Back in 1995 there were approximately 12,500 commercial fitness centers in the United States. Since 2008, there are more than 29,000! One recent authority suggests the following ten ways to recharge your club and set it apart from the competition:

1. Get Fresh. “Store Blindness” is an affliction that besets everyone who lives or works in the same space. After a while, we don’t notice the worn carpets, the tired colors, the clutter behind the front desk, etc. A first-time visitor will notice any of those immediately. Whenever a strong competitor enters the market, it is imperative that clubs undergo a 360-degree examination. Get Fresh with a club makeover!

2. Get Connected. “Connectivity” may be the #1 advantage that existing clubs enjoy over powerful, new entrants into the market. So get started! Connect through the iGo Figure Software by sending a message to a member through your welcome screen, create a Facebook page for your club and/or sign-up for Go Figure’s free Retention Management trial. You will love the results! “Connectivity” is the basic reason why some neighborhood restaurants and coffee shops that may have flawed operations succeed year after year. Get connected with iGo Connect!

3. Get United. Being faced with an imminent threat from a new club allows your club to accelerate in the pursuit of better performance. Whenever a new competitor announces its entry into your market, you have an opportunity to unite your staff in the pursuit of a higher level of performance and excellence across the board.  A motivated and mobilized staff becomes the ultimate asset, the ultimate weapon with which you can win the battle. Get United and show off your team!

For the rest of the list, visit:

http://cms.ihrsa.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=17977&nodeID=15

Let’s beat your competition together!

Always happy to help,

Matt Z

Source: http://cms.ihrsa.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=17977&nodeID=15

I just returned from the Club Industry Show in Chicago.  Visiting Chicago is always a great time; the pizza is great and I get the opportunity to see my Grandmother.

The show itself was good.  It appeared there were fewer vendors there than last year.  And many had smaller booths.  But there was a good crowd of club owners and managers looking to imporve their club management software or buy other equipment.  Many who stopped by loved our new web based software and the new features we have been adding.

Dr. Sean Groves and several other customers stopped by to visit.

More and more people were asking about PCI compliance and what that means.  FYI, its a data security standard that the credit card industry set to ensure software applications that process payments are securely storing your customers’ data.  Its amazing how many vendors out there are not PCI compliant.  If your fitness club management software provider is not PCI compliant, give us a call and we will be happy to help secure your member data; the iGo Figure has been certified PCI compliant for more than a year.

The other buzz-worthy item is Go Figure’s $.10 EFT processing.  When most people see it, they don’t believe it.  So many others charge 1-5% plus $.40 or more to process an EFT transaction.  When club owners hear we can do it for a dime, they hug me!

Cheers,

Matt

The IHRSA 2009 Convention was held in San Francisco March 17 – 19. I and members of our sales and marketing team attended. This convention is one of the largest in the fitness industry, and it showcases products from hundreds of vendors.

The convention was terrific. Many customers stopped by to say “hi”, and many more club owners stopped by to pick up a free trial version of the iGo Figure fitness club management software.  Club owners from many countries stopped by; we were lucky Cereyda attended; she is bi-lingual, and she spoke with many Spanish-speaking club owners.

Attendance was less than last year’s show; though booth traffic was steady throughout the show.  The club owners we met seemed to be optimistic about the year.  And they were especially happy about our $.10 EFT offering.

There was also quite a buzz about our two newest features:

1. Web Hosted Version – Go Figure launched its web-hosted version at the IHRSA show this week.  The same great iGo Figure fitness club management software is now available online!
2. PCI Compliance certification – As explained in a previous blog entry, the iGo Figure club management software is certified compliant with credit card industry data security requirements.

We also ran into the folks at Retention Management. Rich and Jack said for me to tell everyone they said “Hi!” For those who don’t know, we integrated their member retention service to the iGo Figure Software about two years ago, and many of our customers who have tried love it. If you have not signed up for it yet, you should check it out – its a great way to retain your members.

The show was a great success, and we’re looking forward to attending the 2010 Convention. Hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Matt Z

For years credit card companies have been cracking down on merchants that do not sufficiently protect credit card data from evil-doers.  To help merchants minimize the risk of compromised credit card data, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) set standards to protect such data.

One such standard is that credit card data stored in a software program should only be stored in a program that meets Payment Application Best Practices (PABP).

GOOD NEWS:  The iGo Figure health club maangement software has been certified PABP compliant!

Check out this link to see who is and is not certified:

http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/validated_payment_applications.pdf?it=c|/merchants/risk_management/cisp_payment_applications.html|Validated%20Payment%20Applications

Go Figure is on page 19.

Surprisingly, many companies that claim to be certified are absent from the list.  In fact, most other fitness club management software companies have yet to meet PABP standards.

Scary.

Cheers,

Matt

I just returned from training over 100 new users if the iGo Figure software in London last week. It was a lot of fun and the attendees were very appreciative for the event. It was also exciting to train on our newest version (3.6) which will be available in a few weeks. New and existing users alike were very happy to see features such as:

• Profile-based security
• Web-based scheduler
• Session based memberships
• Email Member Retention program

There are more new features than that coming in this version, but those were the only ones I had time to showcase. Check out our news and event tab for more on-site training events going on around the world. Also, remember to look for other training resources from the training section of our website.

Be well, Kyle Z.

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Member scheduling services are becoming a must for many day spas, fitness centers and yoga and dance studios. As a function of customer service, we have found that many of these types of businesses simply can’t survive without this in valuable feature. That is why we have added the new scheduling feature in version 3.6. All iGo Figure users will now benefit from having the ability to schedule classes, sales appointments, employee schedules, etc. See a complete demonstration of the iGo Scheduler:

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