Executive Summary (TL;DR)
This is a strategic briefing on the pattern most franchisors missed, and how the next generation of intelligence systems is beginning to reveal it.

Two studios.
Same city.
Same class type.
Same pricing.
Same class size.
Different brands.

One makes twice the profit per class.
The other has no idea.No report flagged it.
No FDD revealed it.
No booking system dashboard or Tableau report caught it.

Why?

• Because every franchisor is trapped in their own data
• Each brand runs on a different booking system - and none of them talk to each other
• Dashboards only show your network
• And FDDs stop at the franchise line

So no one saw the pattern.
And no one saw the opportunity.

That’s the gap we built FitGrid to close.

Not just to track performance.
But to redefine how performance is seen.

We already benchmark core business drivers like conversion, first time return rate, and retention - across brands and platforms.

Now franchisors are starting to define their own success metrics - and seeing how they stack up across the market.

If your unlock is third-visit return or thirty day purchase; we can apply that exact metric across our industry dataset.

Your definition. Industry-wide lens. Real benchmarks.

That’s bespoke today. It’ll be standard tomorrow.

   Before FitGrid, we were flying blind. No single booking system or industry report sees across brands the way FitGrid does. That 360-degree intelligence builds investor confidence, improves prospect conversion, and gives our franchisees the clarity to scale with precision.”

Michael Piermarini, COO, BODYBAR Pilates
BODYBAR is a publicly acknowledged FitGrid client-partner

   “... A simple, unified intelligence system is worth its weight in gold, and FitGrid is the closest to that I have seen.”

Jon Canarick, Managing Partner North Castle Partners and former Board Member at Barry’s Bootcamp
Barry’s Bootcamp is a publicly acknowledged FitGrid client-partner

This isn’t about dashboards.
It’s about vision.
The kind that gives you power - and unites an industry.

As Julian Barnes, my Co-Founder at BFS, put it:

   “FitGrid is building the intelligence infrastructure our industry has been missing."

Define your success. Or get defined.
The ones who see clearly will scale. The rest will stall.

Welcome

Over the last decade, boutique fitness has matured from trend to infrastructure - a more established, but still scaling category with increasingly sophisticated investors, boards, and brand strategies.

But intelligence systems haven’t kept pace. Too often, our industry still runs on gut instinct - not data.

And if we want to remain a credible investment destination, we have to graduate.

As Founder & CEO of FitGrid, an AI intelligence platform serving thousands of studios, in 15 countries, across four major booking systems, and Co-Founder & Chairman of The BFS Network, the market intelligence hub behind the State of the Industry Report, I’ve had a front-row seat to this evolution.

That’s why I’m launching The Intelligence Bridge: a monthly executive briefing for franchisors, growth leaders, and enterprise operators who are ready to turn data into durable performance.
Each edition will focus on a critical intelligence gap, and how top franchisors are solving it.

This Month’s Intelligence Gap:
Market Intelligence is Still Broken

As the 2024 BFS State of the Industry Report revealed:

   “The percentage of studios reporting a 20% profit margin nearly doubled, from 9.2% in 2022 to 17.4% in 2024.”

That shift has huge implications for franchisors. It means:

• The gap between high-performing and struggling studios is widening

• Your ability to identify and learn from top performers is now your competitive edge

That’s why I believe strategic intelligence (not just data) is the new currency of competitive advantage in franchising. At BFS, which I co-founded to help studios and franchisors turn insights into action, we’ve seen this challenge echoed across nearly every brand: the need to lift the floor and raise the ceiling, reliably and at scale.

As my business partner at BFS, Julian Barnes, often says:

   “Intelligence is what turns inspiration into systems that scale.”

That quote captures the spirit behind what I’ve been building at FitGrid and co-leading at BFS: a multi-layered intelligence system that spans both operational and strategic levels.

With FitGrid, I see the granular patterns unfolding across thousands of studios in real time. With BFS I see the strategic blindspots that limit growth. Together, those layers form the foundation of modern franchise intelligence, and give forward thinking leaders the clarity to scale with confidence

The most eloquent articulation of the importance of this came from Jon Canarick, Managing Partner at North Castle Partners and until recently a Board Member at Barry’s Bootcamp, who offered this critical perspective (Disclaimer: Barry’s Bootcamp is a publicly disclosed client-partner of FitGrid’s):

   “True market intelligence is the holy grail. I grill founders on how their metrics compare and how clients feel about them, but in boutique fitness, it’s a fractured, painful process. The biggest brands live on different booking platforms, and reports barely scratch the surface. A simple, unified intelligence system is worth its weight in gold, and FitGrid is the closest to that I have seen.”

Why the Gap Hurts

• Lose board confidence with shallow benchmarking

• Under-leverage high performers because you don’t know what they’re doing differently

• Struggle to explain KPIs to franchisees (“What’s good conversion in Dallas?”)

• Mis-diagnose problems (“Is it the studio or the region?”)

• Limit your ability to raise capital or expand strategically

Market Intelligence Sources: Strengths vs Gaps

These tools offer useful fragments, but none give you real-time, cross-platform, action-ready intelligence that reveals both what’s happening and how to improve it.

Bottom line: No single tool gives you the full picture. That’s why franchisors need a true cross-platform intelligence layer- not a patchwork.

And here’s the breakthrough: With what we’ve created at FitGrid, franchisors aren’t stuck with generic definitions of success. We let you define your key metrics, whether that’s third-class return rate, 30-day retention on your intro offer, or pricing mix by region, and then apply those definitions across our cross-platform industry dataset to see how you truly stack up.

This isn’t just more data. It’s clarity, leverage, and control.

It’s a shared intelligence layer - a way for high performing brands to compare the metrics they care about, safely and on their terms.

How You Can Get Insights On Your Own

• Ask your ops or BI team to pull performance data across platforms (if you operate across booking systems, as companies like Crossfit do)
• Build manual dashboards to compare core KPIs (conversion, retention, pricing mix) across systems
• Review your FDDs to gain insight into how studios in your system are performing

Limitations: Complex, time-intensive, and prone to human error. You may miss cross-platform performance outliers.

If You Rely on External Sources: 

Pulling Market Intelligence The Easy Way

We saw this gap and carefully built FitGrid to bridge it.

With FitGrid, you define your KPI playbook, and we apply that definition across anonymized industry data to reveal how you truly stack up. Your lens, applied at scale.

FitGrid integrates directly with Mindbody, Mariana Tek, ClubReady, WellnessLiving, with plans for more. That means we can identify actual industry-wide benchmarks- across locations, markets, and segments - without requiring your team to stitch data together manually.

Real Example: Pilates Sector

• Avg. 1st Time Client Return Rate: 54%
• Bottom Decile: 23.3%
• Top Decile: 86.4%

Note: One of the challenges in reporting data is the definition differences on different booking platforms AND the definition differences between franchisors. We saw the gap, standardized cross-platform definitions, and built FitGrid to give franchisors the power to apply their own metrics at industry scale.

While we’re restricted from naming many brand partners, the patterns are real and anonymized from live data.

• No industry report gives you KPI-specific benchmarks
• No FDD gives the real-time insights
• No single booking system sees this

But with FitGrid, your locations are compared - anonymously - to peers in your geography and modality.

And the value?

• Sell franchisees in a more compelling way
• Diagnose root-cause issues with precision
• Turn performance gaps into replicable playbooks
• Raise capital with confidence
• Report effectively to PE boards

   “Before FitGrid, we were flying blind; guessing at benchmarks, stitching together spreadsheets, collecting industry reports, and setting goals with limited context. Now we have both the numbers and the narrative: performance metrics like conversion and retention we can benchmark across the industry, and client sentiment insights we can compare across our modality. No single booking system or industry report sees across brands the way FitGrid does, and that 360-degree intelligence builds investor confidence, improves prospect conversion, and gives our franchisees the clarity to scale with precision.”
— Michael Piermarini, COO, BODYBAR Pilates

Bottom Line

Gut thinking feels safe, but in today’s market, it’s a slow death.

The best operators move with the confidence of true market intelligence.

Done right, intelligence helps you detect shifts early, isolate which levers will move performance, and communicate strategic upside to franchisees, boards, and investors.

The Intelligence Layer, Practically. This isn’t another dashboard; it’s a neutral, consent-based layer that works alongside booking platforms to harmonize signals and make performance visible and replicable across brands and regions.

Make sure your intelligence stack is as modern as your brand strategy - or risk becoming irrelevant.

A Call Out To Franchisors - Let’s Talk

Also, if your brand uses a booking system that isn’t currently integrated with FitGrid but you want access to these insights, connect with me directly to discuss options.

Nobody should be left behind, and although we can only give real comparative data if you’re on a platform we integrate with, we’d still love to see if we can help.

We'll close the intelligence gap - together.

A Call to the Booking Platforms: Be Part of the Lift

However, in a sector fighting for legitimacy, capital, consistency, and scale, that siloing is potentially holding back a much greater future for all, where the number of new studios grows because the investor class recognizes the industry has matured and is ready.



Let’s be clear: we can’t do what booking platforms do, and we don’t want to.

• When platforms like ours are integrated:
• Brands reduce churn with better visibility
• Franchisors surface upsell opportunities and engagement gaps
• PE firms and boards gain confidence to invest and grow
• Operators make faster, smarter decisions at every level

In short, the whole ecosystem gets stronger.

This isn’t about FitGrid alone. It’s about raising the ceiling for all of us. The tools are here. The data is here. The only question now is: will we build the stack that lifts the industry?

Still pushing the boulder. But now with a map,
Nt Etuk
Founder & CEO, FitGrid
Co-Founder & Chairman, BFS

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