"After years of fast growth as the nation's second biggest contender in the women-only fitness arena, Contours Express is flexing its muscle.
Since the private equity firm Pilot Group acquired 65 percent of the franchise chain in June 2005, the Nicholasville-based business dedicated to helping women worldwide stay trim and toned has been bulking up its advertising efforts, and taking its concept head-to-head with industry leader Curves.
Like Curves, the Contours concept focuses on efficient and convenient exercise for females, offering a 29-minute circuit training program that blends both strength-building and aerobic exercise, at a typical cost of $29 per month. In its 2006 campaign, Contours has positioned itself as a similar concept to Curves but with a more efficient workout offering, touting the progress-sustaining merits of its weight-bearing equipment over Curves' hydraulic-based systems. It's a strategy that Contours Express CEO Thomas Christopoul expects will strike a chord among the company's growing primary target market of older women looking for a time-efficient training regimen in a nonintimidating, male-free environment.
"I think we have the demographics of the country in our favor," said Christopoul, managing director for the Pilot Group, who left his position as chairman and CEO of the marketing services and financial services divisions for Cendant Corporation in October 2005 and became CEO of the Contours Express team last year. "There's no question that the boomers at this point in their lives, now that they are contemplating retirement, are also considering how to extend their retirement."
The Contours Express franchise was started in 1998 by Nicholasville native Daren Carter, who previously owned co-ed gyms in the area. He launched the new company after getting the idea from his mother, who repeatedly asked for the keys to his co-ed facilities so she could work out after hours, when the club's male patrons weren't around.
The company's franchising efforts grew slowly in the early years, but the concept started to take off by 2003, according to Contours Express President William G. Helton, Jr. The company was recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as the United State's 23rd fastest growing franchise in January 2005.
Helton, also a Nicholasville native, joined the company initially as a franchisee in Florida. He later became an area developer, selling Contours franchises in the southeast United States before returning to Kentucky, where he has served as the company's president since 2003.
"I knew it was going to be a great niche market, and you actually have an opportunity to affect people's lives," Helton said.
Today, the company has roughly 360 locations nationwide and an additional 225 clubs in 20 other countries around the globe.
"It had been growing rapidly without even a lot of focus on marketing or advertising, so the Pilot Group's thought was that putting a little more marketing muscle and refining the business model could make it grow even more rapidly," Christopoul said.
"(The Pilot Group) brings an expertise in marketing that we really needed," Helton said. "We thought that we were years away from being able to run any type of national advertising campaign, but through their contacts and just through their knowledge of franchise systems and marketing, we actually ran our first national advertising campaign in January 2006."
Contours has also grown the infrastructure of the business since its sale to Pilot Group, adding staff and bringing more of its marketing in-house, Helton said.
Pilot Group, which is headed up by Bob Pittman, former CEO of AOL prior to its Time Warner merger, also plans to bring a more professional level of franchise sales expertise to the company and to create a host of more valuable preferred vendor relationships, Christopoul said.
Contours Express currently has vendor partnerships that represent 15 or 20 supplemental services, ranging from dry saunas to their newly added Chicken Soup line of vitamin supplements. These partnering services are made available to Contours Express franchise owners, who may pick and choose as to which services they wish to offer at their locations.
Opening a Contours Express franchise requires an investment of $31,500 for the franchise fees and equipment and an additional estimated $15,000 to $20,000 for associated costs, not including the expense of attaining an appropriate retail location for the operation. With more than 70 percent of the company's territories available for sale across the United States, the concept still has plenty of room to grow, Christopoul said.
"What we're really looking at is a three-year goal of having 1,000 clubs," Helton said.
But while management expects the number of Contours locations to grow considerably in coming years, the company doesn't necessarily aspire to catch Curves, which boasts of almost 10,000 locations worldwide.
"I don't think we have a desire or a goal to be as big as Curves is," Christopoul said. "I think we have a desire to be bigger than we are, though, and of a substantial size and scope."
The Pilot Group doesn't own any other fitness companies and does not anticipate purchasing any other women's only fitness organizations with plans for consolidation, Christopoul said. The company also does not have any plans to move out of the Lexington area.
According to Helton, the "hometown feel" of the company's administrative office has been an advantage with franchisees looking for more personable and less bureaucratic service, and he attributes that in part to the Nicholasville headquarters and its mostly local staff of 22.
"That's just the way people here are raised," Helton said. "as people come in from all over the country and from as far away as South Africa or Australia, the one constant compliment we get is the personal service that we give."
That personal service resonates with Contours Express owners, Christopoul said, particularly because the concept itself is oriented toward personal attention of customers' fitness needs and individual community involvement. As part of its community commitment, Contours has also partnered with National Breast Cancer Foundation to run fundraising campaigns on both the local and national level during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Money raised locally will be matched with corporate donations for the organization, Christopoul said.
The company's biggest challenges for the near future are to continue attracting high-quality franchisees with competitive franchise offerings and to sustain its flexibility and standard of service as it continues to grow, Christopoul said.
"We've got to continue to innovate," Christopoul said. "We've done some good things with the introduction of our national brand in advertising and creating some value-added services, but we have to continue to innovate if we're going to continue to grow."
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