franchisee sp tlight
Franchisees Chris and Ellen Klebba
Name: Chris and Ellen Klebba
Company Name: PFINMI
Partner(s): Hoyt and Gerry Frericks
Year You Became a PF Franchisee: 2006
Total Number of PF clubs: 11 open, 1 in construction
State(s) in which you operate clubs: Michigan and
Northern Indiana
What drew you to the brand and how did you get involved
as a franchisee? My wife and I started our own independent
gym in 1995. We added another smaller training studio location in
2004 and poured every bit of our time, energy and money into the
two locations for more than 10 years.
While we managed to stay afloat, we were not reaching
enough people and as a result, were not succeeding financially. We
just worked harder and harder until one morning I found myself
with acute appendicitis—exhausted, stressed and frustrated.
I had been hearing about the crazy PF model and was initially
mostly worried about them coming to my market and what that
would do to us. My wife and I had our honeymoon in New Hampshire, so we decided to take the opportunity to check this out with
the hidden motive of getting away to one of our favorite areas.
We walked in, met with Chris Rondeau and Mark Christie and
toured the Manchester, New Hampshire, gym. I was blown away
at how busy it was at 11 a.m. on a weekday, the EFT numbers, how
well the club was maintained and built out, and how simple the
model was and my wife fell in love with the flowers in the locker
room! From that point, we checked out a couple of the other locations and I began contacting some of the PF owners and again was
just set back on how willing they were to help and share information. People like Joe Pepe and CJ Bouchard and so many more that
were—and are today—incredibly gracious with their time, opinions and information. I must have contacted these guys hundreds
of times with hundreds of questions.
|
2015 Issue 1 GearedUp
“I have never been more
excited to be a part of
Planet Fitness.”
16
We soon converted our first club in 2006, but still were very
skeptical. Well, within 12 months following the conversion, that
club climbed to over $100,000 EFT and remains well above that
point to this date. Not to mention this was accomplished with over
half of the labor and expenses reduced and the ability to duplicate
this model. I shudder to think of what would have happened (or
not happened) if the PF headquarters was located in a state other
than New Hampshire!
If you have any business partners, how did you meet? Hoyt
Frericks is married to my cousin and was a builder, so I used him
to build out my first three clubs. After that, he caught the vision
and wanted to check out this strange new opportunity and jumped
on board and brought along his uncle, Gerry Frericks, as partner
in some of the clubs. Both were successful businessmen and could
see this was something special. They came along at the perfect
time and gave us the boost we needed; we couldn’t have done all
this without them.
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