My wife and I had owned and operated our own business for over 20 years and had been very successful at doing so. While we were making a great income from our business there was something missing in our life. Neither us felt that we were contributing to society but just taking and we decided to make a major change in our life. That was when we heard about Curves for Women. It was a new franchise that only had 300 or so clubs and for the first time in years we both became excited at the prospect of actually helping people reach their goals. We bought our first club in 1997 located in a city of thirty thousand. From the first day it opened it was more successful than our wildest dreams. Not only were we making excellent money but the personal rewards helping people better their lives was a truly rewarding feeling. I can still remember as if it was yesterday the first time a Dr. of one of our members came in to check out what we were doing as he couldn’t believe the ch
We sold our first club in 2001 and bought two more franchises. My wife became a mentor for Curves International around this time and I was helping to sell franchise for Curves International as so many of are members wanted to own a club. It was at this time that we started to see problems arising with Curves International but we attributed it to the fast growth that Curves was going through. In 2002 we bought two more franchises but this time they were in what was called a metro-area instead of city under thirty thousand in population.
The first problem we encountered with Curves International was in early 2003. Curves sold a franchise that was a corridor of land between one of our franchise’s and the next city 8 miles from our southern boarder. It was obvious to us that the territory didn’t have the necessary population to support a facility and that Curves International was selling any location just out of greed and the fact that there were so many people who wanted a franchise. The people who bought that franchise tried to open up on our border but it had always been an unwritten but followed rule of Curves International that you open in the middle of your territory so that disputes between owners over stealing members from your territory didn’t arise. We immediately filed a complaint with Curves International and they stopped the new owner from opening at that location. Unfortunately for the new owners there were no other commercial locations between the two cities so they were forced into selling that franchise back to Curves International for a loss.
It was also at this time that Curves International started to change personnel. The employee’s who we had a personal relationship with that had started Curves International with Gary Heavin were leaving the company at an alarming rate. Seven employees that were the top management of Curves left or were forced out because of Gary Heavin’s greed. They ended up filling a law suit against Curves which was later settled out of court. It was at this time that Diane Heavin became involved with Curves and a whole new history was being written about how Curves was started. The original Curves member guide which was written by Gary Heavin and June Manley was taken off the market and the new Curves book authored by of course Gary Heavin was on the top 10 of the Times best seller list.. To make sure it was on the Times best seller list all the clubs had to order at least on case. That is when we as owners realized Heavin was a manipulator and not the born again Christian he portrayed to be. It was also at this time that the price to buy a franchise more than doubled in price. This came as quite a surprise as Heavin had always maintained that he would never ever increase his franchise price and he even swore on the bible in front of a group at club camp that he would never break his word on that. Well as we all know he didn’t keep that promise for long, which just shows his greed.
At this point my wife and I became quite concerned and even considered selling our business but other problems arose concerning Curves International that demanded our full attention. In 2004 another Curves location located on our boarder of one of our metro-areas hired two of our employees and stole around 15 members from our club. Both employees had signed the anti covenant not to compete and in our state those agreements are strictly enforced by the courts. We considered going to court but since it was another Curves facility we decided to file a complaint with Curves International. And to let them handle it. What a mistake that was as they did nothing. We transferred the members files but refused to transfer the money for the members dues until such time that Curves International responded to our complaint. We were told by the area director, which was a new position at Curves International, that we were trouble makers and he refused to send any of are clubs the members appreciation bags. Shortly thereafter Curves International resold the corridor of land that had been sold back to them at a loss from the previous owners and they allowed the new owners to open up in nearly the same location that they had refuse the previous owners only a year and a half before. The new owners advertised in our area and ended up getting 10 or 11 members to transfer to their club. Again we held their monthly dues but did transfer the members files. We immediately filed a complaint but again got the same response nothing. It didn’t take long for most of the members who transferred to come back to our club as the other location was small and in a very run down area and to this day that club has not shown a profit and has been sold numerous times over the years for little to nothing.
Then in 2005 the real problems with Curves International started that we are still contending with today. In one of our metro-areas a competitor by the name of Ladies Workout Express opened up right across the street from our location. Unknown to us they had hired our manager and one other employee from that location and when the employee’s left they had stolen off our computer our member files. They ended up stealing over two thirds of our membership with in a week. The employees had signed the covenant not to compete so we immediately hired a lawyer and prepared for a lawsuit. As I stated before in our state that agreement is strictly enforced but it took four months to get it into court. During this time that location was losing so much money that we decided to move the location next to our other territory so that both clubs could stay open. We sent in the required change of location form to Curves International but never heard anything back from them so we went ahead and relocated in late 05. The owners of the Ladies Workout Express eventually went broke because of the lawsuit and the fact that they would end up owing us monetary damages. They filed for bankruptcy to prevent us from collecting any monetary awards in Dec 05 but we did have the satisfaction knowing that we did what was right
In early 06 we were informed by Curves International that because we abandon that location they were terminating all of our franchise agreements. We immediately requested mediation for all of our clubs which is authorized by our franchise agreements with Curves International. We never heard back from them so we hired a lawyer in Waco, TX to represent us. He proceeded to send them a letter requesting the same mediation process and they did respond to him. They sent him letter stating that it was premature to go through the mediation process at that time as they were in the process of researching our reason for moving. Curves International continued to debit our account for the franchise and advertising fees for all the other clubs we owned but stopped talking the fees for the one territory that they stated we abandoned. The lawyer had us send Curves International a check for the fees and a new authorization form for them to deduct it from our account. Neither our lawyer or ourselves ever heard anything back from Curves International so we all assumed that things were back to normal.
In the spring of 07 we made the decision to start selling off all of our clubs and to completely retire. It didn’t take me long to sell the club we owned that wasn’t in a metro-area and I agreed to stay with the new owner’s to help train them how to run the business. We sent all the documentation into Curves International and the sale was completed by January 08. That freed my wife and I up to concentrate on our metro-area clubs and to get them ready for sale. In Feb of 08 we heard that a Curves club was opening in one of our territories within a mile of our current club. We could not understand how Curves International could do such a thing. We again filed a complaint by phone and e-mail to Curves International and several weeks later we were informed by e-mail that they didn’t know what we were talking about. We were told we didn’t own any franchises and hadn’t since we were terminated in 05. That came as quite a shock to my wife and I as our franchise and advertising fee’s had been deducted all along from our checking account and we had just recently sold a club that they were telling us we never owned. We had a local lawyer send a letter to the new owners explaining the situation and that we would be seeking legal recourse against Curves International and depending on the outcome they were opening themselves up to a potential lawsuit. During this time we had bought and paid in full for the Smart Equipment for Curves International and were waiting for the installation which was scheduled for the June 24th. On June 20th , a Friday we received a phone message telling us that the Curves Smart Installation was canceled and that we had to call Curves legal for an explanation. We left messages both e-mail and phone every 30 minutes on Monday June 23rd and finally late in the afternoon we received an e-mail stating that one of there lawyers would be in touch with us before the end of the day, They never sent an e-mail or a phone call as was promised but by mid day the next day they did respond by e-mail. It stated because of the problems with the members transfers, the fact that we abandoned a franchise, and that we had interfered with the opening of the new franchise located in our territory we weren’t approved for the Curves Smart. Yet in late May they had sent all the promotional ad material for the Curves Smart and of course we had gone to a considerable amount of expense for training the employees, advertising and promotion of the Curves Smart equipment. It was at this point that my wife and I decided that drastic action had to be taken against Heavin and Curves International.
While we still love the concept of Curves we feel that because of the deceptive and we believe fraudulent business practices that Heavin has allowed under his management Curves will eventually end up in the toilet so to speak. After spending many hours on the internet we have found that there are many lawsuits against this man and his company. Just read some of the post’s that are on franchisepick.com from owners concerning the new ten thousand fee if your club goes under and closes to the vitamins that were sold in Feb and March by Ideas in Action at a discount to owners without telling them that they would expire at the end of May. The lack of support and communication from Curves International that all of us owners are going through is intolerable. It is impossible for an owner to get through to them on the phone and good luck if you expect a call back in a timely manor. The fact that we as owners pay a lot of money for our advertising fees and have no accounting of where it is spent and a quite frankly we never see many ads in our area.
I have taken the time to do the necessary research to find several good lawyers who handle franchise law who are more than willing to help Curves owners who are having similar problems with Curves. I for one am going to go after Curves International and Gary Heavin in a court of law. These are not class action but group action lawsuit and if you don’t understand the difference contact me and I will explain it to you. There have been over 200 such lawsuit filed against Curves in the last several years and while some have been settled in mediation others are in the process of going to litigation. If you are a past or present Curves owner who has experienced these problems and want satisfaction whether it be monetary or revenge please contact me. We have several options that we can go and I for one am positive we will win as the other lawsuits have been successful so far and have set a precedent for ours. It is time for the owners of Curves franchises either past or present to stand up together and put a stop to Heavins’s ramped destruction of peoples lives just for monetary greed.
Thanks for reading our post and God Bless you all.
ARE YOU AN CURVES FRANCHISE OWNER OR FORMER CURVES FRANCHISEE?
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE CURVES FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITY?
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Next Step: Thanks for your thorough & frank answer.
unhappy: You still dodge the question, which is not about other clubs, but asks specifically whether you think your clubs (YOUR clubs) would be thriving, breaking even or failing if you had operated them independently without the restrictions and fees of Curves. You want to blame the founder for your misfortune but isn't the truth that you gambled on the longevity of 30 minute women's fitness - just like CI did - and lost? Maybe CI sucks but can you really say you'd be thriving without them?
(FYI I'm not the only one posting as "guest")
"But the damage done to the REST of the Curves out there IS relevant to every one of us who is still in business."
Then tell your friends at CI to call off the dogs. Many of us would just like to get on with our lives. But attempting to extort failure fees and future royalties after we've already lost so much is simply cruel, even if those fees were in our franchise agreements -- per my lawyer, they are not in mine.
You sound frantic, fearful, and desperate that your club might have to close at some point. When you get those demand letters from CI, what will you do? This is just for you to think about -- no response necessary.
Someone has already mentioned Maddoff on this site once,
I have been looking at my children sleeping, as I sat here thinking about how this club has consumed my life. How my children have suffered. My marriage has suffred. How my only options are to try to make it work or file bankruptcy. We don’t have a nice home, we need our credit. My eyes fill with tears, and I think how did it go so wrong. It hit me I understand the connection between the two. It is in times are hardship the companies with strong infrastructure, good management, business acuity, they make it. Not companies that are held together with strings where the ideas of 10 years ago were good, but not enough to hold it together now. Where the greed of the corporation has ran wild (smart and over saturating), and the allowance of resale’s at prices that were not justified.
This was their business model! They knew I was paying too much for this place. They did not call and say, “Hey seller you are overstate the value of this club based upon projection sheets. We won’t let you rip someone off. Come down on your price or don’t sell” Nope they didn’t do anything of the sort. I paid the ridicules amount. I did not know how easy it was to falsify the documents. But CI they new the truth. They had the reports.
I don’t want to hear about stronger together. I want to tell them to go **** themselves, because not even from day one were they here to help me. Nope! They were the ones with the experience and they did not say hey wait Next Step this price is wrong. They just took their money and went on their happy little way. Yep they are like Maddoff in that regard. The sad part is they could have helped me out and still received their money. They could have protected their business. How many would still be open if the bought a club that was not inflated?
No Curves is not a ponzi scheme, but when times get tough it is easy to see this fraud. I have just been living it for the past 4 years. I want it to be over, and I don’t know how to make it stop. I want earn a living and help people. I don’t want to rip anyone off.
My heart hurts.
I have been thinking a lot about your post guest and many of the other posts I have read:
I wanted to comment on what you said earlier: ”Just honestly answer this question: If your clubs were independent and you were free from CI’s restrictions & fees, how successful would they be right now?"
Just to give you a little background in talking with other clubs we may be one of the few profitable clubs left in the system. However if you broke down how much my business partner and I work to how much we make we will probably be making more flipping burgers (however most small business owners work just as much --I grew up in a family who always owned a small business but I do have to say my parents were paid a lot more then I am for the hours I put in). It has taken considerable time away from my family and the stress…well I don’t even want to think about the years I have shaved off my life however I don’t blaim that on Curves (I do partially for their missmanagement of the brand but I am willing to take the blame for some in that I knew what I was getting into…. 80% of small businesses fail so that is a gamble I knew I was taking)
Unfortunatley, a lot of people Curves sold clubs to did not realize this and in my personal opinion Curves should have better veted their franchisees and that would have helped some but their infrastructure would need a major over haul for them to remain viable and they would need to work on the idea of integrity. I remember going to club camp and there was a lady there talking about leaving her buisness to her children when she gets older and I could remember thinking to myself that while it was a great concept I did not think it would be around that long.
I can say our area was "lucky" and we were not cannibalized. However despite that I know most of the owners in our area and I can honestly say many of them are struggling right now. I believe that I can only speak for my club and my area and realize every situation is different.
Here is what I can say, in the beginning I would not have been better off without CI. Even now I can say I don't know (AT THIS EXACT POINT IN TIME) if I would be better off with out CI. But I can honestly say this, that if the company does not realize that times are changing and that for a company to stay on top they need to be able to change and adapt to today’s market and not hang onto outdated practices and conduct business ethically then yes in the immediate future, I will be much better off and much more profitable without CI.
The problem with franchises and this is a problem with A LOT of franchises not just Curves is they no longer have people in the clubs knowing what it takes to run a club. Think about it... what makes a great manager or owner? They are willing to do the things their employees do, scrub the toilets and do all the things that the staff does and you get staff that is willing to follow you anywhere because they realize you talk the talk and back it up by walking the walk. Curves stopped talking the talk and walking the walk along time ago. Yes Gary donated his personal money for advertising and they have done some other things but that does not make them know what it still takes to run and operate a club.
As I said earlier Curves sold franchises to people they should not have been sold franchises to, people who did not have business sense. Is there an ethical issue with that? I think so but it’s not my conscious that was selling the franchises and people can argue the other way I am sure. Nowadays if you feel you are denied an opportunity, you can sue so I don’t know if there is making everyone happy. The big reason the housing market is in the state it is in is because the government felt it was not fair to deny an opportunity to everyone even if they could not afford their mortgage….. hence our economy right now. If you were trying to sell your house and the government came and told you that you could only sell it for x amount because that is what they thought it was worth, there would be uproar. If Curves stepped in and told franchisees that they could not re-sell their clubs over a certain amount everyone would have gone crazy. The economy was FANTASTIC, how many of you paid more for your house than what it’s worth now?? So I don’t know if it is fair to blaim that on them. Now as far as selling areas that were not viable and charging all their fees that is a whole nother cup of tea.
I realize I have not walked in the shoes of either party although from the ACTIONS of CI I will say that I have more faith in the integrity of the franchisees in our system and those who have closed then I do in CI.
This comment is for whichever guest posted earlier... unless you are part of Curves International or you are one of these clubs that have closed or are dealing with Curves trying to take you down because you have converted your club to 24/7 or extended hours I don’t think you can give a fair assessment because you don't have all the facts so you don't know what size the shoe really is because you have not tried it on.
Again all of this is just my opinion…..
Curves owner,
I understand a lot of what you said it the truth. I do know that I really had the ability to run a business, but I went out of my league with a fitness center, since I had no experience in that area.
I do want to say I don't think that CI should have capped the amount a business should have been sold for. However, When I purchased my club all the books showed an extra 150 check draft members. This was not the case, but CI new how much money the club was projecting.
My struggle with this company started the day I unlocked the door. I know that others will say that it is all my fault, and I take 99% of the responsibility for purchasing a company at an overstated amount. However when I sent the forms into curves I stated that there was 325 CD members and projection sheets should have had it around 175. They had that information. They could have told me that something was not quite right.
As for the question would I be better off now without CI. I think so! These last years I have dedicated my time to obtaining the exercise knowledge that I needed to make my club work. That is the path that lead me to realize if CI doesn't change some of this program we are all doomed. It is not the economy. By the way my club has been open for 13 years now. The landlord told me since 03 we have had problems paying the rent.
Weight Watchers Gets Ad Injunction Vs. Curves
The battle of the bulge is getting increasingly litigious.
Weight Watchers International, Inc. today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has issued a preliminary injunction restraining Curves International, Inc. from airing or otherwise disseminating Curves' commercial called "Something New."
The court order is a "stipulated" preliminary injunction, meaning the two parties stipulated their agreement to it, a Weight Watchers PR agency spokesperson tells Marketing Daily.
The injunction bars Curves International Inc. and its franchisees from "airing, broadcasting, publishing or disseminating" in the U.S. the commercial titled "Something New" in "any form or in any version or in any medium" (including but not limited to television, cable television, print and the Internet) "during the pendency of this action." A next court date in the suit has not yet been set, according to the Weight Watchers spokesperson.
The court action, dated March 1, comes out of a suit originally filed by Weight Watchers in Manhattan federal court last October, charging the international fitness chain Curves with false advertising, trademark infringement and other causes of action. The principal charge was that Curves "used the Weight Watchers trademarks to garner consumer attention and divert consumers to purchase Curves' services as part of a 'bait and switch' advertising tactic," according to the Weight Watchers release.
Last September, Curves launched a campaign promoting itself as both a diet and fitness solution, highlighting its new 30-day diet plan. The "Something New" commercial, run on national cable TV networks, shows a woman who is heading toward a Weight Watchers location being intercepted by a van full of women who instead transport her to a nearby Curves location, where she is informed about the new diet plan and shown signing up for Curves. The message conveyed by the interceptors: "Weight Watchers? Oh, no, girl, you're going to try something new."
The campaign, which marked the first time Curves had taken a head-to-head approach against a competitor in its advertising, also included online, radio and print components, Adweek reported last September.
At filing time, Curves International had not yet responded to Marketing Daily's request for comment on the stipulated preliminary injunction.
I have decide to close my club April 1st we can no longer afford to keep it running. Now I am working with a rep from curves. And they are requesting that I return my Curves Smart, they stated that I can not sell it. As far as I am concerned I purchased this from Mytrak. Has anyone else had this request and what did you do? I am not going to destroy my equipment or give it away either.
I am working with Curves so that they know that I am closing my Curves but I am very cautions as to what paperwork I will sign and information I will give them.
Thanks Dee
If anyone can give me a little insight as to what they did I would be more than greatful.
First I am sorry to hear that you are closing, and I am personally counting down the days until my contract ends. I talked with mytrak a few weeks ago, and the only clubs that can have the system is curves. MyTrak will not licenses it's use for any other club. Co ed or not. I talked to several people at mytrak to verify this. Which I think sucks because we paid so much for the system. As for the equipment I am not sure if you have to destroy it or not, but I talk to gofig today and they said owners are not destroying their equipment. My advice is talk to a unhappy about it. If you look at previous post you will find an email address. Send unhappy your number and a name. I think you will get all the answers you need. Good luck with everything and I agree about signing anything from CI.
here is the email address: unhappyfranchisee@gmail.com
Dee,
I am sorry to hear about your situation and your closing. Do not send any files to CI such as current or archive members and do not sign anything until you either send an email to Sean address unhappyfranchisee@gmail.com requesting he forward it to me with your phone number and I will contact asap or talk to a lawyer.