Easy Mile Fitness is a Planet Fitness franchisee operating in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Starting from one club in Port Charlotte Florida in 2017, the company has scaled to 11 locations across three states.
We pride ourselves on building the best in class clubs we can while providing an incredible member experience. HandiFox helps us accomplish that.
Philip Amato, COO Easy Mile Fitness
Growth calls for a new level of inventory control and purchasing
By the time Easy Mile Fitness grew to a multi-unit franchisee of Planet Fitness health clubs, the volume and quantity of inventory items were too overwhelming to be managed and ordered for replenishment from Excel. At the time, stock control and purchasing were done by the clubs’ general managers. It worked with 1-3 inventory sites but was highly inefficient with 8 locations across three states. The system was decentralized and, therefore, lacked the required control and insights. So, the decision was made to hire a procurement manager and find a software solution to standardize inventory management processes.
“We needed a software that was simple enough that it could be used by our field managers, but complex enough to scale to efficiently manage inventory across over 30+ locations. Ultimately, upon finding HandiFox, we realized it embodied the user friendly interface for our field team while serving the complexity of our business.”
Transition and learning curve
As HandiFox Standalone is not tied to any accounting software, and is, basically, self-reliant in all the business processes and transactions it handles, the company merely had to clean up their inventory list in Excel and upload it into the system.
“The team was there to answer any and all questions we had- but truthfully, the system is very intuitive and adaptable to either someone who has operated Inventory software previously or someone who is new to the concept. Training of the Procurement Manager was very simple and communicating what we needed our Field Management team to accomplish took merely a few hours.”
Tailoring HandiFox to specific needs
Easy Mile Fitness worked closely with the HandiFox development team to shape the tech requirements for a number of changes they wanted to see in HandiFox Standalone. As a result, the following features/improvements went live in March/April 2020:
- The ability to round up/down items based on case size on Purchase Orders
- Case Size rounding while setting up reorder points and desired quantity on hand
- Synchronization of reorder point and desired QoH values across all locations (Easy Mile Fitness is currently tracking inventory across 12 sites)
- Save filters on purchase and sale transactions with a shortcut to favorite views
- Columns/lines customization
- The ability to assign shipping addresses to inventory sites, and more...
“We feel as though the customizations we were provided make this the perfect software for our business in our current state, as well as, provide the necessary flexibility to scale with us to our desired state. “
Acting on those suggestions actually helped the software grow more ‘muscular’ in a sense. So, thank you, Easy Mile Fitness!
10 months since the adoption of HandiFox Standalone
Now, Easy Mile Fitness is operating 11 sport clubs with 5 more clubs in preconstruction.
The move from ‘manual & decentralized’ to ‘fully automated & centralized’ inventory control and purchase management helped Easy Mile Fitness managers turn their sights to more urgent and global business objectives as opposed to the everyday busywork of making sure there’s enough inventory or placing replenishment orders.
“HandiFox has enhanced our inventory management capability significantly. As a result of HandiFox we now have standardized inventory across all locations, with the necessary insight and control into every purchase, enabling us to optimize our supply run rates in turn saving budget. “
A message to follow small business owners from Easy Mile Fitness COO
Small businesses inevitably have managers wearing multiple hats. With only so much time in a day, you have to be able to maintain control while maximizing efficiency and saving time. The ability to get clean information from tools that still provide great detail, is why we love Handifox so much. It takes the guesswork out of Inventory control and as a rapidly growing business, having one less thing to worry about is so helpful.
Philip Amato