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HOTSEAT BEN MIDGLEY


The president of Crunch Franchise believes the low- cost model is eminently sustainable. He talks to Kate Cracknell about added value in the budget sector and the importance of supporting your franchisees


What is your professional background? I’ve worked in fi tness my whole life – I grew up in the industry. As a student I worked at Gold’s Gym, cleaning equipment and helping out around the club. In 1995 I won IHRSA’s Salesperson of the Year award, which helped to put me on the radar. I was then recruited by 24 Hour Fitness as a senior director of corporate sales, where I met Mark Mastrov. Nine years later I became executive vice president of Planet Fitness in the US, before taking a six-month career break. I think I went about two years without taking a day off, and my third child was going to be born. I was getting a little burnt out and decided to step away from the business.


How did you first get involved with Crunch? After I’d recharged my batteries, I re-engaged with Mark [Mastrov] and Jim [Rowley, CEO of Crunch] in 2009 – in my opinion they’re the fi nest business people in the fi tness industry and I was thrilled to work with them. They’d just bought Crunch [owned by their company, New Evolution Ventures] and had decided they wanted to do a franchise venture, which I came on board to head up. We launched about a year and a half ago.


What is the best part of your job? I work with people I trust without question, and the work I do is very rewarding. When you franchise, it brings in all kinds of different aspects: you’re not just confi ned within the four walls of a club. You have to know everything about the process, from


fi nding real estate to getting someone fi nanced to doing budgeting and marketing. You have to know it all, because you have to teach people every day. It’s fun to bring people through that process. I couldn’t think of a better job.


The Crunch clubs are high end, with a strong brand renowned for its creativity. How does the franchise off ering compare? We’ve taken the coolness and the fun of the Crunch brand, but we’ve toned down the offerings a bit because we’re lower priced. We charge US$19.95 a month, whereas the Crunch-owned clubs charge an average of US$69 a month.


24 Read Leisure Management online leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital


Crunch Franchise is the franchised, low- cost club division of Crunch Fitness, owned by New Evolution Ventures


Also, Crunch is a fairly edgy brand. Crunch clubs grab people’s attention and get a lot of PR by putting on pole dancing classes and so on… things that are really at the cutting edge of group fi tness. That gives it a strong brand presence and as a result everyone thinks that the company is much, much bigger than it is. That edginess works in the big cities, which is fi ne because Crunch focuses on metropolitan areas, but we designed the franchise model so we could put it anywhere in the country [in the US]. We take the coolness of the brand and the cleverness of the advertising, but we tone it down a bit to ensure that we resonate with audiences out- side of the big cities. We need to connect with a broader demographic than the standard Crunch clubs.


What do you see as your main challenges? The risk with the low-cost market is that consumers stop being amazed by the price and start expecting more and more for their money. We stuck our neck out a bit by adding group fi tness, and it’s allowed us to compete very strongly even in areas where there are other budget clubs. It’s meant it hasn’t mattered that we weren’t fi rst to mar-


ket. Maybe at some point someone will add even more for the money. I don’t see how they could, but you never know. In the meantime, offering group fi tness has allowed us to


ISSUE 2 2012 © cybertrek 2012


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