The nature of exclusivity is a tricky thing. Especially so when it comes to businesses looking to expand grow while retaining a sheen of discernibility. Case in point: Soho House, which just announced its IPO.

“As Soho House heads toward an IPO, the members’ club for the creative set may see any remaining air of exclusivity go up in flames,” argues Nimrod Kamer in an in-depth piece on the bohemian brand soon to turn public entity in 

Kamer has a point. What began as a humble, underground workspace for creatives has become perhaps the most ubiquitous – not to mention most Instagrammed – chain of members clubs in the world. With over 27 locations in 10 countries (plus new openings in Tel Aviv, Austin, Rome, Paris, and Brighton, UK) detractors argue that the chain lost any claims to exclusivity and choosiness years ago.

In April Sky News broke the story that Soho House submitted a filing for an IPO in New York which would see the company valued at $3 billion. The news was confirmed in a June 21st press release in which Membership Collective Group (MCG), which owns Soho House and associated companies, The Ned and Scorpios Beach Club, announced that it has “

has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of its Class A common stock.

Is the party over? Soho House&#8217;s IPO has led some people to believe the brand has lots its edge


“This move will enable us to accelerate our investment in improving both the physical and digital elements of your membership,” founder Nick Jones told members via email.

Soho House group reportedly aims to use funds raised from the listing to expand to 46 Soho House sites globally by 2023. It is offering a yet-to-be-revealed fixed amount of shares that each member can buy.

As Kamer reminds us, Soho House did in fact hire J. P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley ahead of a since-aborted attempt at an IPO back in 2018. Now, however, the stars have seemingly aligned.

“It’s bullish on its timing this go-round—travel-and-leisure stocks are expected to boom post-pandemic—and big names are buying in, such as Goldman Sachs, who just loaned Soho House $770 million ahead of the IPO,” Kamer writes.

Taking a private members club public may seem counterintuitive as a degree of ownership will be handed over to anyone who chooses to invest. Some argue this could be the death knell of a club that once styled itself as the opposite to the boorish old members clubs of the capital. It used to be that you had to know someone to get in. That bankers weren’t allowed.

While the club chain does retain a selection process, it’s difficult to square its global pre-pandemic membership of over 110,000 with its supposed exclusivity. But is decrying Soho House’s IPO simply snobbery in and of itself? Instead of undermining its own raison d’être by inviting everyone in, is the chain simply forging ahead and continuing to break new ground?

According to Soho House founder Nick Jones, the company has a combined waiting list of roughly 50,000 people across its clubs. The thing is, not just anyone can join. Yes, there’s a yearly fee. But the emphasis has always been on attracting the kind of people who fit the ethos of the club, namely creatives.

Born in 1963 to an insurance broker father, Jones initially went into catering after leaving school aged 17. He has since told 

: “It was considered a shit job, 20 years ago. But that was partly the reason why I wanted to go into it. Plus, I’m obsessed with food.”

Eight years later he had risen to marketing manager at Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane and was running Cafe Boheme on Greek Street in London’s Soho district.

In 1995 the owners of the townhouse out of which the cafe was based offered Jones the rooms upstairs. He accepted, turning the rooms into a members club for the artists and acts who patronised the restaurant.

Three years later Jones opened Babington House, a countryside hotel in a Grade II-listed Georgian manner in Somerset. Further locations across London and New York followed in the early Noughties, with Soho House Berlin and Soho House West Hollywood opening in 2010. The club’s first locations in Asia – Mumbai and Hong Kong – followed in 2019.

Via its Soho Home offshoot, members (and non members alike) can now purchase the furniture featured in certain clubs while the brands Neville and Cowshed supplies all of the clubs’ toiletries. In other words, you might linger on the waiting list, but you can still outfit your own home to resemble the rooms you see on Instagram. Kind of like The Ivy doing takeaway.

As much as purists would like to picture Jones still running his Soho House empire from the back table at Cafe Boheme the truth, of course, is that the company hasn’t been able to grow to its current globe-straddling iteration without investment.

In 2012 Ronald Burkle, co-owner of hockey team the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, bought a 60 percent stake in Soho House, while Richard Caring, who owns the infamous Annabel’s nightclub and The Ivy is now Soho House’s second-biggest investor.

Bankers are now welcome because it turns out that struggling writers and artists can rarely afford the membership (£1,090 annually, with a £500 joining fee for someone over 27 at Soho House London). And there has been criticism that the new Soho Works co-working spaces are simply an imitation of the failed WeWorks experiment.

Then there are the controversies. In 2002 Jude Law and Sienna Miller’s child was hospitalised after consuming half an ecstasy pill found on the floor at Soho House London.

As the world hunkered down under the shadow of a global pandemic, Soho House continued to charge membership fees, despite all of its spaces being shut down. Naturally, its members were not best pleased – despite Jones assuring them their fees could be used as “store credit” instead.

Then, in April 2020, 30 employees of Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire were fired for “poor performance” – a reduction in staff that some have argued was a harsh alternative to simply furloughing these workers during the pandemic, especially considering that in July 2021 the company qualified for $22 million in P.P.P. loans.

This year, during rising Covid infection rates in Berlin, luxury brand Bottega Veneta reportedly held a number of mask-less parties at Soho House Berlin. The company described these parties as “

” but staff said the spaces were booked in advance, and a police investigation is underway.

The drawing room at Soho House Hong Kong, one of the brand&#8217;s newer outposts


Controversies aside, should the Soho House IPO go ahead the club will likely continue its metamorphosis from upstairs-of-a-restaurant drinking den to something else entirely. And, really, that is OK. Because that’s what successful things do. All of the brands we now and love have changed and compromised along the way to becoming household names. Wether the final product retains any elements of what made it attractive in the first place is a different question.

As for how the IPO affects you, Nimrod Kamer has a proposition, arguing that he would not be surprised should everyone on the waiting list be accepted between now and the IPO.

“But what of Soho House’s original members, who joined when the club was still cool? They might be better off forgoing their membership altogether and just buying the stock,” Kamer writes.

Of course they could but then, at present, stock options seem set to only be available to members, creating a bit of a Catch-22 situation; stocks could be a better option than membership, but you’ll probably have to be a member to purchase stocks.

There is another option; in 2021 perhaps we don’t need private member’s clubs at all. After all, what are they apart from a balm for the ego, just another back-drop for Instagram selfies and Tik Tok videos. Following the pandemic haven’t we all learned that the best place to feel at home is, well, at home?

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