A new expansion policy for VivaFit, a women’s-only franchise based in Portugal, is set to help the franchise expand internationally at a much faster clip.
Previously, VivaFit did not allow any individual to open a franchise in a country where there was no “Master Franchisee.” Now, those restrictions will be loosened, and direct franchises will be allowed to flourish without “Masters.”
“This (the previous expansion policy) has been slowing our international growth down,” explained Maria Joao Alegre, who works with VivaFit’s franchising business development. “It is a very rare bird — a person who believes and loves to exercise, has $300,000 to invest in a Master [plus] one pilot unit, has strong leadership experience, strong commercial experience, has a very developed synergetic mind, has a strong entrepreneur spirit and wants to wait to open his club, get full and then start selecting franchisees.”
Many franchisee prospects were being rejected under the old policy; under the new rules, however, international growth of VivaFit is expected to grow five times faster, according to Alegre. The company will make extra efforts to adapt to all of the different cultures involved with VivaFit.
One of the biggest concerns with expanding so quickly in an international capacity was the prospect of training so many franchisees. But VivaFit has embraced technology to help with that process.
“We have developed very robust online tools to manage the network,” Alegre said. “We have real-time software information on everything that happens in any VivaFit in the world financially, commercially and operationally. We analyze the data online and then Skype our franchisees in order to coach them and find solutions to improve their bottom line.”
VivaFit is now in its ninth year, and in that time, company administrators have learned how to effectively expand the VivaFit concept internationally, even though there were doubts in the beginning.
“Until now we did not want to have direct franchisees far away because we wrongly thought we could not train them, coach them, serve them and adapt the concept from Portugal for their country,” Alegre said. “Now we realize that we need to travel anyway to serve the masters and help them with their sub-franchisees anyway. So we do live on planes anyway. We might as well extend the journey to neighboring countries.”
By Ashley Scoby
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
