Gary Heavin and His Billion-Dollar Franchise Business - Curves
In the fitness and health industry, the ability to endure a recession and, even, to continue growing, often comes down to the market position. Though many traditional fitness franchises are dealing with the current downtrend well, one niche - budget franchises - seems to be doing better than most. Since its founding 21 years ago, Curves has grown from one franchise to 11, 000.

Gary and Diane Heavin, founders of Curves
Gary was born on March 3, 1955 in Houston, Texas. He had difficult childhood, because his mother died at the early age of only 40 when he was 13. The causes of her death were weight issues and other emotional and physical problems. She left five children. Gary knew that the premature death of his mother was unnecessary.
In high school Heavin had a dream to become a doctor and after graduating, he went to a medical college. He had many different jobs in order to support himself during his studies. Gary's dream of becoming a doctor was broken when he ran out of money and could not afford to continue his studies. Fortunately, his brother David decided to open a fitness club and offered Gary to manage it. Of course he accepted the challenge. He was only twenty years old and did not know anything about business. In the first year of running the gym Gary could not pay the bills for the fitness. Despite that, he learned few important things, which changed his life. The first one was that he loved the fitness business and the second - he knew how to deal with women.
Heavin was aware of the fact that the first step in promoting women’s wellness is to get them into the gym; many do not feel comfortable exercising in the presence of men, which keeps them from going to traditional gyms. That is why he soon limited the gym's membership to women only and named it Women's World of Fitness. Gary also took the mission of helping women be healthier very personally, as he knew that by exercise and proper nutrition his mother could have lived longer.
By the time he was 30, Women's World of Fitness had 14 locations and 50,000 members. Then things started to fall apart.
‘I let my overhead increase beyond the capacity of the market’.
Moreover he decided to open fitness for men just to save the women’s business. In 1986 Women's World of Fitness went bankrupt. Heavin lost his house, his airplane and his wife divorced him. He was just a broke man who happened to serve for 3 months in Cameron County Jail in Brownsville.

Curves Fitness
‘We had two Curves, a brand-new baby, and we were earning a quarter of a million a year. We were going to live happily ever after’. Gary shared in an interview.
But then Heavin made very spontaneous decision to develop the business and started thinking how to make it as popular as possible.
"I believe you can teach a manager to care enough to make a pretty good cup of coffee… But it's hard to make a manager care enough to run a fitness club. Only an owner will care enough to do the job."… “I want to franchise this thing."
Despite Gary and Diane’s fear of failure, they turned to Gary Findley for advice, who at that time was vice president of franchise sales at the Dwyer Group. Soon Heavins opened their first franchise and in 1996, there were 44 Curves gyms and by 2004, the company had more than 8,000 franchises.
‘It took McDonald's 25 years to reach 6,000 locations. It took Subway 26 years and it took us eight.’ Gary said
The Heavins provide funding for healthcare and health education for women, family abuse prevention, adoption services, and more. The company is not just a business according to Heavins, it is more like a mission for their family. Gary keeps saying that he can do the same business again and again
‘I'm not afraid of losing my money or my business; I'm going to wake up every day and do the right thing. And if I were to lose everything I own, I'd just rebuild it again.’