At platform company Giant Ideas, skill-based fitness is the name of the game.
Using that term, rather than the all-encompassing “boutique” fitness, “aligns more with what Legends Boxing has been since 2012,” Giant Ideas CEO Rob Scott said. The company owns eight brands, including Legends. “Then when COVID hit and the [boutique fitness] market flattened, we really needed to market ourselves separately and differently than boutique fitness.”
The company’s fitness concepts are centered on teaching new skills with the added bonus of getting a solid workout, rather than focusing only on burning as many calories as possible, like some other exercise classes.
Giant Ideas acquired two more boxing concepts this week: Kickhouse and Mayweather Boxing and Fitness. Scott declined to share terms of the transactions. Those brands, plus Legends, are supported by the same team, but Giant Ideas is keeping them separate.
“The methodology will be very similar,” Scott said. Adding Mayweather and Kickhouse “was such a natural fit” with the concepts in Giant Ideas’ portfolio, he said.
The company’s other brands include Bootlegged Barber and Atmosphere Chiropractic & Wellness, which don’t franchise. It holds retail brands Legends Boxing Gear and Cage Punch—which sells “death spray” to clean fitness equipment by “knocking out germs with zero mercy,” according to the brand’s website.
Legends put the brakes on franchising while Giant worked to stabilize the existing studios.
“We have a new location opening next month, which I didn’t think was ever going to happen again after COVID,” said Scott, who co-founded Legends with his brother. “Now we’re growing, and we’re growing much smarter. We’re growing much slower.”
Now it’s time for the same approach at Mayweather and Kickhouse, he said.
When boxing champion Floyd Mayweather put his weight behind the boxing concept, Scott said he thought Legends would have “a real competitor.” But instead the brand shifted toward heart-rate monitoring and high-intensity training, rather than teaching boxing skills, Scott said.
“We’re changing the programming in Mayweather to where it is skill-based fitness rather than high-intensity training,” Scott said.
Kickhouse already had a heavier focus on teaching kickboxing, so there’s less for Giant Ideas to change for that brand. Kickhouse’s skill classes are the most-attended of its offerings, Scott said, “which was really good to hear.”
When the company bought Kickhouse and Mayweather, Scott promised franchisees that they were his first priority.
“I think the franchise model has been broken, in my opinion, for a long time. I think that the broker sales stuff really hurts the franchisees, so the only people that win are the sales people and the broker,” Scott said. “My commitment to them is that we’re not going to sell another franchise location until we’re at 70 percent profit across the board.”
The boxing fitness segment has a few competitors, including 9Round, which founder Shannon Hudson bought back this year from Lift Brands, which first acquired an ownership stake in 2013. Extraordinary Brands, meanwhile, announced last week that it bought Rumble Boxing from Xponential Fitness.
There are about 70 locations across Giant’s three boxing brands.
The model Giant Ideas uses works, Scott said. He believes that franchisors shouldn’t charge their franchisees steep fees to stay in the system. Getting to that 70 percent profit mark in part comes from Giant Ideas’ cutting down franchise fees, he said.
“I really think that it got so normal to charge absurd fees and high tech fees and big royalties and jacking up brand development fees. We’re going through and cleaning all of that up,” Scott said. “I’d say that helps about half of the gyms to at least break even. After that, we’ll work on driving revenue and adding in the skill-based fitness.”Because the company produces boxing equipment and gloves, franchisees get “a significant margin there,” Scott said. Bundled with in-house marketing teams, recurring membership revenue and forming a sustainable business model, Scott believes the brands can hit that stabilization goal by April 1, 2026.
Source: Franchise Times
