![]() Well yeah, there's no choice.Īnother big red flag I missed. So at the yearly convention the Franchise sell lead would always "debunk" the news that we have a high fail rate by saying "No, 60% of locations are sold/year, not closed. Owners literally can't walk away without paying the remainder of the 10 years, being sued into bankruptcy, or transferring it (with home office approval, it's not even yours to sell). 9Round locked people into 10 year agreements with personal guarantees, and stipulated the commercial leases match. Look at the number of locations sold and transferred. (Even worse, they now require a flat fee or % whichever is higher for the month, and they know all because you're required to use their contracted overpriced club management and POS system, which they have full access to, but you pay for your fees and theirs.) Being required to sign a personal guarantee on EVERYTHING they touch, because they want to be able to sue you if the business folds.ĭon't look at numbers of locations closed only. Being required to buy insurance from a no one insurance company the Franchisor Owners wife owns. Red flags, agreeing to follow any documents other than the franchise agreement. I saw they started selling the franchise gear at Walmart the other day, for less than we could buy it for directly from them. Every single item I bought for 9Round could be bought on Amazon for 20% less. ![]() Their vendors are nothing more than retailers with a high markup and giving kickbacks to the Home Office. You're a middle manager responsible for all of the bills, and required to buy everything they tell you, when they tell you, from who they tell you. It goes on.īasically small business skills are useless, because you can't control anything. The operations manual was the "you will be open a minimum of X hours/week, you will buy this service from our specific vendors, you will purchase all equipment directly from us or a listed vendor in our online store, you will have a minimum of X employees on site at all times, you will upgrade to all new equipment every 1-5 years. So the franchise agreement will say things like 10-year agreement, $500/month franchise fee, etc. Want to see the operations manual you're agreeing to first? Nope, that's proprietary and can only be provided after signing the agreement and paying the franchise fee. This effectively gave them unilateral authority to change whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. When reading hundreds of pages of legal disclosure, it's easy to miss. What I missed was one little line in there saying I agree to abide by the current operations at all times. The FDD and your franchise agreement are your contracts, and it appeared legit on the surface. The owners I sold to were regularly fined by the Home Office for failing to follow the manual, but they turned a profit compared to most. Following their support is where I failed. I had fitness, training, and some small business ownership experience, but not franchise. The franchise marketing plans absolutely did not work, and I sunk my yearly marketing budget into their plan in 3 months, and generated one member from it. My biggest takeaway from franchise gym ownership is that it is 100% all about marketing and membership sales. There are people that do well, there are a lot more that give away their business to get out from the franchise agreement. Knowing what I do now, I won't touch a franchise. If I had known more back then I would've saved a bit more and opened an Anytime instead of the 9-Round. Location Specific Small Business Subredditįormer 9-Round owner, they're controlled by the same parent company as Anytime Fitness.
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