Multi-Unit Franchisees Bring the X-Factor

Tapping into diverse skillsets to help evolve your brand.

By Adam Zeitsiff

One of the biggest challenges most brands face is meeting the constantly shifting standards of the modern consumer. Over time, all brands reach a point where they need to transform themselves in order to remain competitive within their industry.

This was the situation Gold’s Gym faced in 2016, shortly after celebrating our brand’s 50-year anniversary. The fitness industry had been maturing, and with that came growing niche competition like inexpensive HVLP (high volume low price) gyms as well as higher end boutique studios and digital fitness offerings.

As the most widely known fitness brand in the world, we needed to leverage our expertise and global footprint to differentiate ourselves and take advantage of the growing demand for fitness. We shifted our focus to brand innovation and introduced a new gym prototype offering enhanced products and services, a revamped pricing structure, a proprietary digital personal training app, and more. As the changes proved successful in our company-owned locations, we began partnering with our franchisees to implement this strategy across the brand’s more than 700 locations in 28 countries across six continents.

Of course, implementing significant change takes time and investment. So the question then became how to showcase the “new Gold’s Gym experience” at an accelerated rate. The answer was clear: multi-unit franchising. For a global brand with a complex system such as Gold’s Gym, multi-unit franchisees are attractive assets because they have the financial and operational infrastructure to foster rapid growth, which is necessary for brand-wide change. They also bring fresh energy and extensive expertise, which are valuable to an evolving brand.

If you are looking to utilize multi-unit franchisees as a tool to accelerate your brand efforts, here are some important “X-factors” to consider based on our experience at Gold’s Gym.

X-Factor 1 - Extensive Skillsets

Look for multi-unit franchise groups with strong financial and business acumen but also an aggressive approach to development. For successful multi-unit franchising with Gold’s Gym, the multi-unit franchise group needs to have the resources available to be proficient at managing group exercise programs, personal training, membership sales, day-to-day operations, digital innovation, international insights and more across multiple units.

When the time comes for evolving the brand, all of these responsibilities must be maintained while simultaneously making desired changes to the group’s various locations. Multi-unit franchisees who show a history of speedy, yet successful, development present promise for adopting any brand revitalization efforts in a timely manner.

X-Factor 2 - Infrastructure and Experience

Multi-unit franchisees are in the best position to accelerate growth as they have the infrastructure and flexibility to apply the brand’s desired changes across existing locations alongside their goal to continue adding more units to their investment portfolio. The more powerful a multi-unit franchisee group is, the stronger learning and development systems will be under them in order to quickly bring on new teams to efficiently oversee the growth and operation of new units.

Multi-unit franchisees backed by large investment groups with multiple businesses have experience from the staffing of other locations to know what needs to be put in place for managing change at existing locations along with the development of new locations. Additionally, they have the ideal financial resources available for the hiring and training the personnel needed for such initiatives.

X-Factor 3 - Power of Networking

It is a franchisor’s duty to provide adequate resources to support the growth of their franchisees, including training, market analysis, real estate selection, business planning and more. However, an important benefit realized through Gold’s Gym’s multi-unit franchising efforts is the power of networking among the franchisees themselves. The world is small for multi-unit franchisees associated with large investment groups, and they become well acquainted with one another through their various business endeavors.

To capitalize on the opportunity for productive and beneficial communication from one multi-unit franchise group within the brand to the next, it is valuable for brands that rely heavily on multi-unit franchising to provide a variety of opportunities for networking via annual conventions, international summits, and more. At these brand-wide events, multi-unit franchisees share their methods for business growth with others in the franchise network.

Networking like this is invaluable across the franchise network, as it opens the eyes of all franchisees to the possibilities of new and effective business practices that they may not have considered which in turn supports broader adoption of brand-wide innovation efforts.

Ultimately, while every franchise brand has different needs, expectations and capabilities to inform and propel any revitalization efforts, we all share the common characteristic of looking for new ways to expand. If your franchise has reached a pivotal point where you are looking to evolve your brand while continuing to grow on a global stage, multi-unit franchising is the way to go.

Adam Zeitsiff is President and CEO of Gold’s Gym. He rejoined the company in February 2019 after serving as Chief Information Officer from 2016 to 2018. Find out more about Gold’s Gym here.