By Joshua Axelrod
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Kathryn King was just about to put the finishing touches on her “F45 Training” gym when she was ordered to shut down and halt construction. Since then, she’s been trying to engage customers online but she is anxious to open her doors for real.
Pittsburgh
It’s one thing to be a small business struggling to stay above water due to a physical location being shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s quite another challenge if your business doesn’t even exist yet.
Just ask Kathryn King, 29, of Bloomfield, a local fitness instructor and budding entrepreneur. After 10 months of preparation, she was finally set to open an F45 Training location in the Strip District at the end of April. Her finish line has now been pushed back — possibly indefinitely thanks to the uncertainty surrounding the way the coronavirus has reshaped society.
“It really screwed businesses like myself and other business owners that are trying to open something,” she said. “Now they’re even more behind than they originally were.”
Ms. King had already had to push back the opening of F45 — a national gym chain in which actor Mark Wahlberg has a minority ownership stake — because of red tape with the city and county. That had all been sorted out and she just had to finish construction on the approximately 2,500-square-foot facility.
That’s when Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf shut down nonessential businesses statewide and halted many construction projects still in the process of being completed. Though the state allowed some construction projects to resume, many more have been stalled.
The gym’s construction is now four weeks behind schedule, according to Ms. King. It’s extra frustrating because she has talked to franchise owners in other states that are still allowing inessential construction to continue. Their gyms are set to launch as originally planned.
The franchise fee for a new F45 Training gym is $50,000 and it usually costs a total investment of between $227,000-$315,000 to get one up and running, according to Entrepreneur magazine.
Ms. King did not give specifics on the fees she paid, but said she took out a Small Business Administration 7(a) loan to finance this project. She noted it doesn’t help that the F45 franchise fee is a monthly set price as opposed to a percentage of sales.
Luckily for Ms. King, who used to teach classes at the North Side’s Urban Elements Power Yoga & Indoor Cycling before venturing out on her own, she’s been able to support herself through her day job as a health care consultant.
“I am hustling, believe me,” she said. “It hasn’t been easy.”
For now, Ms. King and Jordan Rose — her only employee right now — are doing what many brick-and-mortar gyms, yoga studios and recreation studios have done in the age of COVID-19: offer their clients virtual training options until they can return to working out in physical spaces again.
She is using this opportunity to grow her fledgling businesses’ online presence. She teaches a free live class on Instagram every Saturday and recently launched the 45-day challenge, a free daily program focusing on nutrition, physical activity and accountability.
Ms. King said about 35 people are participating in the 45-day challenge so far, which isn’t bad for an operation that has yet to actually open its doors.
“We’re trying to see where we can play now that everything is virtual, since you don’t have to have a physical location to offer workouts at this point,” she said.
She’s not the only one who was about to open a gym in the Strip District and had that plan derailed by COVID-19. Mecka Fitness, which currently has a location in Mt. Lebanon, was going to open a new 10,000-square-foot Strip facility sometime in May.
Mecka owner Kevin Beamon said workers were in the process of soundproofing and starting electrical work on the Strip gym when the stay-at-home order came down. When that location will open now depends on the ability to finish construction and whatever the protocols for getting businesses off the ground will be when social-distancing guidelines are lifted. He’s confident that Mecka has built up enough savings and goodwill to ride out the pandemic relatively unscathed.
“We definitely run the business like a business and we don’t live month to month,” Mr. Beamon said. “We’re able to take a hit and we know we’re going to have a huge membership of people who will be here for us like we’ve been here for them.”
Ms. King doesn’t have the luxury of previously established finances and brand loyalty. That said, she’s confident of two things: Fitness enthusiasts will be eager to work out in real gyms once that is permitted again, and she’ll be able to use this window before F45’s official grand opening to create a customer base.
“My expectation is that people will understand our situation and kind of be behind a young Pittsburgh-native entrepreneur,” she said. “… I also think people will be eager to get back in the gym because they’re not just a place to work out. These are people’s second homes, their communities.”
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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
