High-risk move of kids' gym begins to pay off for couple

When Tom and Lisa Boughner closed the location of The Little Gym franchise in Reno and left it dark for more than six months while they moved, they easily could have killed the business.

But their decision appears to have paid off as membership has risen steadily since The Little Gym reopened in new quarters in June.

Like other franchisees of The Little Gym International of Scottsdale, Ariz., the Reno facility provides noncompetitive classes that help young children build motor skills. Children, some of them as young as 4 months, tumble and dance and learn sports skills.

When the Boughners purchased the franchise for Reno a year ago, the business had about a five-year history and a lease in Caughlin Ranch that was about to expire without hope of renewal.

They swallowed hard, operated the business in Caughlin Ranch for a couple of months, then shuttered the operation just before the

Christmas holidays.

Tom Boughner had made a living as a real estate investor before the couple bought the business, so he shopped hard for new space.

He landed at a 4,000-square-foot location in a shopping center at 2202 Harvard Way, right across a parking lot from Reno's CostCo store. The center, Boughner says, draws 1,000 families a day.

But six months of darkness is tough on any business. The Boughners Lisa Boughner is trained as a physical therapist working with children built the business from 26 members to 135 in the first months after

they purchased it.

But they lost about 50 of those members while they were getting the new

location ready.

"Our enrollment is on the way back up. But summer is tough for us to

grow enrollment," Tom Boughner says. The couple expects to have a good handle on their status after a busy back-to-school signup period during August.

It's more than a bean-counting exercise. Boughner, who loves working with children in a way he never loved crunching the numbers in real estate deals, has his family's financial future staked on The Little Gym. And he feels responsible for the gym's eight full- and part-time workers.

While the business does some print ads in family-oriented publications, Boughner says its most successful marketing comes from appearances at community events where the Little Gym's owners and staff can visit directly with parents.

The company focuses on the parents of pre-school children. There's typically less competition from organized sports and organizations such as scouting for the time of those kids, Boughner says. Then, too, a preschooler may be a member of The Little Gym for years it serves children up to age 12 while an older child will outgrow the program sooner.

Once kids are enrolled in programs that track the semesters in Washoe County schools, the Boughners spend a lot of time wooing students' parents.

The Little Gym provides regular Parent's Survival Nights gym-and-movie nights for kids while parents enjoy some time alone and Boughner says gym employees spend a lot of time explaining the motor skills curriculum to parents as it unfolds.

"If they don't get it, they stop coming," he says. "This is not a pure

gymnastics program. It's development of motor skills."