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Because muscle weighs more than fat, Curves measures success in inches, not pounds, lost. In a month of thrice-weekly visits, Holding shed 8 1/2 in. total from her arms, legs, hips, waist and bust. She decided to buy a franchise while continuing to work as a real estate agent, spending $65,000 to set it up in a shopping center, and enlisted daughter Diana, 36, to manage it. Within three months, Holding's Curves had 400 members. As Diana rapidly shrank from a size 22 to a 12, shedding 48 in. from her figure, she decided to open her own Curves on the other side of town. Holding's youngest daughter Danielle, a recent college grad, got help from Mom in opening the first Curves in Austin, Texas, in 2001.
The Holdings are the kind of owners Heavin hoped for when he set the monthly franchise fee at a low $395 in 1995. His success took the franchise industry by surprise. "A few years ago, this company called Curves started showing up on our lists," says Maria Anton, executive editor of Entrepreneur magazine, which recently ranked Curves the fastest-growing franchise in the world. "We said, 'Whoa, where did this company come from?'"
Heavin and his wife Diane, 41, had managed and owned traditional gyms in Houston. Heavin had made his first million by the age of 26, then lost it all by 30 after trying to expand too quickly and broadly. In setting up the Curves chain, he avoided debt for himself and his franchisees by keeping down costs and growing at a rate he could afford. The typical Curves inhabits just 1,200 sq. ft. to 1,500 sq. ft. and can be profitable with as few as 200 members. Those low numbers let owners focus on service rather than member recruitment.
Liz Naughton, of Kodiak, Alaska, opened her franchise five months ago after being taken to a Curves by her daughter in Palmer, Alaska. When Naughton, 47, cracked her nest egg for the initial $19,900 investment, her husband thought she was nuts, she says. She has already made half the money back (and dropped from a size 18 to a 12). "I never pictured myself in this profession," says Naughton, a former Teamster driver on the TransAlaska pipeline. What got her interested, she says, is that Curves customers seemed to be having fun--a word not often associated with lifting weights.
Heavin designed Curves' hydraulic-resistance machines to require minimal adjustment between users. (He has the machines made at a plant in Los Fresnos, Texas.) An exerciser spends only 30 seconds on a station, then keeps her heart rate up by walking or jogging in place before moving to the next one.
The workout is not without critics. Miriam Nelson, director of the Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University, says Curves' use of hydraulic resistance rather than actual weights allows users to exercise only when lifting, not when lowering. Heavin concurs but says the resulting reduction in muscle gain is, for Curves' mostly novice clientele, more than offset by greater safety, because most muscle injuries occur during the lowering phase of weight-bearing exercise. He gleaned this fact from Jack Wilmore, professor of physiology at Texas A&M.