Archive for the ‘Franchise updates’ Category

There are fitness franchises all over the country and now the world and the question we have asked many times on this blog is what do these fitness franchises really provide to their franchisees?  It’s a great question because there are no trade secrets or recipes that separate most of these fitness franchises.  So really it is all about the exercise equipment they provide and at what cost to the franchisee, their marketing efforts, their software and their computer capabilities which will help franchisees run an efficient stream-lined franchise.

Here at Illuminate Gym Franchise Development we have spent many years looking into fitness franchises, gym franchises, and personal training franchises around the United States to really assess how to separate ourselves from our competitors.  Believe it or not a decade ago I was in the same space as most perspective fitness franchise owners.  I wanted to be my own boss and I didn’t know how I was going to get there…. So I did what a lot of people do.  I looked into opening  franchise and because I was already a fitness professional and personal trainer it made sense to look at the fitness franchises available to me in the United States.

What I found on my search threw the fitness franchise world was a lot of smoke and mirrors about what was actually being offered to me for not only my initial franchise fee, but also the 6%-9% of gross revenue those fitness franchises wanted to keep from me.  So I began to look deeper into these fitness franchises and I was shocked to see how much of these ’so-called’ fitness franchise development companies really were ’snake oil’ salesman.

1.  The first thing that concerned me about many of these fitness franchise development companies was how they were going about getting fitness equipment to their franchisees.  Most of these fitness franchise companies were more interested in creating more wealth for themselves than actually helping their fitness franchisees keep their bottom line at a minimum.  In fact, I quickly found that I could acquire equipment for far less than most of the fitness franchises out there.  This was very concerning, but as I said earlier in this point these fitness franchise owners were more interested in making money up front rather than creating a successful fitness brand.

2.  The technical support was also very important to me because fitness franchises don’t really offer preferred vendors on food and recipes like food franchises.  And what I found was that most of these fitness franchises were really still stuck in the 1990’s with their interactive and cyber services which was very concerning to me as a perspective franchisee because I just couldn’t see why paying a lot of money up front for very little made any sense.  In fact, most of these fitness franchises actually set you up with a third party company that will charge you another franchise royalty to take care of a lot of your franchise needs as far as billing and accounting are concerned.  Does that make sense to pay a huge fitness franchise fee and a continued franchise royalty in order to use a software that is available to you anyway?  I certainly didn’t think so.

3.  After bringing up my first major concerns with the fitness franchise world these fitness franchise development companies would usually answer me by letting me know that I was buying into a ‘brand’ of fitness that couldn’t be duplicated.  I am sorry to let most of the fitness franchises know out there that your brand means very little to the consumers out there.  In fact, there are fitness franchises out there with 500 plus locations that people have no idea about.  People aren’t interested in a ‘brand’ of fitness franchise…. They are interested in finding a place that can help them get into the best shape of their life period.  The fitness franchise ‘brand’ means very little to people around the country.

4.  The next thing that was very concerning to me was speaking to other fitness franchise owners about the continued support they received from their fitness franchise.  Many of them told me that after their doors opened it was very hard to get the fitness franchisors back on the phone to give them any franchise support.  One fitness franchise owner I spoke to referred to the fitness franchise he was a part of as, ‘a bunch of used cars salesman who don’t care about you after you hand over the check and drive off the lot’.  That’s sad.

After I weighed my options in the fitness franchise world I made the decision to develop my own fitness facility and years later I realized that my concept was actually a concept that could turn into a successful fitness franchise across the United States and even beyond.  Here at Illuminate Gym Franchise Development our main concern is building the Illuminate Gym ‘brand’ through creating successful businesses.  That means that we keep our franchise owners’ costs down as low as possible initially and on an on-going basis.  We want to build successful fitness franchise owners rather than taking all of your money up front.  In the franchise world many franchisors are not aware that real success is not in the ‘fast cash’ but in the longevity of a franchise.  At Illuminate Gym we are interested in building a fitness franchise that stands the test of time and believe our low-cost approach to franchising and to fitness will provide that to our franchisees.  We also have now developed our own proprietary brand of software that will undoubtedly save our fitness franchise owners a ton of money over the course of the years they own our franchise units.

Thanks so much for reading the blog here at www.illuminategym.com!  If someone you know is interested in purchasing a fitness franchise or is interested in speaking with people who know about the franchise world than please give us a call here at Illuminate Gym Franchise Development.  Also if you would like to read more about the exciting franchise news here at Illuminate Gym Franchise Development then please continue to come back here or check us out at www.gymfranchises.net.  Have a healthy day!