When Mike Feitelberg was 21 years old he was provided the opportunity to buy into his first club, Peake Strength and Aerobics Center in Williston, Vt. Feitelberg, now 43, said that was the beginning of enjoying the fitness industry. He watched individuals and couples come into the club to better their health. He witnessed lives change, and more than 20 years later, he still is provided the opportunity to watch many of those individuals exercise regularly at his five current clubs, referred to as The Edge.
Initially Feitelberg was asked to assist The Edge as a consultant, but was quickly asked to become a general manager, and soon found himself provided the opportunity to buy into the company in 2004, becoming a co-owner and president.
Feitelberg had the vision to build a great facility around an exceptional staff. “I wanted to build a club that people wanted to be a part of,” said Feitelberg. A lot of the staff has been with The Edge for many years, providing them with the ability to hire new managers from staff members with longevity — individuals that truly understood, not only the fitness industry, but also the club itself.
Being in Vermont, The Edge has its own share of personal issues, aside from the typical club problems. According to Feitelberg, the winters can get pretty bad, but since the large amounts of snow are typical to the area, people continue on through their routines. “We’ve seen the worst storms the state has seen, and members are still at the front door when we open,” said Feitelberg. Although, to Feitelberg it’s like burning money, The Edge will bring in dump trucks to haul away snow in harsh blizzards to ensure that members have a place to park.
Sticking with its hours of operation for its members has been something The Edge has taken extremely seriously. It has to, considering it has three preschools, a Parisi Speed School and a physical therapy department to operate.
Feitelberg said prior to adding the Parisi School to The Edge, the club was at a disconnect with residents of the community between the ages of 11 and 18 years old. The Parisi School gave members a reason to keep kids involved in the club during middle school and high school ages.
“On one sideline you’ll have a division one athlete, and on the other you’ll have a kid that’s just into fitness,” said Feitelberg. “When they are at the Parisi School everyone feels equal and gets the same fitness experience.” For The Edge, Feitelberg said that the Parisi School was the missing piece to the puzzle, helping them to give reasons for members to stay involved in the club after kids started varsity sports.
Additionally, The Edge boasts the largest indoor tennis and aquatic facility in its market, which is a vital resource to a club located in colder climates. “The window of time we have to work with for outdoor activity is limited,” explained Feitelberg. “There are opportunities for us to help folks get ready for their seasons, and that’s really how we best prepare our members to what the Vermont landscape offers.
“We do have a lot of big snow storms throughout the winter, and those can be game changers as well, as to who can, and who can’t, get to the club,” said Feitelberg. “We have a reputation and we are a very good club. We have a large membership base, and three large preschools, which is a fundamental piece of the company as well. We are home to about 350-400 preschoolers every day over three locations. People come from far and wide to get to us, and we have a reputation for not closing a whole lot. The staff has pretty much accepted that.”
The staff makes the same efforts as the members. With the club opening at 5 a.m., the staff has had to wake up early in order to dig out their cars to make sure they get to the club on time. “Our members will find a way to get here,” said Feitelberg. “We prepare from a staffing standpoint. Our crew that takes care of our lots and sidewalks are aware of the expectations, as well as the staff.”
People in Vermont don’t handle a small snowstorm like someone in the southern states might. “My wife comes from North Carolina where they have one plow in the whole town,” he laughed. “If it snows three inches, the whole town stops. Schools are closed and so forth. People start to get a little anxious around here if it’s going to snow 12 inches in six hours, but if it’s not, it’s pretty much business as usual. We pretty much have to go with it.”
The responsibility the club expects from its staff goes all the way to the top for The Edge. Feitelberg believes that they are responsible to their members to help bridge the gap between health care and fitness. They work together with local medical professionals in order to provide doctors with good faith in being able to send patients to the clubs for exercise.
“For us it starts with the preschools, we begin even at that age to talk about healthy choices and the difference between what’s good for you and what’s not good for you, and the important role that physical activity plays into everyone’s life,” said Feitelberg. “As they progress, we continue that message and expand through the entire operation. One of the reasons we brought on Parisi was that we found we do an excellent job with kids between newborn to the 11-12 year old range, then they tend to drop off, and we pick them back up as they get older, at 18 or above.
“What Parisi provided us with was an avenue into that demographic, really from 7 years old and up. That demographic that we didn’t have the largest success with, we created a program that really drew kids in for a very positive reason.”
The Edge also partners with a lot of universities, high schools and home schools in its area to help get kids active throughout their region. “The home school community uses the clubs a lot, as well as some other schools. We try to stay as intertwined, not just with the schools, but also with the community at large through various recreation departments. We also work with different physicians and pediatricians to really have them understand that a physical therapy patient that is referred here will not only get the benefit of a top-notch physical therapist, but has the facility to support them beyond what their injury, or their rehab, might be, which makes a big difference from a doctors point of view.”
By harnessing those relationships, clients enter the club for rehabilitation, but then have a greater chance at becoming a full-time member because they have developed a relationship with the club and its staff. “It makes a big difference, from a doctors point of view, when they know that they just did a knee replacement on someone, who also happens to be overweight, and that we are going to rehab that knee, but with the hope to incorporate them as a health club member, and use what they learned in PT, to maintain that knee,” explained Feitelberg.
Changes in the Club
Changes have perpetually evolved around the technology within the club, both from an equipment and data standpoint. “I’m definitely impressed with what’s coming out, and the more data you can pull from equipment is particularly useful,” he said. “I think the improvements, mechanically, in some of the equipment, has greatly improved. I think from an entertainment basis, you can go do 30 minutes worth of cardio and be watching a flat screen TV with the volume pumped right into your headset — I think all of these things help to support people coming in and enjoying the experience that they have. I think it’s also very useful from an entertainment, purely member satisfaction standpoint.”
The Edge has been continually striving to improve, and Feitelberg and his staff never let off the gas to keep evolving and getting better as a facility. “We’re constantly trying to evaluate and then reevaluate different ways we can improve the various systems we have deployed,” he said. “At the end of the day, not being satisfied by what’s in front of us drives us to make sure we are doing all the things that we can do to improve the experience of our members.
“Just last week we had somebody secret shop every club, every preschool and about five major departments throughout all the clubs, and got a lot of very good feedback and workable material that we’re immediately beginning to share with the different departments that we shopped.” The data that was discovered from the secret shop will be analyzed by department heads and used to swiftly improve the member experience.
In terms of the club, everything has to do with the member experience, but that experience isn’t anything without a successful staff. “I think it comes back to staff,” said Feitelberg. “I think our success long term, just as I think the member experience, is directly related to what the staff is like. When you put us up against another facility I think our strongest edge comes from the staff. I believe that support of the staff and growth of the staff, trying to bring in new ideas through them, has made a big difference and gives us a big competitive edge. Every department is charged with a very large responsibility to perform, not only to the very high standards that the member sets, but also financially they have to be very accountable for what they are doing and how they are doing it. As a result, that ends up with a lot of success stories from the members’ perspective, and success stories from a financial business perspective.”
As The Edge continues to evolve, Feitelberg expects the club to become even more involved in medically-based fitness. “I see us having more partnerships within the health care community, so that we can work more hand-in-hand with them as we see more patients becoming members, and working in concert with them from the club side, as well as through the physical therapy side.”
The Edge’s effort to grow within the Vermont market doesn’t mean that it’s restricting itself. Feitelberg and his staff have discussed the possibility of a franchise model, or opening clubs in other markets. However, Feitelberg’s fear has been the inability to quality control the brand as a franchise. The individual clubs that The Edge represents has a unified quality to it that members throughout its region have come to expect. With a vast growing reputation for being more than just a fitness facility, The Edge is ready to expand to be as much to its members and community as it can — both in fitness and in the overall health of the people it impacts.
By Tyler Montgomery
