When cryotherapy or “cold therapy” relieved years of chronic pain in just two treatments, Alia Alston was sold. She felt moved to make the healing modality available to the general public, so she founded Icebox Cryotherapy in Atlanta, Georgia.
Icebox holds the unique distinction of being the country’s first brick-and-mortar cryotherapy studio. The franchise has since grown to 21 locations across the United States.
“We’re really excited about the growth,” says Alston, “and now we’re able to offer this amazing modality to communities all over the country to help people and teach them a different way of healing themselves.”
Underpinning Icebox’s success are the brand’s franchisees, says Alston, with Zenoti software helping each studio deliver cold therapy with warm personalization and greater efficiency.
Choosing the right platform
Icebox COO Allison Adams was clear she wanted business management software that would help maximize efficiency and make more money for franchisees. Her wish list also included ease of reporting and better oversight of the business.
The Zenoti platform met all of Adams’ requirements: Real-time reporting? Check. Royalty payments? Piece of cake. Traveling memberships? Done. Icebox could also replace some tedious manual work with a newfound efficiency, a boon for a brand with ambitious growth plans.
As for the customer-facing elements, Zenoti measured up equally well. Within three months of moving to the platform, Adams saw a surge in sales. “Zenoti has really helped with the consumer process,” she said. “The mobile app, the webstore – everything is really easy for them to buy and book.”
Revamping memberships, gift cards, and more
Innovating is key to staying ahead in beauty and wellness, and Zenoti helped Icebox Cryotherapy level up their membership, gift card, and package programs. Centralizing those programs at the brand level means clients can access membership benefits and redeem gift cards and packages at any studio across the franchise.
“We’re not only doing traveling memberships but also traveling gift cards and packages. We’ve never been able to do that before, and that’s really awesome for our studios,” says Alston.
Upgrading software helped Icebox leadership, too: they have instant access to data for decision-making. If Adams or Alston want to look at metrics for the brand as a whole, they can. Franchisees are similarly empowered – they can access metrics for their individual studios in real time.
Says Alston, “The reporting with Zenoti is helpful and will continue to be helpful to not only teach our franchisees and our studios how to look at their business, but also for us to really understand benchmarking and what averages look like and how we’re growing.”
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Putting franchisees and customers first
A desire to help franchisees succeed informs Alston’s yearly goals for Icebox Cryotherapy, and the Zenoti platform helps her achieve those goals.
“Ultimately, making the switch to Zenoti, launching our new memberships, implementing a new coaching program for our franchisees – we’ve done a lot to help grow them,” says Alston, “and I think they feel that and they’re excited, which gets us excited because they’re growing, they’re learning, and it just feels like a good place culturally, which is great.”
Helming a brand as dynamic as Icebox, Alston’s motivation boils down to being able to help more people.
“The wellness recovery industry is very focused on sports and performance,” she said. “And even though we’ve worked with many amazing NFL and NBA athletes over the last 12 years, our focus is on helping more people – even just weekend warriors – to be the best that they can be.”
Explore how Zenoti helps franchise brands with multi-center management.
