<span style="font-size: 25px;">🕒</span> Estimated reading time: 3 min.
TRIB3 offers the ultimate group workout experience in luxe industrial settings. An effective boutique studio model with three zones, customers train across Treadmills, Resistance and Intensity (TRI) for a full-body, coach-led 45-minute HIIT workout underpinned by TRIB3s own heart-rate tracking system. It’s the boutique fitness model with a twist - it feels really personal and it’s highly customer-centric but the one-of-a-kind design of the studio space means you can offer over forty spots-per-session for a faster breakeven.
Group exercise and boutique fitness has been booming in popularity over the last few years as consumers seek increasingly social and effective workout experiences. TRIB3 is at the forefront of the boutique fitness market. They are already in the UK, Russia, Spain and Finland – with huge expansion plans. Come and be part of it.
Learn more about the franchise opportunity here
In this week's Q&A, we take a look at how fitness studio franchise TRIB3 has managed during the pandemic, and what their plans are for future global expansion.
Q1. What makes your franchise standout?
TRIB3 International offers a highly curated brand experience that is cost efficient and compelling for franchisees. Offering the ultimate group workout experience, TRIB3 stores are purpose-designed as a one studio, one workout model creating a single, compelling ‘volume boutique’ offering that can be flexed depending on the available space. Each store carries a large studio with a minimum of 42 spots per session so we can fuse the community with great results, while also being highly resilient to current distancing measures. Our model allows for affordable fit-out and operating costs while still delivering a high-end industrial luxe finish.
We help franchisees find their ideal location based on careful selection using a demographic and locational analysis so they can choose the exact right specification from our flexible, tiered model, with initial investment starting from as little as £59k plus bank funding. Our simple but effective one-workout business model centres around putting the customer at the heart of everything so that every time someone sets foot in TRIB3 they receive exceptional and unrivalled service. As well as offering high returns and a fast break-even for franchise partners, our one studio model also enables high clarity of brand, meaning we can deliver more focused, regular product innovation to keep TRIB3 at the forefront of the market.
Q2. Why is it worth investing in your brand?
We are passionate about bringing people together through next-level workout experiences. Designed to deliver results, TRIB3 is an experience but also a science. Underpinned by full heart rate tracking and our dedicated SWEAT app, the workout is built around effort-level, not ability, making it arguably the most inclusive group workout in the world. By developing the ‘volume boutique’ model, so that each studio will feature a minimum of 42 spots-per-session, we’re able to scale up the power of the group, the power of the community, to something that’s really commercially exciting.
Since we have put our customers at the heart of everything we do, as a TRIB3 store matures, 80% of the business will be repeat purchases from existing customers. We’ve developed an intimate boutique setting with an unparalleled workout experience that creates brand loyalty and a community that continues to show up through even the most unprecedented times. TRIB3 saw over an 80% return rate in month one after the recent UK national lockdown with an average 78 NPS score post-lockdown.
Q3. How is your franchise adapting to the current COVID-19 crisis?
As well as enhanced hygiene measures, we adjusted the layout of our studios, adding dividers and creating distanced training lanes, but also adapting the timetable based on feedback from customers around their changed consumption habits. This ensured that while distancing would mean reduced capacity, as the model is built on a prudent occupancy rate even with reduced session capacity, occupancy only had to increase marginally per session to keep each store profitable.
Additionally, one of the most important messages throughout the pandemic, has been that being physically active is crucial to long-term health and keeping people fighting fit. Fitness franchising allows for efficient and fast growth of the sector and we’ve seen historically, after any challenging financial global conditions, both leisure and franchising increase in popularity due to more people looking to improve their wellbeing and also to secure their own future income streams via a proven model. Boutique operators can implement physical distancing efficiently into the model as class-based fitness is already built around capacity management and zoning – plus with our high capacity studios our model is highly resilient to the impact of distancing measures.
Q4. What extra support and assistance are you offering your franchisees during this time?
At TRIB3, we have a robust and hands on approach as our support and coaching never stops for our franchise partners. We offer over 220 onboarding hours along with dedicated training from our experience team. During COVID-19, we became even more vigilant, monitoring closely all of our local markets and the changing regulations. We scheduled more regular catch ups with our store managers and increased our brand marketing support to protect and maintain their share of voice in their local markets. Also, through the creation of our at-home workout platform, TRIB3 Live, we supported our communities who were working out at home or continuing to integrate virtual fitness into their core routine, which helped us keep them engaged and fit over the duration of temporary lockdowns. Our community continues to show up and sweat with us so much so that TRIB3 Live saw a 240% increase in usage in the wake of the second UK national lockdown in November.
The benefit of this hybrid model is vast for franchisees. With digital fitness content here to stay and likely to be expected of traditional operators ongoing, TRIB3 Live takes away the cost and effort to create this content from the franchisee. Plus, our franchisees are compensated financially, in the form of a kickback, when their store customers engage with the platform, creating a revenue stream agnostic of the physical studio.
This digital platform allows us to grow our brand at scale on a more national level, reaching as many people as possible and creating awareness of TRIB3 in new markets across the country which benefits any new stores and franchise partners opening in these markets.
Q5. What plans do you have for the franchise over the next few years?
TRIB3 is a brand that is already built to expand globally, with stores in five countries internationally and our sixth global territory, in the Netherlands, recently announced. We have established systems and proven processes in place and between our executive board and dedicated support team we have over 100 years experience in the fitness industry so our franchise partners don’t need to be from the industry to start their own TRIB3 – plus with our flexible model and low initial investment options, we are aiming to make the brand as accessible as possible to drive fast growth, globally. In terms of expansion, we have a strong focus in the UK for 2021, as the heartland of the brand, with several new stores currently in fit-out, however, we are also already in discussions with several new countries to continue expanding and growing the brand internationally.
Q6. What skills are important for your franchisees to have?
We welcome people with all backgrounds as long as they are passionate about people and providing exceptional experiences. Our franchisees will be supported by an expert team with decades of experience in the industry and established systems and processes, so even if you’re new to fitness, you’ll have the support to confidently make the change and be part of the booming boutique market.
We also encourage franchisees to come on board if they have a future ambition to open more stores and expand their network. Because TRIB3 stores break even so quickly and have high commercial viability as a result of our ‘volume boutique’ model, we often find franchisees mobilise a first successful location and move forward to open multiple sites in a city or region. Either way – whether you want to open one TRIB3 or several – we welcome anyone looking to make their mark in a crucial sector getting more and more people active, worldwide.
Learn more about the the TRIB3 franchise opportunity here>>>>