrations without any additional intervention by the competition organizer or Strongest.com support.

 

How robust is your system?

Highly robust. We’ve optimized our system to guarantee fast page loads and routinely stress test our system to ensure that it meets expectations. Our largest competition involved approximately 1,000 athletes and our servers responded to hundreds of requests per second.

 

Why isn’t there a list of events on your website?

Fundamentally, we’re still thinking about whether it’s a good idea to provide a directory of past and future events. Our goals have more to do with serving the needs of individual competitions as opposed to providing an aggregator. We might add one in the future.

In case you’d like to take a look at an instructional competition template, you can check out a simple read-only demo at http://throwdowns.me/public-demo

Be sure to get in touch if you’d for us to set you up with a fully functional trial so that you can take the system for full test drive…

 

Do I have to create an account to use your product?

Neither competition organizers nor athletes have to create an account to use our product. We’ve intentionally designed the product to be a “stateless system” so that it doesn’t require account creation or any type of session through a login. Throughout the evolution of the product and discussions with our users, we found that a login system was unnecessary based on the existing set of features that our product offers.

 

Is your product optimized to work well with mobile devices?

Yes. Both registration and scoring are fully optimized to work well with the broadest possible variety of phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

 

Do I need an existing website for my competition?

Not necessarily. Although an existing Facebook page or website might be a convenient way to manage informational details for your event, our product provides a simple splash page that you can use as a landing page and communicate the essentials for your event.

 

What if there’s an extra feature I need that your product doesn’t offer?

Tell us! Our best features are the direct result of customer requests. As a startup, we hustle to earn your business, and there’s a very good chance that we’d be able to add new features to the product in a timeframe that would work for your event if that’s what it takes to earn your business.

 

Registration

How does registration work?

Our registration system is designed to help you collect funds from many individuals and fit them into a particular division for your competition. Athletes and teams can register into any number of custom division categories, but you can also register judges and volunteers for your competition so that you use a single consolidated system for all of your registration needs.

You can even sell additional merchandise (extra t-shirts, pre-paid meals, etc.) or collect additional donations for a charitable cause as part of the registration process, and some event organizers have even used our registration system to collect funds from event sponsors who wanted to pay with a card.

 

Can I customize the registration form for my event?

Absolutely. We provide a reasonable default registration form, but it is easily customizable to collect whatever information you might want from your athletes.

 

Can I provide my own waiver for the event?

Yes. We offer a default waiver, but you can easily add your own waiver to the registration form so that athletes must explicitly accept its terms before registering to save your one more piece of paperwork.

 

How does registration work for teams?

Registration for teams works exactly as it does for individual athletes, judges, volunteers, etc. The only difference is that the registration form dynamically updates to reflect the number of athletes on the team so that all necessary information can be captured by the athlete completing the registration.

 

Scoring

How does scoring work?

A score is a number that maps an athlete’s (or team’s) performance to an event in the competition. Depending on whether lower scores are better (timed events) or higher scores are better (AMRAPS, ladders, etc.), the scoring system sorts the scores for each event and aggregates them to produce an overall score. We can also handle tiebreakers if your programming requires it.

 

What scoring policies do you offer?

Most competitions prefer the placement-based scoring that’s used in the CrossFit Open, but we also offer options for the points-based scoring tables that are used in the CrossFit Games and a couple other options.

 

Are the leaderboards live?

Yes. It takes less than a minute for the live leaderboards to update from the time that someone on your competition staff enters the score into the system. The short delay is inconsequential for live events, and it’s essentially instantaneous from the perspective of athletes and spectators.

 

Can I project leaderboards at my venue if I have monitors or flat panel displays?

Yes. Our system is optimized for mobile devices, but if your venue has the luxury of wall-mounted displays, we offer a carousel that allows you to continuously cycle through the leaderboards for every division. Each time it cycles through the divisions, it also provides instructions so that your athletes and spectators know how to access the leaderboards for your event on their mobile devices.

 

Can I use your system for an online virtual event or my online qualifiers?

Absolutely. Live events work exactly the same as online events except that athletes submit their own scores online. You have full audit capabilities for scores submitted online, and it’s easier than you might think to host and manage an online event.

 

What if I need to allow for athletes to scale beyond the prescribed movements within the scaled divisions?

It’s not uncommon for certain types of events such as fundraisers that seek to maximize participation to allow athletes to scale beyond the prescribed movements. Our scoring system is flexible and provides a fair solution to what can be a complicated situation: any athletes who scale beyond the prescribed movements will rank below all athletes who complete the prescribed movements. This guarantees that the athletes who don’t scale rank higher, but it allows the athletes who scale to rank against one another and still receive a fair placement.

 

Pricing

How much does it cost to use your system?

We don’t have a “one size fits all” pricing model because no two events are quite alike. Instead, we offering a pricing model that tries to provide the greatest value possible for a few of the most common scenarios:

Free & Charity Events – If you’re running a not-for-profit competition that’s either free for athletes to participate or involves a registration fee but is 100% for a charitable cause, you’ll receive our most aggressive pricing possible. This usually equates to a price point that’s no cost or absolutely nominal. Our philosophy is that if you’re spending your time and energy to do a good work, then we want to be your partner.

Scoring Solutions – If you have already opened registration for your event and only need a scoring solution, we offer a competitively priced solution that features our best-in-class scoring system. It’s absolutely free of charge for small “in box” competitions that involve fewer than 50 athletes, and pricing starts at just $99 USD for events involving more than 50 athletes. There’s no money due up front, because if you trust us with your business, then we’ll trust you to pay our invoice after your event. We’re more than happy to provide a free trial so you can evaluate our scoring system to make sure that it meets all of your needs.

Premium Registration & Scoring (BEST VALUE) – Typical pricing for our most premium offering that features fully-integrated registration and scoring for CrossFit competitions comes with all of the bells and whistles and is typically less than 8% of gross funds collected. Pricing for this premium offering is all-inclusive and includes extensive technical support and consultation so that you can the extract maximum value our system offers for your next competition! We’ll be glad to provide a free trial and do anything else we possibly can to help you be successful. We want you to be able to get to know us and evaluate everything our system has to offer before making a final decision.

If you feel that your needs don’t fit nearly into one of these categories or you have additional questions about pricing, please contact us! We’ll be glad to work with you on your specific needs.

 

Do you price match?

Philosophically, we already try to provide aggressive pricing at a fair market value, but we will hustle to earn your business if you can provide a fair and equitable comparison to another product that delivers more value at a lower cost.

 

Payment Processing

How do I get paid?

We provide two primary options. We can collect funds on your behalf, paying you out in 2-3 disbursements leading up to your competition with a final settlement after the event. Or, you can enroll in our electronic payment program and receive instant access to your funds (less our fees). We typically recommend our electronic payment program, because it’s quick/easy to enroll, and it gives you ultimate flexibility in managing your own funds.

 

How are refunds processed?

We can issue full electronic refunds to athletes at your request. There’s no additional fee to you or to the athlete for a refund.

 

What types of payment are accepted for registration?

We accept all major credit cards that are used throughout the world. It’s highly unlikely that an athlete would have trouble completing a payment with our system.

 

Can I process registrations in my own local currency if I live outside the United States?

Yes, we can process over 130 currencies worldwide. It’s highly unlikely that we don’t already have you covered.

 

Is your payment system secure?

Yes. Our system is expressly designed such that no credit card information ever touches our servers. We use an innovative payment processor that allows us to fully offload the fully liability for processing payments so that there’s never any concern about a breach of security.

 

Other

What if you didn’t answer my question?

This FAQ covers some of the most commonly asked questions and isn’t a comprehensive resource. Feel free to contact us, and we’ll be glad to answer any additional questions you might have.

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