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Post by veryfrustrated on Feb 27, 2018 20:14:37 GMT
Has anyone added showers to their Snap? If so, what size room seems to work best to incorporate a shower and a place to hold their clothes while showering? Trying to figure out costs on doing this and how it goes over, e.g. does it retain membership and/or increase memberships?
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Post by cheryl on Feb 28, 2018 14:09:30 GMT
We're contemplating a shower. However, it will be part of an elite package plan. Access will be granted with a bio-metric reader and will include several other things. Our shower will be a very high end shower (eg travertine tile (or similar). Showers are a pain to keep clean and I don't want some plastic (ala planet fitness) type of shower. It might work as planned, it might not. Like many other things we roll out it may need tweaks here and there to be successful.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Feb 28, 2018 15:06:15 GMT
I have had private stall showers for years. 9'x9' plenty of room. The landlord threw them in during the build-out and I regret approving the install to this day. They are a pain to keep clean and the bathroom floors get swamped at times. If you took a survey, you would probably find some ridiculous number say "yes" to wanting them. The truth is, almost no women use theirs and maybe 3 or 4 guys use that one in my club. I never sold a membership based on my showers and nobody ever asked about them over the phone. They raise the water and electric bills. I did have another snap member from a club across state come in just to use my shower on his way to a concert. Did I mention I hate reciprocity? I had a father/son joint membership for over a year. The father told the son to use the gym shower so they saved on their bills at home. The father would walk 15 minutes on the treadmill then hit the shower. Then the son would follow. Pretty much EVERY single day except for when they left town.
Actually, I wish my 50 gallon water tank would break so I could shut them down. Then I would close them off and install a 5 gallon tank.
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Post by yankedchain on Feb 28, 2018 16:14:39 GMT
My experience is similar to snaplongtimer. We solved our problems with the showers by lowering the water temperature in the tank. Rather than the usual shower and shave time, they just jump in and rinse off. They have ruined the walls in the men's room. So every spring we have them repaired. You will have to change your paint, your ceiling tiles and make sure your exhaust venting can handle the extra moisture. You may even need to change your drywall, especially around the shower area.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Feb 28, 2018 19:24:54 GMT
I have a dual element heater and turned the temp settings down to the minimum. Trying to figure out how I can get them down further. Still too hot.
I have the cheap shower stall insert kind Cheryl mentioned. They look fine after all these years, but the surrounding wall edges need repair after a while. I try not to touch that repair hoping people will think the shower is too gross to use. lol
If your members are professional business, accountants, lawyers, office type workers etc perhaps they would use the shower more. If not forget it. You're wasting your time, money and space.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Feb 28, 2018 19:31:40 GMT
Oh here's a thought. If you have a private shower in each men's and women's bathroom. Better plan on having a unisex bathroom (no shower) also. Shower rooms get locked up for 20 minutes at times.
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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Mar 24, 2018 14:45:31 GMT
The value of having a shower in the club lies simply in being able to say you have one during the sales process. In reality, most don't get that much use. But in my experience, they help to sell memberships, and thats what makes it worthwhile.
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Post by Guest on Apr 24, 2018 15:41:17 GMT
I can't believe what I'm reading here. You intentionally leave your showers "gross" and turn down the heat as low as it will go? Who would ever go to your gym? Do you also keep the air temperature cold in the winter and hot in the summer to save a few dollars in electricity? Thats a strategy to go out of business. If you have a member that only joins to use the showers thats great. Say for example it costs you $200 per month for hot water, that means you need 4 members to cover that expense(My clubs averages $55 per member. I'm guessing your doesn't). How many members will you gain and not lose if your showers have hot water and are not gross? 100? 200? Install proper drywall that won't decay in the bathroom and paint every couple of years, is that such a big deal? I can say without a doubt I would not join a gym without clean showers whether I planned to use them or not. Showers might not mean much to you but you should probably be thinking about what your members want, that is if you plan on being in business much longer.
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Post by cheryl on Apr 26, 2018 12:09:15 GMT
The average snap has about 300 memberships. To think that, on average, adding a shower will gain 100? 200? new memberships sounds like snap math. We all know snap can't do math (or accounting, or software, or much of anything else except raise/collect taxes (ie fees))
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Post by snaplongtimer on Apr 26, 2018 14:11:04 GMT
Actually, I cleaned the shower since the last posting. I just keep it gross enough to keep a dumb-ass like "Guest" out of my gym. Sounds like mission accomplished...high five!
"Hello, my name is Guest. Welcome to my club where we average $55 per member. There's a 50% chance you'll be paying more than that so fyi. No worries though, we keep the water tank on a scalding hot setting because I'm a complete dumb-ass on cutting costs."
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Post by Guest on Apr 26, 2018 15:35:00 GMT
Hi snaplongtimer. You are right I don't care in the slightest about cutting the cost of hot water or investing in having my showers cleaned daily. I admit my math may have been a little off on my 100-200 new members. If the average club has 300 members I should have said you are losing 400 members. Let me try to do some math. I have 3 hot water tanks set nice and hot with 3 shinny showers, I estimate to run those water heaters cost approximately $200 per month plus $650 per month to clean them daily. We can increase that to $1,000 to avoid any arguments that the numbers may be too low. Since I know the absentee owner/minimal operating hours model does not work my club is staffed all day. This makes sure our club is always clean and the members are engaged, added labour cost to be open 60hrs per week over 40hrs $1,290 per month. Those extra 400 members are paying on average $55 each for a total of $22,000. In summary I invest $2,290 each month for a profit of $17,710. When you factor in the fact that the average club charges about $20 per month I am also making an extra $6,000 off the first 300 members. So when we total all that up I profit $23,710 more than the average club. But in the end you are correct, I do not save $20 in water heating costs.
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Post by cheryl on Apr 26, 2018 17:14:27 GMT
Hopefully you're not taking your average membership price from snap's dashboard numbers. These don't take any costs into account. eg If you have a member who bought a $100 widget and pays $35/month snap calculates that member as paying $135. Wow, what a great member!! Factor in that your cost for the widget is $85 and now instead of that membership being $135 it's $50. That's less than half of the $135 reported. An average club with 300 memberships losing 400 members would be hard to imagine. *** Poof *** add showers get 400 memberships? Where did that statistic come from? More snap math? Have you thought about getting full size showers instead of just shinny showers? People sweat all over, not just on their shins. Using absolute numbers rarely makes sense. It's much more accurate to talk in terms of percentages. All day = 24/7. At $12/hour that's $8640/month. With your $55 average rate (again, most likely inaccurate due to snap math). That's 157 members 60 hours/week doesn't equate to all day. McDonald's offers breakfast all day - not 60 hours during the week Also, you seem to use the terms members and memberships interchangeably. A single membership at $35 is $35 per member and $35 per membership. A $50 joint membership is $25/member. In snap's original documentation they state the reason the discourage showers is that only about 2% to 5% of members actually use a clubs showers. For a club with 700 members/memberships (I still can't tell which you're stating) That would be 14 to 35 members. At the misconstrued $55/member(ship) that's $770 to $1925 more per month. At an additional $1290 per month in costs you're making between -$520 and $635. With an all day staff it's a huge loss. As I've stated before full showers and other amenities would be part of an elite package. With no showers my water costs are about $78/month. I'm not sure what my hot water heater runs me per month. Not having showers for the masses is one of the things I believe the original model had correct. (Yes, even though we're planning to tweak it a bit.
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Post by Guest on Apr 26, 2018 18:27:04 GMT
Thank you for your in-depth analysis Cheryl. To clarify I have 700 members not memberships. Comparing memberships means nothing as a membership could include 1-4 people and have a value of $10-$100+. Our average members dues are $55. If you add in widget sales the average member pays $61.50 per month. If you are comparing 2 equivalent clubs in your calculation about have or not having showers are you taking into account one club being clean and well taken care of and the other club being "gross"? How old are the Snap original documents you are referring? You always refer to the original Snap business model. Times change, if you don't change you are destined to fail, complaining about the market changing will not prevent imminent failure. Snap is actually trying to change right now. They are making an effort. Are you? This post bothers me so much because clubs that don't include basic amenities and consider themselves "gross" only bring down all the other hard working clubs.
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Post by cheryl on Apr 26, 2018 19:20:32 GMT
You're welcome. Always willing to help people clarify things when their data is convoluted and use terms like members and memberships interchangeably.
"Comparing 2 equivalent clubs in my calculation" - Where did I compare 2 clubs? Focus...focus...focus...
"You always refer to the original snap business model" - Beware terms like always. I see 1 reference above and 310 posts. That would be .003%, but then there's that snap math again.
You don't have to go back to far to see snap stating that showers aren't part of the snap business model.
Better is always different, but different isn't always better.
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Post by determined1 on Apr 26, 2018 21:51:41 GMT
Why are you bothering to respond to someone who isn't accountable enough to create a login on the site. This is done so they can hop into a thread and say one thing one time and another thing another time. In doing so they don't have to remember what sort of crap they said in a previous post. As far as I'm concerned anyone who doesn't create an account is a (fat) corporate troll.
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