Are you considering buying a fitness franchise? Great choice! The world is your oyster and now is an excellent time to invest in a new opportunity. Before you do, though, there are a few things you’ll want to consider. After reading this article check out the Fitness Franchise Buyers Guide.
This Article was In the News: North Fulton Herald, Dec. 30, 2020, 5 Things you Need to Consider Before Buying a Fitness Business
Top 5 Considerations for Buying a Fitness Franchise
1. Boutique Fitness
Boutique fitness has become a popular trend in recent years. Right now, about 18.2 million people in the U.S. belong to fitness studios, and many of those people are looking for more than a big box gym experience. Enter boutique fitness studios. These studios serve specific populations of people, offer specific exercises, or provide some on-demand service someone is looking for.
For example, Alloy Personal Training specializes in a combination of personal services, effective technology and a formula for incredible results for both member and franchise owner. Everything we do is focused on tailoring to our customers, and providing the best possible workout experience for them. In that sense, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors who try to be everything to everyone. We know what we’re great at, and we focus on excelling at it time and time again.
If you’re considering purchasing a fitness franchise, investing in a boutique fitness offering is a great way to pinpoint your target market and understand your customers from the get-go.
2. Personal Training
To offer personal training or not to offer personal training, that is the question? In a world where customers are increasingly attracted to personalization and on-demand offerings, personal training has become incredibly popular.
In fact, the personal training industry has experienced steady growth over the five years between 2015-2020, growing about 2.4% during that time. Experts expect the growth rate to continue increasing, and for demand to remain high.
As a result, now is a great time to consider purchasing a fitness franchise with a personal training element. Not only does it allow you to expand your offerings, but it’s a great way to serve customers from day one.
Additionally, you don’t have to actually be a personal trainer to bring this kind of service to your gym. You can partner with personal trainers to provide this service. From there, you can also build out in-home personal training, and digital personal training. More on this next.
3. Digital Personal Training
If there’s anything COVID-19 has taught us, it’s that digital offerings can save a business when everything else hits the fan. When gyms and fitness studios were forced to shut down back in March of 2020, many survived by pivoting to offer digital classes.
These classes, either live or pre-recorded, were the only way many gyms could continue serving their customers and stay in business, as a result. With this in mind, it’s an excellent idea to look for fitness franchises that offer an aspect of digital personal training.
Not only does it allow you to compete with other establishments that have expanded their personal offerings, but it’s an excellent way to cater to more customers and make your business harder to interrupt in the future.
4. Weight Loss
A lot of people come to a fitness community with the ho[e of losing weight, but not all fitness communities actually have a plan to help people do just that. Fortunately, you can get an edge on the competition by looking for a fitness franchise that offers a tried-and-true weight loss program for customers.
For example, when people come to Alloy Personal Training with the hope of losing weight, we pair them with a personal trainer and a dietician.
This well-rounded approach allows our customers to reach their weight loss goals without feeling like they’re punishing themselves or participating in a program that’s impossible to maintain. The result is happy customers who feel like they’re doing something good for themselves and their bodies.
As you consider purchasing a fitness franchise, look for offerings that provide medically supervised, research-based nutrition plans and other offerings, like behavioral health programs. When you cater to the whole health of your clients, they’ll keep coming back for more.
5. Programming for a Healthy Lifestyle
Today, fitness goes way beyond just diet and exercise. Most people who come to a finesse franchise are looking for ways to live a healthier, better-rounded lifestyle. The question, then, is whether or not your franchise will help them achieve this goal.
To meet this need, some franchises have started to offer stretching and flexibility programs, for example. These programs are designed to minimize sports injuries and help people stay in great shape for many years to come.
Another benefit of looking for a franchise that offers these healthy lifestyle programming services is that, in addition to the fact that they’ll help draw more customers, they’ll also add a lot of value to your franchise without drastically increasing your startup costs.
Since there’s minimal equipment involved with stretching, healthy lifestyle programming, and on-staff dieticians, for example, you can get in with all these added bonuses without blowing your upfront investment out of the water.
Staying on the Cutting Edge of the Fitness Franchise Industry
If you’re considering buying a fitness franchise, there are dozens of exciting opportunities to consider. Fortunately, you can give yourself a leg-up in the industry by looking into franchises that offer any of the five cutting edge trends above.
Here at Alloy Personal Training, we pride ourselves on offering cutting-edge, industry-leading personal training for the active aging population.
Our franchise model has served as the standard for other fitness franchises in the United States and beyond. To learn more about our program or our franchise opportunities, request your free information packet or contact our team today.
Check out the Podcast on Buying a Fitness Franchise
In this podcast you will find why buying a fitness franchise is hot right now. It’s a great investment opportunity; it gives you a better return on investment as an entrepreneur. If you go to sell, if you’re an independent operator, it gives you systems and a massive shortcut to success.
Nonetheless, you’ve got to put the work in and run the systems. It’s one thing to have them create it, but you still have to be an entrepreneur.
We felt like it’s a better vehicle for our potential or our core customer, and ultimately, a better vehicle for their core customer.
How about the pricing? What’s your investment for a franchise versus starting on your own? And sustainability and longevity? What is the level of support that you’re going to receive ultimately? Those are important questions to consider.
The franchisee-to-franchise alignment and financials are other vital considerations when you are mulling over buying a fitness franchise. Stay tuned to know more.
Podcast Key Points of Discussion:
- Pricing: The upfront fee (franchise fee) and the ongoing fee (4:13)
- There are franchises that do a flat fee (5:27)
- With a low barrier to entry and price per month, don’t expect lots of support (9:36)
- Sustainability and longevity: You need to look at overall market conditions (13:12)
- Make sure there’s some history there, that the scalability is proven out (16:40)
- Level of support you’re going to receive could make or break you (17:03)
- Make sure the franchise fee threshold is enough to get you training (17:27)
- Franchisees to franchise business coach ratio – the less, the better (20:09)
- You can’t take the personal out of business relationships (20:24)
- Your core values: Do they align with the master franchise? (23:15)
- The financials: Ask for Item 19 (24:08)
- How soon will you get a return on your investment? (25:18)