Krystal Kolenich started life as an x-ray technician, before buying a franchise with Aradia Fitness when they were just starting up.  Since 2007, she has been the Canadian franchisor for Aradia fitness, as well as continuing to run her own franchise locations.  Aradia Fitness, which is expanding rapidly, currently has 21 franchises across Canada.  Talking to Krystal is fascinating as she has a strong sense of both sides of the fence - having been both franchisee and franchisor – the franchisee relationship at its best.

Franchise Offering
Krystal’s franchise has the possibility to be very controversial when you consider that Aradia Fitness' line of business are pole dancing lessons.  Talking with Krystal you realise she is extremely passionate about the benefits of her franchise, and what it offers the women who come.  She’s fighting against a strong stereotype (that pole dancing is for strippers) but is very convincing about the benefits of Aradia Fitness and full of amazing stories about what it has done for different women of different ages and all different levels of fitness.  Krystal says:

“Women don’t want to be sexy 24/7, but we give them a place to be sexy when they want to.  There’s no sexuality in the workplace or in many women’s lives – that’s not a bad thing, but we want to be able to bring that back; to give women the confidence – after the first class, it’s amazing; they walk out with their heads high and walk differently down the street and they don’t care what anyone thinks”.

Straddling Both Sides of the Fence
One of the biggest challenges/opportunities for franchises is the relationship between the franchisee and the franchisor.  This can be a source of great growth & energy for a franchise, but it can also be very painful when things go badly.  When Krystal became the franchisor, she thought a lot about whether to continue as a franchisee or whether to sell her franchises.  She decided to continue as a franchisee so that she would be equally affected by corporate decisions.  She also felt this would give franchisees confidence that she wouldn’t make decisions that were based only on the franchise level because these would hurt her as well in her role as franchisee.  This choice has been very positive for her – she can speak to the franchisees as a peer and talk about how corporate decisions have affected her franchise locations.

The biggest challenge for her in this transition from franchisee to franchisor was to break away from the perspective of her own studios and have a global outlook.  She now sees how little things that don’t fit with the brand will cause problems down the road, and how the franchise will expand to help everybody grow.  Another growth point for Krystal was moving away from working with the original franchisors (who had become friends) to working with franchisees that she didn’t know and hadn’t chosen herself – “you learn to grow to be as productive as you can for the business”.

Brand and the Franchisee – Franchisor Relationship
Aradia’s brand is very much about women learning to appreciate themselves and others and having a supportive network.  This distinguishes Aradia from other pole dancing places.

The brand value is also implemented in the Aradia franchise structure.  Many decisions are made on a consensus basis or by a vote (how to spend the marketing budget, for example).  Some decisions are not what Krystal would have chosen personally, but building that network and strength as a group is part of Aradia’s brand.  Krystal talks very frankly about some of the particular aspects of running a franchise of women franchisees; she sees a relationship-oriented approach to the way women do business and is open about the challenges of wanting to give the benefit of the doubt rather than basing decisions solely on the bottom line.  When she started, she wanted every franchisee to be happy, but she now acknowledges that isn’t an attainable goal – instead she is aiming for a successful stable company that is consistently upgraded and always on the leading edge.  Her motivation, and that of her franchisees, comes from hearing the stories of women whose lives have been changed by their classes.

“As a franchisor, you don’t have all the answers but your role is to create leadership that says we’ll make it through and work this through together and if we have to change, it will be a learning curve for our company and it will be good – you can’t make everything perfect but doing it together is much stronger than us doing it separately”.

This attitude has clearly helped to build a successful and growing franchise that is still doing well in the current challenging economic climate.

This article was written by Katryn Harris, CEO and co-founder of Open Box Integration, a company that helps franchises improve communications through the development of online communities, social media, online marketing, websites, intranets and custom software development