Why consider fitness franchises as an option to investing? Because people enjoy keeping fit and staying healthy. They also like having a support system to help them do so.
I recently had the opportunity to interview Brandon Wilson of Rockbox Fitness and Cary Tober of Alloy Personal Training. To listen to the interview go Franchise Maven Podcast.
Whether you are an investor or looking for a new workout this information may come in handy.
Rockbox Fitness
Rockbox fitness is the fight club that meets nightclub experience. It’s boxing, it’s kickboxing, and functional strength training all tied together. This creates a really fun atmosphere, you’ve got the loud music, the lights, it’s a great time, but the biggest piece of Rockbox is taking the boredom out of fitness routine. Their members are never repeating the same workout routine. Even if they’re coming in seven days a week, they’re not going to do the same workout twice. It’s different every time. Combining these different functionalities to it, makes it very fun, very engaging. And it helps retain members long term because they enjoy coming back. That’s the big piece. But beyond that, Rockbox is also holding their members accountable. That is really one of their core values as well, accountability. Making sure that they are helping them to achieve their goals. That’s the big focus for the brand.
Steve Halloran, the primary founder, he was an amateur boxer and had some corporate roots and was a serial entrepreneur. Back in 2013. He started Fast Fit boxing. That was really the first iteration of what’s now Rockbox. As he started to build that up, he changed the name to Rockbox. And then the other co-founder, Roger Martin, who had been in the pharma industry for 25 years and executive level positions, he ended up becoming a member and loved the brand saw the big long-term potential of it and wanted to help scale it. He came on board, they started to implement some new systems. And then, shortly thereafter, in 2018, started franchising. The brands partnered up with Jeff Duden, who has quite the background in franchising himself. At this point, they have grown to 54 franchise partners, 36 open locations and over 100 locations sold. A lot of growth is coming this year in 2022, as well.
Alloy Personal Training
Alloy is different in the fitness space. And it offers a complete twist on the fitness industry. They don’t fight for the limited discretionary income of the 25- to 35-year-olds. They focus mainly on the 45- to 65-year-old age bracket. This age bracket typically holds about 70% of the nation’s disposable income. The differentiator for Alloy is that they limit it to about six people per session. They are not doing that big group sweaty, high five thing. They offer highly customized non modality based full body workouts. Their clients are achieving their goals without risk of injury. They focus very heavily on injury prevention. Because if you are in that 45- to 65-year-old age bracket, you usually got like one or two chinks in your armor. You need a little love, a little customization. But the interesting thing about what they do is that they cap all of their facilities at about 130 members. It makes it really easy to start a business and ramp it up get to 130 members. Then, because of their intense cut to the customization and their high-quality relationships with their members, their retention rates are about 97%. At 130 members, you’re really only losing four to five members every single month that you need to replace. With some of the other larger fitness facilities where they might have 500 members, you have to replace something like 50 or 60 members every single month. You’re always in driving sales mode, spending a lot of dollars on marketing. What you really want to do is just focus on fitness, really leverage that experience. That’s perfect, especially for Alloy. Folks that have had some experience in life and are up there always know what we call it, we call it we call it a premium demographic. We like that better. We like being called a premium. You’re like the Cadillac of demographics.
Their founder, Rick Mayo, and if anybody’s in the fitness space, you may have heard of him, he’s been operating since 1992. And he found some substantial fame early on, while he was running just one on one personal training. He’s got his business in the 90s, up to a million dollars out of his location. I think at one point, it was the highest revenue per square foot of any fitness facility in the country. And he was approached a few years after opening by a franchisee of one of the big gym franchises who said, I love what you’re doing on the personal training level. Can you write the programming for my franchise? He did it, and it worked really well. At that point the big gym’s corporate called and said, can you do it for all of the franchisees? And so, he did that, and then ended up on the board of directors at that gym. He then repeated the same thing for another large fitness franchise and ended up on their board of directors as well. Boutique fitness started knocking on his door. Rick’s an entrepreneurial guy, so, he’s like, I think I’m just going to franchise myself, and started doing that in 2019.
Greg Mohr is a former corporate ladder climber, bestselling author of “Real Freedom, Why Franchises Are Worth Considering and How They Can Be Used For Building Wealth”, and has managed restaurants, been a micro-electric circuit engineer, owned and operated dry cleaners, storage units, rental properties, and franchises. Greg has helped hundreds of people invest in a few hundred franchise units. Contact Greg at 361-772-6401 or greg@franchisemaven.com