Fitness Feature Articles

Fitness Feature Articles

Franchise Sector Showcase

Informative Fitness franchise articles to support business buyers, franchisees, and franchisors.

Even in tough economic times, franchisors are stepping up and giving back to causes and organizations they - and their franchisees - believe in. Many of these activities fall under the radar, displaced by news and events deemed more immediate or important. What could be more important than raising money and donating time to help those in need, especially when budgets are pinched and time is at a premium? That's why we're taking the time to recognize our contemporary heroes.
  • Franchise Update
  • 3,567 Reads 1 Shares
Everybody loves lists. Whether it's a year-end "best of" list in the entertainment world or a list of business-performance rankings, we see them everywhere. Lists give us insight and a benchmark for all kinds of comparisons. Readers continue to tell us that the lists found in the pages of Multi-Unit Franchisee magazine each issue are informative--and sometimes provocative--and provide a perspective that often allows for self-assessment and operational adjustments.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 10,933 Reads 1,023 Shares
Gurvinder Singh is, in many ways, a "normal" 24-year-old guy. A former wrestler, he's into martial arts and spends an inordinate amount of time training in the gym. Despite his high energy level, he can go "couch potato" with the best of them, and he loves TV (his favorite show is "Lost"). He also loves cars, and jokes that the health of his business can be measured by the impressiveness of his ride.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,494 Reads 13 Shares
When Jeff Innocenti was a teenager in the Bronx, he and his brother James pretty much lived at the Gold's Gym in nearby Yonkers. "Our mother bought us our first membership and we became gym rats," says Innocenti, now 40. "Working out with weights was pretty much all we did at the time. We may as well have lived there."
  • Amy Zuckerman
  • 14,138 Reads 3 Shares
It was like a gut punch for Charlie Marshall. In less than a year's time, the Spring-Green Lawn Care multi-unit franchisee went from paying $12 per bag for lawn fertilizer to more than $25 per bag. "That will make you look for ways to streamline and cut costs," says Marshall. To add insult to injury, gasoline prices were skyrocketing, making it even more expensive to fire up his seven trucks and dispatch crews to care for his customers' lawns each day.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 4,711 Reads 1 Shares
About 20 years ago, Greg Cutchall learned a crucial lesson. An investor group he worked with forced him out of a chain of KFC restaurants in Omaha, units he had operated and helped to build. That fired him up to make things happen for himself.
  • John Carroll
  • 5,321 Reads 1 Shares
Retailers have never been shy about enticing customers to buy through all kinds of incentives. Now a franchisor has followed suit. During the last quarter of 2008, Seattle-based Emerald City Smoothie was offering a "buy one, get one free" franchise promotion. Seriously.
  • Franchise Update Magazine
  • 7,228 Reads
This article from 2008 could almost be written today. Learn how the more things change, the more they stay the same (except for Covid, of course).
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 5,202 Reads 14 Shares
In 1993, Grant Simon had his heart and mind set on identifying a franchise he could commit to. He found it while getting a haircut.
  • John Carroll
  • 5,553 Reads 12 Shares
Unfortunately, many franchisors flounder in direct-response recruitment advertising. Typically, their development efforts focus on improving their sales and media sources, with minimal attention paid to increasing ad performance.
  • Steve Olson
  • 3,688 Reads 1 Shares
With her high energy and positive attitude, it's no surprise that Linda Fong is a successful multi-brand, multiunit franchisee. However, like many franchisees, she's not one of those who made a plan and followed a straight line to that success. But it's the detours and her individualism that have taught her what she needed.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 3,626 Reads 15 Shares
MSA Worldwide
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Ask any small business owner in the country how important customer retention and loyalty are and they'll tell you they rank right up top of the list of business priorities. It's no different in franchising.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,469 Reads 76 Shares
Franchisees aren't the only ones with more than one brand these days. Increasingly, franchisors are getting into the act as they see the value in selling multiple brands from under one corporate roof.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 4,307 Reads 1 Shares
Kahala Corp. moves fast. When we first spoke with Chris Prasifka in late March, he was executive vice president to the CEO. Two weeks later he was president of Kahala Franchise Corp.--and charged with leading the franchisor and its 13 brands from 4,600 units to 10,000 units by the end of 2010 (an average of 170 units every month for 32 months).
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 5,404 Reads 133 Shares
The former Soviet Union was a frightening frontier for expanding businesses in the early- to mid-1990s. The former communist country was experiencing growing pains as it left behind decades of closed existence and began embracing a new economy built around more of a free market-based environment. And it was just this setting that Jake Weinstock and Paul Kuebler dived into headfirst.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 7,982 Reads 1,014 Shares
Even 10,000-unit gorillas have an Achilles' heel. For Curves, the number-one women's fitness and weight loss franchise, its own success is now biting it in the ankle. Competitors of all sizes and shapes have sprung up, offering women an ever-increasing array of options for losing weight and staying fit.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 3,339 Reads 117 Shares
There’s probably not a bigger franchise opportunity in America...literally. Weight loss franchises not only help individuals change their lives, live longer, and more healthfully, but also offer high earning potential for franchisees who are interested in a piece of the $46 billion weight loss franchise industry.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 2,183 Reads 3 Shares
Last Saturday, mom and dad packed the kids into the minivan and headed out to the fitness center (Curves for her and Athletic Republic for him). First they dropped the kids off (one at Huntington Learning Centers, the other at Abrakadoodle). Before they left, they'd made sure the woman from Bathfitters knew exactly what they wanted done with their new shower, and reminded the man from Spring-Green to cut the back lawn extra short this week.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 4,605 Reads 1 Shares
1987 was a good year for franchising. Up to then, franchising was young, brash, and not always professional. Franchises weren’t much concerned with history. They were built mostly by young entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity and grabbed it, looking forward, not backward. The first 30 years of modern business format franchising had the feeling of the Wild West (like the Internet of the last 10 years).
  • Eddy Goldberg & Ripley Hotch
  • 3,642 Reads 9 Shares
When Liz Goodwin of Durham, N.C., was announced as the Curves Franchisee of the Year for the Southeastern Region last October, a cry went up from across the Las Vegas hotel ballroom.
  • Debbie Selinsky
  • 4,149 Reads 20 Shares
Mike Snyder, who grew up in Michigan and spent most of the last 20 years in and out of California, began work after college as a driver for FedEx in the early ‘80s. He ended up as vice president of the company's eastern region, responsible for $2 billion in revenue and more than a thousand employees.
  • Ripley Hotch and Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,071 Reads 5 Shares
Tropical Smoothie Cafe
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William Monk, Burzynski's ideal AD, was born in Farmville, N.C. He grew up around the family tobacco business his grandfather had started in the 1900s, and went to college to prepare to be part of it. He earned a degree in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and later got his MBA down the road at Duke University in Durham.
  • Ripley Hotch and Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,182 Reads 1 Shares
Conventional wisdom has it that young franchises are jumping on the area developer bandwagon to grow quickly and establish their presence in the most efficient way.
  • Ripley Hotch and Debbie Selinsky
  • 3,526 Reads 137 Shares
Innovation has played a progressive role in franchising since the beginning. Over the years, there have been new spins and fresh angles on all kinds of products, services, and concepts. As if there were any doubt, consider the more than 300 new franchise concepts introduced last year alone, according to franchise research firm FRANdata.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 5,118 Reads 182 Shares
Mr. Rogers, of children's television fame, would have felt right at home at the Franchise UPDATE's 8th Annual Leadership & Development Conference--The Playbook: Winning Strategies for Franchise Success. No one would have raised an eyebrow at the close of the conference if they'd heard his reassuring voice in the hotel lobby singing those familiar words: "It's such a good feeling..."
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 3,613 Reads 1 Shares
Are you looking for the biggest loser? You're not alone. Millions of Americans are searching for a gym or fitness center to help them drop that spare tire and get into shape.
  • Kerry Pipes
  • 2,445 Reads 7 Shares
If you're looking to add women franchisees--and according to every statistic, you should be (more are looking, and more have the means and skills), then you should know what women want (our apologies to the movie).
  • Linda C. Ray
  • 4,565 Reads 25 Shares
Retail is huge. Franchising is huge. And, of course, holiday shopping is huge. Add all that up, and opportunities for retail franchises are tremendous--especially in the last four to six weeks of the year.
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 2,480 Reads 1,014 Shares
Americans love to have fun--and despite their bulging waistlines, they also like to keep fit--or spend money trying! Between these two trends there's a lot of room for franchise growth--whether for seniors, juniors, or in-betweens!
  • Eddy Goldberg
  • 2,685 Reads 9 Shares
In 1963, women's advocate Betty Friedan wrote in her book, The Feminine Mystique, that women were preparing to break new barriers. Friedan lived to see her prophecies come true before her death earlier this year. And nowhere are the broken barriers more apparent than in multi-unit franchising.
  • Linda C. Ray
  • 4,212 Reads 1 Shares
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