I have a rather nice Anytime near me that had terrible ownership/management that looks to be belly up after Covid. I've thought about contacting corporate to get more info as it's a pretty damn good location but ownership ran it into the ground. I'd be interested to hear what your preliminary research has turned up.
I know a gym franchise is fool's gold but I wouldn't mind not waking up and hating what I do for a living.... Plus there is a younger guy that owns one a town away and he has it decked out pretty nice w specialty bars and a few nice pieces from Rogue, titan, etc. Shit, I'm actually looking into it just to have a decent gym to train at after relocating
Well, I had calls with 5 owners. Heres what I learned for anyone interested:
You'll be taking an sba loan or spending between 400 and 500k to open up.
You'll pay 60k a year in franchise fees
You'll overpay for equipment, outdated systems that are overpriced because the franchise company charges you 7% over retail to make money on it.
$100 in advertising costs to gain 1 new member is the average spend due to how you're forced to advertise.
2 owners did some testing with Facebook and Instagram ads and found this number to be $3 in advertising for 1 new member. And they found it to be much more effective in driving memberships. So again, potential savings.
Overpay for security system by roughly 6000%
The short story is, a gym with 941 members will make you 159000 in your pocket every year.
If you did it yourself, you could open for 250k and at the same membership prices make an extra 80k a year. this is for a similarly equipped 5000 sq foot facility.
One thing that stuck out for me was 5 out of 5 in 5 different states all said, they'd do it themselvs and save half while making more if they were to do it again and all plan to do just that when their franchise agreement ends.
3 mentioned they would increase takehom to 200k and continue to invest the difference in growing their business and opening new locations. They agreed that after the first one, it would be feasible to open 1 new location every 2 years by reinvesting rather than taking a larger salary.
I have 15 pages of notes but this is the general gist and what I believe are the key take aways.
I'll be doing some homework into doing it on my own.
If anyone is interested, I can keep a log in the business section of the process, costs, and anything else I can think of.