Strong effort wins award for gym owners

SNAP Fitness held their company awards recently and local business owners Emma and Mark McDowall came away with the gong for franchisee of the year.

Yet the accolades didn’t end there, with staff member Maddy Theobold taking home the title of best club manager.

The national awards also include New Zealand and there are more than 230 Snap Fitness gyms in the two countries.

Emma and Mark are owners and directors of both Epsom and Bendigo Snap Fitness franchises and Ms McDowall said the win was a thrill and surprise.

“To win felt like a shock,” she said. “There are some amazing franchisees out there that were nominated, we didn’t even prepare a speech.

“It’s such a wide network of over 200 clubs nationally, to even be nominated in that top three is an amazing achievement.”

There were a couple of factors that helped get the Bendigo owners over the line Mr McDowall said.

“I guess there’s a few things, like myself and Emma obviously working in here, basically every day of the week is one,” he said.

“I think one of the other things we do well is our club culture within both gyms. We want to really create that community feeling when people come in. I guess that sets us apart from your standard setup.”

Ms Theobold said it was a focus on community that helped her win her best club manager honour.

“It is based on a whole different range of things every single year,” she said. “Community connection, local area marketing, engagement with the members, club numbers that sort of thing.

“But this year I think the decision makers really had a focus on community involvement and we’re definitely trying our best to be as involved in the community as possible.

“We sort of pride ourselves on having a range of different things that we do in the community. That could be fundraisers or supporting local sports teams, things like that.”

Ms McDowall said it was now on the team to come up with ways to improve and take home the award again next year.

“We’ve won awards in the past for being the most innovative club and we try and pride ourselves on that,” she said.

“Being innovative, trying to think outside the square for different things that we can offer to our members.”