Felicia Alexander and Todd Wadler have been busy. Since buying Title Boxing Club in January 2021 and bringing it under their BoxUnion Holdings, Alexander and Wadler have gone on a roadshow, taken countless boxing classes and invested heavily in the infrastructure of a brand whose footprint they want to double by 2025.
What they haven’t done, at least until last month, is sign a new franchise agreement.
“We intentionally stopped all growth initiatives when we made the acquisition. We really wanted to get our arms around the business,” said Alexander, who with Wadler co-founded BoxUnion and is now chief revenue officer of Title Boxing. It its first deal since the acquisition, existing franchisees Blake and Jenny Kidwell will open a second studio in Sacramento, California.
“Sacramento is my home and after experiencing a Title class for the first time, I was determined to bring the concept to this community,” said Blake Kidwell in a statement. “Jenny and I have built a welcoming environment in our existing club for all members—regardless of their fitness level—with the help of employees who live and breathe that same mantra. We have established ourselves in the heart of city and I’m excited to continue to strengthen our presence in the area.”
Felicia Alexander is the co-founder of BoxUnion and chief revenue officer of Title Boxing.
Title Boxing finished 2021 with 141 locations, down from a high of 180 in 2019. It’s operating in a competitive fitness segment, one that’s becoming increasingly crowded with boxing and kickboxing concepts. There’s 9Round, with about 450 locations in the United States, along with Mayweather Boxing + Fitness, now with 75 studios, RockBox, Legends, Rumble and others.
As Title Boxing’s new franchisor looks to restart growth, it’s doing so with new initiatives aimed at improving franchise profitability and the member experience. Alexander, Wadler and other members of the leadership team visited nearly every location, Alexander said, to meet with franchisees and take classes.
“We were really looking at the experience inside the studio itself,” she said. “We noticed, other than just having ‘Title’ on the wall, the experience could vary quite a bit.”
In response, the company built out a 52-week curriculum for club managers and trainers that builds upon members’ skill development and includes regularly updated training materials, along with a system for rolling out new workouts. It also introduced a new learning management system, Title University, to “make it easier to onboard, train and retain employees,” noted Alexander, and made multiple new hires, including a vice president of field marketing and district field operators. New platforms to provide data and analytics, meanwhile, give franchisees “better visibility into their operations.”
“Before we came on board, franchisees could see leads and memberships that came in, but that was it,” explained Alexander, and franchisees felt the lead volume was lacking. “With the new analytics program, we could see it wasn’t that they weren’t getting leads, it’s that” those leads “weren’t getting booked into a trial class.” The new platform tracks lead progression and conversion into a membership.
Title On Demand, the brand’s digital platform with boxing, kickboxing, strength and other class formats available for members to stream, got a revamp and the company added bundled memberships as another tool for franchisees to increase revenue. In 2021, average gross sales were $433,609 for locations operating in markets with a population of more than 100,000.
Alexander noted that like the Kidwells, other existing franchisees are looking to expand, which “speaks volumes” about the brand’s efforts over the past 18 months. And franchisees who are embracing the new tools and operational enhancements are positioned for growth.
“Those that are really all in, that are following the plays, are seeing the benefit,” she said.
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