The New (LOL) Snap!

Well said! MyZone is a 150$ advertising medium! No other use for the product in our type of fitness environment. OT will fizzle out soon there is no variety offered. Clubs like that just don't last. Kosama is a good example, curves, jazzercise, etc....., the list goes on. Why doesn't Snap stop chasing what others are doing and start being innovative again!

My thought is the only way Myzone will work is if you have personal trainers that are using/promoting it with classes much like OT. Unfortunately, my trainers think it's just as effective for members to use their fitbit, and aren't interested in promoting it. In the current environment with so many of us competing with lost cost gyms, I just don't think Myzone is the answer. I'm getting criticized on Listen360 for not offering $10 memberships; do you think these same people will buy a Myzone belt from me? Most likely not.

The only thing RELEVANT to me right now is how soon can I escape from this franchise!

I'd like to understand why, if this MyZone is so relevant, does corporate only have it in a small fraction of their 35 clubs? JV mentioned on a FB post just how many locations they have with MyZone, and how many more are rolling it out. So in all this time of being available, I think he said they have it in four or five stores with 8 more about to add it. This is not even totaling half of their stores. What have they been waiting for? This is their "do as I say not as I do" moment?

It's hard for me to jump on board when I find it super easy to just use my Fitbit and view my steps and heart rate on my phone in front of me.  I don't care if it's not super accurate. it's a guide and a motivator.  And it is reliable.  It seems there are a lot of issues with the reliability of yet another Snap Fitness program/product.

I'll start off by saying that we've had MyZone for several months now. We spent almost a year evaluating the offerings from Polar and MyZone. I love the MZ-3 product. I have a fitbit blaze as well. The blaze cost me about $200 about 2 years ago. The two products are like night and day. The fitbit is fine for counting steps and tracking sleep. The blaze has a heart rate monitor, which is why I bought it. Unfortunately, it sucks at tracking my heart rate and adjusting my heart rate zone based on my level of conditioning. The fitbit would have me exercising in a rest mode and telling me I'm in a fat burning zone. It's about 50% as accurate as the MyZone and shows I'm only burning about half of the calories shown by the MyZone.

Moving away from the device and onto the app, it's also head and shoulders above the fitbit. The charts are easy to read and let me see just what zones I worked out in. In the club the MyZone transmits the data not only to the MyZone TVs, but also to the different cardio machines. You don't have to touch the cardio machine's heart rate monitors. You can make small adjustments to your workout and get immediate feedback as to how it affects your heart rate.

I agree with a prior post: If you don't have personal trainers I believe you'll have a very difficult time if not an impossible time seeling the MZ-3s (or MZ-1s). You have to have time to sit down with someone and explain the benefits and show them. You can also try to sell them on the idea during your tour. Unfortunately that sometimes leads to those new members taking the information you've just enlightened them with and trying to incorporate their fitbit in the process. They try to press buttons to see where they're at with their heart rate. It's cumbersome, but they already have a device and want to try to make that work.

As much as I love the MyZone I think it's a mistake to force clubs to buy it. If they don't have the resources to run it properly it'll just be a huge failure. I've seen several new snaps open touting the MyZone, but have 0 TVs displaying any member tiles. They don't want to spend the extra money or go through the effort of hanging a bunch of new TVs. (That's what I'm guessing) However, they can check that box. Basically they're stating that they have them for sale. The only way you're going to sell it is to use it. Even then I'm finding it a tough sell. We sell about 2.5/month. We run in house contests and MyZone is having a raffle in the Month of March where top prize is $5,000. It's unclear if snap is trying to claim that this MyZone promotion is a snap promotion.

I can't get any of our instructors to use it for their classes. I teach a couple of the classes and use it. It's easy to set up the classes. The difficult part is that it makes your class extremely regimented. There's really no flexibility if you need to change or pause part of your class. This may be fixable and we've suggested a change, which basically revolves around making a very simple remote for instructors. (Play and Pause) The remote keyboard is tough to use and move the mouse into position. The instructor needs to grab the remote and just hit a button to pause the class and start it back up.

Make sure you sell it to the right audience. If you sell it to a senior citizen you probably have a 50% chance that they're going to have problems and make your life a living hell. It starts with getting them to be able to get the MZ3 turned on, but even after that the problems persist. I've tried to get them to email MyZone directly. They refuse and only want to work with me on it. They call me at all hours of the day and night. Some of my employees have said I should just give them their money back because of all the headaches they're creating. I've spent over 10 hours with one member over a period of about 2 weeks. Then they get mad that it won't work for them and I have no idea what's causing their problems. We've swapped belts, no change. I've put their MZ3 on my belt and worn it, works fine. No pacemakers. I'm getting frustrated just typing about it. In the club it works fine (for the most part), outside of the club it's a nightmare.

As far as retention goes I don't really see it. I've had 2 members join my club who already had an MZ3 from their previous club (the YMCA). It didn't keep them there and after about 3 months they terminated from my club. I have several members who love it just as much as I do. We compete for first place on the leader board every month.

Does it differentiate us? Well, other clubs who offer this type of capability charge $100+ per month. We offer it for less. It's a selling point. Will it alone sell someone on your club? I doubt it. You need to have a lot of differentiators to get someone to join your club. On a chart this shows up as bullet points in your column and not your competitors. If they are in your competitors box are they at a much higher price point? Does that prospect care about those differentiators? Well, part of the sales process is to get them to care about them, but some just don't. If they're looking strictly at price then part of the sales process is to change their focus from spending a small amount of $$ and getting no results or using what your club has to offer to get the results they're looking for.

Sorry if this post sounds a bit wishy-washy, but it's really dependent on your club as to whether MyZone will benefit you or not. You should know your club better than anyone else. For that reason MyZone should be an opt-in program.