WW closing down most studio locations!
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cakeman21k
Posts: 5,999 Member
So at our usual Tuesday morning weigh in meeting yesterday we got the word that WW is going through a corporate "restructuring". That means they are closing all but 125 of what they call "brick and mortar" locations, and about 600 "studio" locations (church basements, VFW halls etc.). I was told that they currently have about 6000 locations so a very big cut! The news was not met with great enthusiasm by the people in my meeting!
For me personally it certainly means cancelling my WW subscription for the first time in over 16 years! I actually got something out of the meetings! I have not decided yet if I will pay to continue to used their e tools, I have learned to like their recipe library and the scanner for items in the grocery store. I will decide that over the next few days.
For me personally it certainly means cancelling my WW subscription for the first time in over 16 years! I actually got something out of the meetings! I have not decided yet if I will pay to continue to used their e tools, I have learned to like their recipe library and the scanner for items in the grocery store. I will decide that over the next few days.
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I am very sorry to hear that. I do think it will end up biting them in the backside.0
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Take a look at the WW stock chart over the last 20 yrs. It’s crazy. They have a brand that a lot of people love and they don’t know what to do with it.0
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The problem is that the people who love WW aren’t investors.
I hate the closings - but paying retail rental rates for space that’s used perhaps twenty hours a week has never seemed like a sustainable business model in a world increasingly dominated by digital natives. I’m not surprised, but I am very disappointed in the way they’re handling this. They’re clearly up to something with Lifetime members, for example, but they as closed-mouth as Bellichek after a bad loss.0 -
One of my WW Leaders just posted a very negative post on her FB page. She is really POed!
I saw something on line that WW planned to have meetings in church basements! LoL meaning free or LOW rents!0 -
Purely coincidentally, I cancelled my WW membership earlier this week. One, I could use the money elsewhere, and two, with no meetings near me at a time I like, I can do just as well with calorie/ nutrient content information found online.0
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WW has always had meetings in church basements - and VFW halls, and hotel conference rooms, and Knights of Columbus, etc. Those meetings were generally the “once a week” meeting for that location.
My brick-and-mortar center will be going to some sort of “transient” facility like the ones above. Perhaps more important, once they do it will go from seven weekly meetings to three. Pretty clearly it’s not just about saving rent on retail space, but also about forcing people into virtual meetings.
Which I tried last week. I was one of 105 people in the meeting. Let’s just say I haven’t transition to the idea of that as a true option. I’m not sure a one-inch square on my iPad is as viable a way of getting to know people as sitting down next to them.
But I’ll stop before I rant . . . .0 -
[quote="crewahl;c-473Pretty clearly it’s not just about saving rent on retail space, but also about forcing people into virtual meetings.
Which I tried last week. I was one of 105 people in the meeting. Let’s just say I haven’t transition to the idea of that as a true option. I’m not sure a one-inch square on my iPad is as viable a way of getting to know people as sitting down next to them.
But I’ll stop before I rant . . . . [/quote]
Yeah, I tried one of the "big" meetings. Hated it!
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@Al_Howard Bedford is going to have three “church basement” meetings going forward; don’t know if one of them would work for you or if Salem is a better option.0
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@Al_Howard Bedford is going to have three “church basement” meetings going forward; don’t know if one of them would work for you or if Salem is a better option.
What's the days/times? Are they on their WW site?
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Re: the church basement meetings, my "brick and mortar" ww site closed down during the height of covid, My DW and I tried the zoom meetings which popped up in their place, it was a poor replacement in my opinion, but because it was still the same time and group of people we made it work, but I never liked it all that much. When the lockdown eased they started having ftf meetings at a local rec center, but went from about 10 - 12 meetings a week down to 2! now there will be no meetings in my town, and only 2 meetings a week about 45 minutes away. I am not interested in attending an on line meeting with potentially hundreds of faces on my phone so I have dropped back to an e tools only membership which reduces my monthly cost to ww by 60% but still gives me access to the e tools which I have become familiar with and dependent on. We will see how it goes, I do not rule out dropping ww completely in the near future.0
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I live in a small town. Our church basement meeting was cancelled during Covid and never came back. It was the same for the ones in neighboring towns. If you chase them away, they'll leave. I've been a life member for 30 years.0
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Moving. 😉
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louisstone wrote: »Moving. 😉
“Moving” - as in “moving to the internet”. 🤯
(Nice to see you here on GoaD, Lou. 😊)0 -
Remember hearing "meetings work!" from a meeting leader? Backed up by studies of how much more succesfull users who attended meeting were over on line only types!
I have been through more "corporate restucrturing" events in my life than I care to remember, I can recognize the signs that tell me this is an "accountants in charge" type of situation. I can picture the meeting in the corporate boardroom where the spreadsheets are getting reviewed, and the conclusion is reached that the biggest cost items in the business model are rents and salary's so lets reduce those 2 items and that will make margins look better! Not giving any thought to the idea that without leaders and locations there are no meetings so there can be no income from people who attend. This will have a short term positive effect on the spreadsheet as costs are reduced, and a long term negative effect as income goes down! I just love it when the accountants are in charge!0 -
My former Leader left a scathing post on her FB page Re WW management about how they were poorly treated. She now working at a new clothing store for women!
She burned her bridges and moved on. LoL
Paying big bucks for all those studios didn’t work when Covid-19 hit.0 -
"If we didn't have to spend all that money for the product we could make a profit."0
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If you go back in time 3 CEO's for WW, they changed the model for the centers and it ruined the business model. WW used to do subleases on retail properties at low rates for the centers. They brought in chairs and made do with whatever the configuration was for WI booths, etc. Then they decided to sign real leases and build out the centers to conform to a standard at a high fixed cost.
Remember that most centers see activity maybe 20 hours a week, so that's a lot of rent for places that's not used much. Then add in all the other false starts like ditching the core mission, pushing online to the detriment of centers, etc and you can see how this happens.
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Interesting. Back in the day, when I was a paying WW member, I used to attend an "at-work" meeting. It was super-convenient and I could pop over during lunchtime and get right back to work. It was the incredibly low activation-energy that made this an attractive, and viable, model for me. It didn't really matter that I couldn't buy WW-logo'd snacks, because the important part was the face-to-face interaction.
I'm sure WW got trashed by a number of issues, including the "real lease" issue that Lou mentioned (nice to see you here!), the COVID work-from-home model that hasn't quite recovered yet, and the general idea of "why pay for something when I can use a free app" issue. To be honest, at this point someone could probably set up a free website and app, driven by ads, that would be as-good/better than the current WW model!0 -
Fellow GOADs:
Reminded me how we all ended up here on line after WW booted us off WW site. The original WW GOAD group was a fun, robust group of intelligent, funny GOADs who helped me change my life.
Thanks GOADs!0
