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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Aug 18, 2016 21:12:54 GMT
So I was doing a little research and came across something that blew my mind. As I'm sure you're all aware, Anytime Fitness is a competitor of Snap with (to my knowledge) the exact same business model. I think Anytime may have had a year or two head start on Snap, but otherwise Snap is essentially a carbon copy of Anytime.
So back in 2009 Snap Fitness had 893 U.S. Franchises and Anytime had 1,082 - a difference of just under 200 clubs but pretty competitive given A.F. had a few more years in business.
Now fast forward to 2016. Snap has 930 U.S. franchises - essentially 8 years with no domestic growth. Anytime Fitness - 2,177 U.S. Franchises - more than double what they had 8 years ago.
International locations tell a similar story. In 2009, Snap was actually ahead as far as the number of locations, with 31 vs. Anytime's 29. Fast forward to today, Snap now has 415 international franchises. Not bad, right? Well, Anytime fitness now has 1,049 franchises outside the U.S.
All this has happened in spite of Anytime Fitness charging a substantially higher franchise fee than Snap (currently theirs is $37,500 vs. Snap's $25,000) - which I would think would be a turn off for a lot of potential franchisees cross shopping both brands.
So how, or why, has this happened? What is Snap doing wrong, or what is Anytime doing right? I don't have the answer yet, but I'd like to know, because I think there's a lot of value in what can be learned.
Are all the extra clubs coming from existing franchisees opening more locations, or are they bringing in more new club owners? Are their franchisees more satisfied, are they making more money? Is Anytime just better at selling franchises? (They'd have to be a lot better) Are Snap owners defecting to Anytime?
As far as whatever they're doing differently/better, why hasn't Snap tried emulating? Or HAS Snap tried? I know for a fact Anytime does not do a 30 day trial... does that have anything to do with it? You would think that if the powers that be at Snap saw anytime fitness doing something that was bringing them tons of success, they would jump on board. Or is there too much pride amongst leadership to copy the competition at this point?
I would really like to hear all of your ideas on this, and I'll share mine as I continue to do my homework.
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Post by supercool on Aug 19, 2016 14:28:46 GMT
In my opinion, Anytime offers a more polished product. They have from the start.
Their clubs look better, they have more staff, they have a better door system...these are things Snap is kind of, sort of, starting to get more caught up with.
Anytimes are still opening around our area while several more Snaps have closed. I don't think it can all be blamed on the franchisees.
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Post by formerfam on Aug 19, 2016 15:15:19 GMT
The biggest problem Snap Fitness has is the corporate culture. It's a toxic environment which emanates from the CEO's corner. FAMs getting it from both ends and it's a thankless job. FAMs are basically trained to believe that franchisees are always complaining for no reason and are a pain in the ass. Top level execs are constantly heard talking about "making an example" of franchisees who "stir the pot".
Gary Findley obsessed on finding out who was participating in garbage forums and taking them out to the woodshed. Jayh's post about corporate not paying attention to this blog is a bunch of crap. You can pretty much bet that Snap Fitness' lawyers have contacted freeforums to have this forum shut down. They will use all sorts of nonsense to try to achieve that goal. One tactic is that the name snapfitnesszees uses the trademark name snapfitness and therefore infringes on their trademark. I'm not a lawyer, so some of my jargon may be wrong, but that's the basic idea.
Another of Snap Fitness' tactics is to take actions which cause the franchisee to retain a lawyer and spend money. I've heard corporate executive stae that they don't care if they're in the wrong or have no basis for their actions they'll simply take that action to "make an example" of the franchisee. The person who warned participants not to reveal their identity had this exactly correct. You can bet that corporate is doing their best to find out who is behind the different posts, so that the lawyers can send them a nastygram.
The Snap Fitness hallways are filled with employees who have nothing but contempt for franchisees. A perfect example of this is Caleb Johnson. This is a guy who I saw over and over again during training pull up clubs missing revenue due to mistakes they made do absolutely nothing about fixing the problem. When asked about contacting the club to resolve the problem he said that the club should know better and that it's their own stupidity. I contacted a couple of the clubs myself. This is just one example of a caustic employee who's allowed to treat franchisees like crap and is applauded by corporate for it.
Are there happy franchisees? Well yes, but that's because one of the ideas is to have a couple clubs they can point to as shining examples of happy franchisees. These clubs are allowed to do things, which if done by other clubs, would have lawyers all over them. Want an example? Go out to 3clickfitness.com. This club is allowed to use Snap Fitness imagery and locales in their advertising. Other clubs have had almost identical programs sent a nastygram.
I have no idea what the corporate culture at anytime fitness is, but I have an idea that it's nothing even close to the toxic, caustic one found throughout every hallway at Snap's Corporate HQ.
Oh, and Dale, watch your backside because you can be sure that Snap is doing everything they can to discover your identity and "make an example" of you. It's simply the Snap way.
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Post by Dale on Aug 19, 2016 15:34:11 GMT
formerfam...thanks so much for your feedback. What are your insights if any on the 30 day trial &/or Visa/MC account updater? And thanks...I will keep an eye on my backside!!
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Post by Dale on Aug 19, 2016 16:06:16 GMT
thatkidfromjersey...I like the poll question. I don't know how to do that but if you get a chance do you think you could set one up to rank what issues/things we zee's would like to see improvement and or changes to from corporate? As we can all see from this forum there are a lot of "areas of opportunity" but if we can get the top 1, 2 or 3 and begin to call, email, etc. we can begin working on change.
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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Aug 19, 2016 16:07:41 GMT
Thank you formerfam. Everything you stated is exactly what I have (unfortunately) come to expect from Snap Corporate. I would love nothing more than to say I'm part of an organization that has trust and respect at all levels, but Snap right now couldn't be further from that.
Fortunately, if Snap does indeed resort to such dirty tactics to silence people who "stir the pot", there are options we have as franchisees. There are numerous PR outlets, websites, newspapers, magazines, etc. etc. etc who would love to hear stories about these things. What do you think potential franchisees would do if it we're widely known that Snap was suing their OWN franchisees just for speaking out.
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Post by formerfam on Aug 19, 2016 16:09:30 GMT
The only information we're given as far as stats go are what are provided by the execs. What I can tell you in terms of franchisees that favor the program, it's about 5%. All I ever heard were complaints about the program and the execs touting the program and telling us that the franchisees that were complaining weren't running the program properly. When they followed corporate's guidance then it shifted to the fact that the club "couldn't sell their way out of a wet paper bag". As others have noted Corporate is always right and if things aren't successful it's the franchisee's fault. Other explanations are that the franchisees are lazy. As I said it's a stressful, toxic and caustic environment. Every other fitness company I worked at was upbeat and happy, not this one. That's why I left.
I left before the whole Visa/MC updating thing came up, so I have no idea what's behind all of that. Sorry.
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Post by formerfam on Aug 19, 2016 17:14:37 GMT
Just remembered this one -
So Caleb was pacing all around the hallways cursing about a franchisee who pissed him off (this happens often). His solution? Well the next day he bragged to a bunch of us how he had emailed a virus to this difficult club in the middle of the night and then logged into their system using LegMeIn and opened the email, unleashing the virus and rendering their system useless. The system called in for help, he had the call forwarded to himself and told them it wasn't something they could help with, but he could sell them a new system. I reported this and absolutely nothing was done. This is only one example of the types of things this organization will do when they feel they've been wronged, and most of them have very thin skin.
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Post by cheryl on Aug 19, 2016 20:23:29 GMT
Wow, though I have to say I'm not surprised. Every, and yes that's EVERY time we've had to deal with Caleb he's been a complete and obnoxious ass--le and no help whatsoever. I don't think he's even qualified to mop the floors at McDonald's let alone take an order. Here's one link we found when we googled Snap Fitness franchisee reviews www.unhappyfranchisee.com/snap-fitness-franchise-complaints/ These days anyone contemplating opening a franchise is going to google reviews. The complaints listed at that site seem to have been there for years and have been echoed on this forum. There's also a site called Blue Mau Mau.
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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Aug 19, 2016 21:14:54 GMT
You hear that franchisees? Next time you get a computer virus you know where it came from!
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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Aug 19, 2016 21:20:51 GMT
Wow, though I have to say I'm not surprised. Every, and yes that's EVERY time we've had to deal with Caleb he's been a complete and obnoxious ass--le and no help whatsoever. I don't think he's even qualified to mop the floors at McDonald's let alone take an order. Here's one link we found when we googled Snap Fitness franchisee reviews www.unhappyfranchisee.com/snap-fitness-franchise-complaints/ These days anyone contemplating opening a franchise is going to google reviews. The complaints listed at that site seem to have been there for years and have been echoed on this forum. There's also a site called Blue Mau Mau. Wow just clicked on that link and according to one poster, 20% of US Snap locations are actually on the market for sale. If that's the case we are in bigger trouble than we thought!
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Post by determined1 on Aug 19, 2016 22:11:18 GMT
I had seen this a few months ago and googled craigslist for these. It's not a good feeling to see how many Snap clubs are closing their doors. In looking into some of them they state that they're profitable. So why close? My guess is that it's a quality of life issue. snap's corporate office is finding new ways at every turn to take money from their franchisees. At some point people just say enough, I'd rather not deal with it. It also looks like each of these clubs may be being forced to modernize their clubs if they want to continue. If the profit is minimal, then the $50K or so required to modernize would have a lousy ROI.
The reason for all of the closures isn't clear, but the numbers of them should be sending a clear message. Unfortunately the only message corporate seems to get is "franchisees aren't willing to put in the work, are lazy or incompetent". The funny thing is most that are doing well aren't following any of the Snap programs, while the unsuccessful ones are, but obviously doing something wrong.
I just heard today that the recent head of personal training for snap has jumped ship. Anyone hear what happened there? Is she the one who came up with the Club30 program?
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Post by thatkidfromjersey on Aug 20, 2016 20:23:21 GMT
thatkidfromjersey...I like the poll question. I don't know how to do that but if you get a chance do you think you could set one up to rank what issues/things we zee's would like to see improvement and or changes to from corporate? As we can all see from this forum there are a lot of "areas of opportunity" but if we can get the top 1, 2 or 3 and begin to call, email, etc. we can begin working on change. shouldn't be a problem. Let me know the items you think should be in the list and ill set it up
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Post by determined1 on Feb 11, 2018 2:28:21 GMT
Bumping to make it easier to find
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