About Spark Membership

Spark Membership was founded by Master Ron Sell and Grand Master Cheong Park, who teamed up in 2017. Ron is Co-Founder and CEO and Grand Master Park is Senior CEO; both hold 7th degree black belts.

Ron Sell opened his first martial arts school in Florida in 1991 at age 19, having grown up in schools run by his own martial arts grandmaster parents. He went on to open three more schools, later built and exited a member-based business software company, then co-founded Spark Membership in 2017.

Grand Master Cheong Park owned eight martial arts schools before co-founding Spark Membership with Ron Sell in 2017. He brought hands-on, multi-location school ownership experience to match Ron’s software background.

Ron Sell and Grand Master Park built Spark to help overworked member-based business owners win back their time, something they had both struggled with themselves while running multiple schools. The goal was to fix the same operational problems they had lived through as school owners.

Our founders point to more than 30 years running martial arts schools, dating back to Ron Sell opening his first school in 1991. That experience is the foundation for how and why Spark was built, rather than a software background applied to an industry from the outside. Our founders lived the problem & created Spark to manage the business operations owners struggle with.

After selling his four martial arts schools in 2004 due to burnout from 80+ hour weeks, Ron Sell spent time analyzing why his schools had succeeded, concluded it came down to systemization, and taught himself to code to turn those systems into software. That work became his first martial arts school software company, which he ran from roughly 2004 to 2014 before exiting in 2015.

Yes. Before Spark, Ron built and ran a martial arts school software company for about a decade, then exited it in 2015 after he and his business partner grew apart on their vision for the company. That experience fed directly into how Spark was built two years later.

Spark Membership launched in 2019, two years after Ron Sell and Grand Master Cheong Park started building it together in 2017. Spark passed 1,000 schools using the platform within its first year.

The name Spark was chosen to represent the drive and desire to help small business owners, according to our founders. Spark was built to bring back the fire that got owners into the business in the first place.

Yes. Spark began by focusing on martial arts schools, since that is where both founders had direct experience. Spark later expanded to serve other member-based businesses like dance, gymnastics, and yoga studios once it recognized the operational problems were the same across those industries. Spark today is purpose built and best for growing martial arts schools.

We grew from its first 10 schools to more than 1,000 schools within its first year of launching in 2019. Our strong start and early rapid growth was the sign that it had solved real problems school owners had been asking for help with.

Spark introduced new features, including online training courses, so martial arts school owners could move classes online during pandemic closures. More than 500 new schools adopted Spark during that period specifically to shift their business online.

More than 2,000 martial arts schools currently run on Spark, spanning across various martial arts along with dance, gymnastics, yoga, and other membership-based disciplines across four continents.

Spark has helped martial arts schools on its platform generate more than $50,000,000 to date. That figure represents revenue generated by Spark’s customers using the platform, not Spark’s own company revenue.

No. As of the company’s most recent update, Spark serves member-based businesses across four continents, having expanded beyond its original US martial arts customer base.

Our founding philosophy is "no holds barred transparency," meaning our founders committed to sharing what they learned from decades running schools rather than keeping that knowledge to themselves. Spark is proud to be a business founded by real martial arts school owners.

Spark’s goal is to help martial arts school owners escape being tied to the mat, studio, or gym floor full time, and get back the time and lifestyle that made them start a business in the first place. Our founders faced the same problems before building Spark and we pride ourselves on making life easier for school owners.

Spark provides knowledge and guidance alongside its software, not just the technology itself. Spark cannot guarantee a customer’s success, but aims to meaningfully improve their odds by giving them the tools and know-how used to build multiple successful schools.