Sep 20, 2007 4:21 PM
Interview with Tim Miller, CEO of Crunch Fitness
With almost 20 years of experience in the hotel industry, Tim Miller is at your service with hip, cosmopolitan Crunch Fitness.
Q: In an interview, whether it’s applying for a job or maybe you get the question sometimes: Where do you think you’ll be in five years? I’ve always kind of hated those questions, so I’ll pose that to you. As far as Crunch goes, where do you think it will be in five years? In regards to, maybe, we talked a little bit about expansion, maybe remodeling, staffing, technology, pricing. What types of changes do you foresee in five years with Crunch?
A: I think that in five years, Crunch will be the leader in the industry, hands down. What we’re focusing on now is having a best-in-class product. Everywhere where we are, not only in our new builds but really going back and looking at all the assets that we have right now and making sure they’re up to speed from equipment, design and technology point of view, I feel like that’s our obligation to our members to give them the best in class. I also think that in five years, we will be a growth-forward company, a company that really continues to focus on expansion and providing this business model and this membership-experience model to as many people as we possibly can. One of the things that I really want to focus on aside from really making sure the member experience is 101 percent, I also think that we have some opportunities to take Crunch and everything that it stands for and to translate it into something else as well. I’m not exactly sure what that is, but maybe something having to do with media or something having to do with retail goods. We feel like there is an opportunity there because Crunch is well known. We just have to make it even better known. And I think that there’s an opportunity to explore that.
Q: That’s pretty interesting that you mentioned media. One of the last things I want to know is in regards to the Claymation Crunchers.
A: Sure.
Q: Will there be more of those coming soon? I’m waiting for either the TV series or the movie, the major motion picture?
A: We just launched that campaign a couple of months ago, and we’ve gotten a lot of feedback on it. It’s really interesting because I think there are people that absolutely identify with one of those people, whether it’s themselves or whether it’s someone that they see in their day-to-day workout life. So, we are looking. It started to be a small, grass-roots, viral campaign. We’re looking to see what happens next. They definitely have a life of their own, and there are people who are absolutely enamored with them, so we’re hoping that something, we’ll see what happens there.
Q: I hope that for your sake and your members’ sake and the sake of the company that not everybody is like the towel police lady who rips off the arms of that one [guy]. I just hope you don’t have that violent of a membership.
A: No, I hope not as well, actually. That was part of the campaign. The campaign was really about seeing how far we could push the limits of humor. It’s actually a great example because we’re working with a very sort of hip, irreverent ad agency based here in New York, and their mission was to really push the envelope because we wanted to go out with a bang, figuring we could always scale back if we needed to, but we wanted to kind of go out there with a very sort of tongue-in-check, fun point-of-view that really Crunch is made up of all different types of people. You don’t have to be a competitive bodybuilder, and you don’t have to be a 22-year-old high-fashion model. But it’s really all about that everyone fits in, and that we are a very inclusive experience. And anyone can come in and be a Cruncher, can be part of the family.
Q: Nancy was the one. Steven and Nancy, that cartoon was, you say eye-opening or gets some people’s attention, I think that one got my attention more than the others. Well, it’s great to talk to you. One more silly one: the peak-a-boo showers. Have you tried them? Are they here to stay under your tenure at Crunch?
A: You know, I have tried them, years ago. My first time in Los Angeles, when I showered in the gym, I was like, ‘What the heck is this?’ But you know, none of our design features are here to stay. When Crunch was really founded, each one was meant to be somewhat of that city, sort of a varied and organic extension of that city and meant to be leading toward the provocative side of that city. I’m not married on any of those things because part of what makes up Crunch is the ability to stay very, very relative and very, very current. We’re currently looking at and speaking with a bunch of design firms to make sure that we stay up-to-date and looking at doing something that really isn’t about the status quo—even our own status quo—but doing new, fun and equally provocative things today that we did 10 years ago.
Q: I guess if you’re going to try those showers, you want to be on the road and maybe not in the place where you live.
A: The thing about them, I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but it’s really not about, you can’t really see. It’s really more about a silhouette. It’s more about a sense of voyeurism. It is a very respectful sense of voyeurism, I will say.
Talk Back
Pamela Kufahl
Editor
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