Curves finding success with women-only gyms

Irena Szrek, front, and her daughter,<br>Asia, work out at Curves for Women<br>in East Greenwich.
Irena Szrek, front, and her daughter,
Asia, work out at Curves for Women
in East Greenwich.

It only seems like the Curves for Women fitness centers are on the verge of
out-saturating Dunkin’ Donuts shops, another franchise staple of Rhode Island
and southeastern Massachusetts.



With the time for making New Year’s resolutions here, the more than 45 local Curves locations are expecting to see an annual swelling of their membership ranks. Owners of the centers say they plan to keep providing what sets them apart from other workout options – a supportive women-only community – to ensure their clients don’t head to that other franchise staple in the coming weeks in breaking those resolutions.



Curves was founded in the early 1990s by Texas’ Gary Heavin, whose own mother died of a blood clot, perhaps brought on by high blood pressure, when he was barely a teenager.



By 1992, Heavin had taken over a failing fitness center and expanded to 17 locations over a decade, before eventually seeing the business go under. Along with his wife, Diane, he took the strengths from that initial chain and opened the first Curves for Women in Harlington, Texas. The women-only fitness center began franchising in 1995 and is now approaching 2 million members, with more than 6,000 locations open and another 1,000 under construction. Half of all franchise holders own more than one location.



The parent company remains headquartered in Waco, Texas, and employs about 50 people.



The total investment needed to get the business up and running was somewhere between $30,000 and $36,000 (including a franchise fee just under $25,000). Entrepreneur magazine ranked the chain No. 2 on its Franchise 500 and America’s Top Global Franchises lists and No. 1 on its Fastest-Growing Franchises list this year.



Kim Verdi, owner of the Curves on Main Street in East Greenwich, said franchise locations for the Rhode Island market are sold out and that she is regularly approached by people with offers for her franchise. Verdi has operated the location since September 2002, although its former owner originally opened the center in June 2001.



After more than a dozen years in the advertising profession, Verdi had left the business world to start a family and is now a mother of four. She had exercised for years at the YMCA, doing both running and weight training, but found it tough to juggle motherhood with a workout that usually ran for two hours. She tried the Curves program and found out that the 30-minute cycle around a ring of hydraulic resistance machines really was an equivalent, stopping in between to jog in place and keep the target heart rate up.



“The workout has built-in efficiencies,” Verdi said. “There’s no adjusting of weights or seats, and with the hydraulic machines you just need to speed up your repetitions for a harder workout … What a lot of women like best is that it’s 30 seconds at a station before you move on to the next, they never get bored.”



Liz Driscoll, who has owned a Curves location in West Greenwich with her sister, Mary Skog, for the last year and a half, just opened a new Curves location in Providence’s Eagle Square at the end of December. Driscoll had been a member of the North Providence Curves and Skog had a friend who owned a handful of locations in Connecticut. Both were big believers in the exercise program itself and felt the program would sell itself.



“Everybody has a half-hour, three times a week to do this,” Driscoll said. “And you don’t have to dress up to impress anybody either. You come in, you work out and you can be out the door.”



Driscoll said business is cyclical, although members are asked to sign an extended membership after a trial period. She said her locations would likely see the New Year’s resolutions surge in the next couple of weeks, before people start slacking off again come March. May will bring in those contemplating bathing suit season and another surge will come in September, once moms send their kids back to school.



But Driscoll said more importantly, Curves locations offer communities and support groups beyond the fitness program.



“It’s more than just a workout,” Driscoll said. “People become regulars and start offering moral support, talking and chatting and offering an ear with everything from their health to their families to their spouses.”



Verdi echoed those thoughts and said the Curves program is different from its competitors (including the Ladies of America program beginning to move into the area) because its owners, from Gary Heavin on down, are in it for the customers. Even more than losing a bit of weight, or going down a dress size, Verdi said the exercise is about living a healthy life.



She is planning on talking to doctors’ offices and group homes about the program in the new year and hopefully changing the stigma that the routine is exclusively for older people, or people who have never worked out before.



Verdi moved her own location early last year from a smaller plaza further down Main Street into a building neighboring a CVS, allowing her to add dressing rooms and more weight machines while giving more of a “feminine touch” to her space. She said her membership numbers continued to inch up through the last half of last year.



“This is something to supplement my husband’s income,” Verdi said. “So my goals aren’t just financial. … I love the business and it’s easy to communicate the benefits of the program when I’m so inspired by the success I’ve seen. There are many other reasons a lot of us are doing this than just a paycheck.”



Both women are also part of a co-op Curves group that includes locations through Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Besides exchanging business tips at their regular meetings, the group plans to begin buying joint print advertisements this month.

No posts to display