Business View Magazine | April 2020

96 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE APRIL 2020 them to have a passion for the business—that passion for changing lives,” shares Lyons. “We’re fortunate enough to belong to an industry that does that. We change people’s lives daily. So, we really want that passion to extend to our community.” As a franchisor, Snap Fitness enjoys a hands- on level of involvement, offering franchise owners every available resource, from access to their in-house real estate team to health club demographics. “We like to be able to share our statistical data and research,” Lyons explains. “Not just how many people live in each given market, but what segment of the population? Are they in their golden years? Are they single families? Are they Millennials? We then have an in-house project management team that works directly with the franchisee and their contractor of choice to facilitate the club’s design and ensure that all products are delivered on time, from us and our vendors. In addition to that, our operations team is also heavily involved, both in terms of the grand opening campaign and the pre-sale campaign, utilizing that ramp-up period before the gym is open for business.” Although franchisees are free to do their own hiring, corporate guidelines dictate that they must choose suppliers from a pre-approved list of vendors. “Just like most franchise systems, we do require all our franchisees to purchase their equipment from our preferred vendors,” says Lyons. “All of our preferred vendors work closely with us to provide the highest quality equipment at the lowest possible prices. It’s about exploiting that strength in numbers. Our largest supplier, Matrix Fitness, has been with us from the get-go. We’ve got a great relationship with them, as well as with Cybex and Octane Fitness. Tru Fitness is rapidly becoming a strong preferred vendor for us, too. They’re very supportive of our business model.” With franchising continuing to provide a profitable option for private equity and other sources of capital, Snap Fitness has