How Kings of Fitness Uses GymStudio to Streamline Operations

Kings of Fitness, a gym located in upstate New York, is the first GymStudio customer ever. Talk about an early adopter!  

It's run by husband-wife team Kiel and Lauren King.  KOF is a semi-private group training facility focusing on 10-person classes and a 5-person waitlist per class. 

I had to sit down and get their year one retrospective on using TeamBuildr’s new member management system, GymStudio.

Although our vision for GymStudio is just starting (we currently launched 3 huge features this month), Kiel and Lauren share how the platform has positively impacted their business and elevated the member experience over what they were using before:

Hewitt: “How would you say GymStudio has worked for you since you started using it a year ago?”

Kiel: “We like it - a lot. It’s made it easier to manage classes, track attendance, and collect payments in-app which we used to do for them but they do it themselves right in the app.

Our gym likes a 5-1 athlete-to-coach ratio. If we have 3 coaches available, we can easily go into GymStudio and let everyone in off the waitlist, so it’s been great for that flexibility in our business.

We also like using it to see how we can plan for sessions each day by easily seeing in the iPhone app which members are showing up that day. Let's say, 8 to 12-year-old athletes are coming in the building versus if we have a high school, college, or even pro show up. So it's kind of like, we want to know who's in and when. And it's really easy to just open up my app from the standpoint of the facility and then be able to look to see who's coming."

Lauren: “I usually use GymStudio on the computer at our front desk, but our members find the iPhone app user-friendly for booking and checking into classes which was not necessarily the case before. Everyone uses their phones so a good mobile experience is a must-have."

Hewitt: “What were you using before GymStudio?"

Kiel: “We were actually using a cheaper solution called Setmore which was very limited in quality.  We had to manually enter class schedules every week instead of setting them as ‘recurring’ like we do in GymStudio."

Lauren: “There were other solutions out there that we looked at, but we were already using TeamBuildr and knew the customer support and product quality was going to be great  - plus, the price ($150/mo.) of GymStudio was really fair compared to the others."

Hewitt: “I find it interesting that you went from a free/cheap solution to a higher-priced one. Most of our customers are actually switching from higher priced solutions like $450 per month for MindBody and saving money by switching to GymStudio."

Lauren: “So walking into this situation I said, ‘I will pay money if I can save time.’ Yeah, invest my time somewhere else because something else is being handled, then I'm willing to pay for it. So coming out of the free solution, I felt like I was getting nothing out of it, which wasn't fun."

Hewitt: “Are you happy with the GymStudio pricing?"

Kiel: “Yeah, we are. We feel the pricing is fair compared to the value we get from the features and time savings we capture."

Hewitt: “Speaking of pricing - did you notice the ability in GymStudio now to price by week, biweekly, or every 4 weeks?"

Kiel: “Yeah, I actually noticed that you can play with the billing cycle like that. We have just used monthly billing with our customers."

Hewitt: “Yes, that’s the most common, but a lot of gyms are switching to every 4 weeks because you get an extra billing cycle in the year by trimming the 29th, 30th, and 31st day from every month. Some high-end gyms charge weekly because it takes a big number and chops it up. Also good for cash flow."

Kiel: “I’m glad you said that because I do have somebody who wants to pay weekly and that’s good to know. I may have to go in there and adjust that."

Hewitt: “What new GymStudio features are impacting your business the best?"

Kiel: “We are potentially going to use 1-on-1 booking for client assessments. When we get new clients, we require a 1-on-1 assessment before joining group classes so if we can publish 1-on-1 availability and the clients just book on their phone, that would be great."

Hewitt: "Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s for! Awesome. Where can GymStudio improve to better accommodate your business?"

Lauren: "Merging the GymStudio and TeamBuilder apps would be ideal so members only need one app.

Hewitt: “Yeah, I love that idea. It was actually the original vision of the mobile app when we acquired GymStudio (formerly called Blossom). So yeah, we are actually planning a mobile app merger right now. It’s our next big project.”