Two days ago, January 16th, was the 5 year anniversary of my wife and my re-opening The Little Gym of Lake Oswego after becoming owners. It's been a roller-coaster ride -- exciting, scary, fun, and daunting, but we usually have at least one huge smile every day.
Here's the brief story about how we became owners...
In her adult life, my wife Marie used to volunteer at the YMCA in the Richmond District of San Francisco, teaching aerobics to adults. When she got pregnant with our daughter, Freya, Marie got her pre-and post-natal exercise certification and started teaching a few of those classes at a fitness club near our post-baby home in Hercules, CA. After one class, one of her friends said, "You should make (and sell) a video of your classes!"
So we did....
A year later, we were selling a video -- Freya Fitnesss Postnatal Exercise Video -- on our own website, on Amazon.com, and at a few baby fairs in the Bay Area.
We learned a lot from that first business venture. It was fun, but when we had our second child, Blaise, we made the decision to shut down "Freya Fitness, Inc."
Marie had really gotten bit by the bug of having our own business and started researching franchises. We looked at several different ones and after visiting The Little Gym headquarters in Scottsdale, AZ, we both fell in love with it and decided to go for it. We spent some time trying to find a location in the San Francisco East Bay where we lived, and after several months broadened our search to a few other cities. Portland was at the top of our list because Marie spent several years at Willamette University in Salem and had fond memories of her time here.
The timing was great because The Little Gym of Lake Oswego was 10 years old, and the previous owner, Bridget, was ready for other challenges in her life. We came up in early September 2005, put in an offer to purchase the gym, bought a house in West Linn and sold our Hercules home in October 2005, and moved up in November. In December 2005, we closed the gym down, spent 4 weeks renovating it and training the old & new team members, and re-opened in January 2006 with a 22-week Winter/Spring semester.
My strongest memory was that during those 4 weeks of renovations, we rented out the McLean House in West Linn, from 8 - 5pm, Monday - Friday. We operated The Little Gym from our cell phones and carried our 2 front desk computers and our laptops to the McLean House every morning and back every evening, setting up our computer network, credit card machines, etc.... each day... in the rain... for 4 weeks.. I don't think it stopped raining for those 4 weeks.
During those 4 weeks, we transferred the previous 12 months of customer data into our new computer system, and we called every customer of those past 12 months to invite them back to The Little Gym. We did customer service and skills & spotting training at the McLean house (as best as possible). And on the day that all of our new gym equipment came in, we were super-excited. We met the 18-wheeler at the gym and carried in the crates of equipment. (The high beam was quite a pain!)
Now it's been 5 years. We want to thank all of the families in the Greater Portland area who have come to The Little Gym of Lake Oswego for classes, parties, camps, and more. We are committed to providing a safe, warm, nurturing environment for your children to build confidence through gymnastics-based programs. And we're hoping that the next 5 years aren't as much of a roller coaster ride!!
This week is Show Week, and in seeing "our" children performing their gymnastics and dance routines yesterday, I'm proud of being part of their development and their future success.
This past Saturday was the end of our Proud Parent Photo Contest. We had about 68 entries in the contest. Please
check out the amazing photos of the cute kids that were sent in.
In honor of our 5th anniversary, this week we will be giving away a free birthday party at The Little Gym, one per night for the next 5 nights. We'll be picking winners at random from children enrolled in our upcoming Winter/Spring semester. If you've been thinking about The Little Gym classes, it's a great week to join!
