HOTSEAT
Members pay $19.95 a month for use of the facilities
“I think a franchise company has to be open to learning and allowing a bit of flexibility, letting people test things out to see if they can make improvements”
For example, someone who owns one of the largest Dunkin Donut territories in the country has now come over and bought into our brand. That’s exactly what we’re looking for – people seeing us as a strong investment opportunity, even in this young stage of our development. Part of that is of course down to the brand, but I also
have to credit our team in the franchise business – there’s a lot of relationship-building that goes on, creating trust with the potential franchisee and then making good on that. We’ve done a good job of getting people comfortable.
What do you most enjoy about the franchise business? What I really love is the sort of personal relationships you end up building with the franchisee. That’s really important to me. I have a very strong belief in terms of doing the right thing for the people you sell to, whether it’s a health club membership or a franchise. Most franchisees currently buy closer to fi ve units, but
we do have people who buy just one, and in a lot of cases they will invest a signifi cant portion of their personal assets to get the business up and running. You also learn about these people through your conversations with them – about their family, their dreams… It becomes very rewarding to help them become successful in their own business.
How much control do you like to have? We take the philosophy that we’re 80 per cent rigid and 20 per cent fl exible. A lot of franchisors say ‘do it our way: that’s the only way’, but there are lots of great ideas out there. I think a franchise business has to be open to learn- ing and allowing a bit of fl exibility, letting people test things out to see if it can make improvements across the network.
26 Read Leisure Management online
leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital Because the fi tness industry is evolving – it’s always going
to evolve – and you have to be able to evolve with it. There are different ways to programme, different ways to inter- act, different things to do with technology, different ways of integrating with the community. We want to make sure we have open ears the whole time. If you get to the point in your career where you think you have all the answers, I believe you’ve already missed the broader picture.
Are you optimistic about the future of the fitness industry? I think what’s good about the industry is that it’s always trying something new, trying to fi nd different ways to get people involved. But it is an uphill battle to get people off the couch and taking their health seriously, and we need to be more open to changing in different ways – not just evolv- ing our offering in our clubs to try and get more people in, but actually looking beyond our four walls. We have to go out and promote ways just to get people to do something, some sort of activity, and in the end we’ll all benefi t. I believe we need to rethink the way we approach politicians too. Rather than being too prescriptive in our rec- ommendations, we need to focus on getting them engaged in exercise. If they do that, and start to appreciate its value, I believe they’ll work out a way to get it into legislation.
And how about future opportunities for Crunch Franchise? Mark [Mastrov] has set a target of 300 Crunch Franchise clubs in fi ve years, which would be great. But I’m not one to put big numbers out there. My day-to-day job is about looking after our franchisees. If we do that really well, who knows what the number could be. ●
ISSUE 2 2012 © cybertrek 2012
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