One of the largest fitness franchises in the US: 2,000+ locations, 15M+ members, and zero online membership management. When lockdowns made in-person visits impossible, members who wanted to cancel had no path forward. Complaint volumes peaked and press coverage turned negative; brand trust eroded daily. Building an app was the easy part. The harder bet was whether controlled self-service could cut complaints, open retention moments, and repair the brand relationship. Over the next three fiscal years, revenue grew 150%+.
The challenge
- No online self-service. 100% of membership changes required in-person visits.
- Revenue collapse. A 40%+ year-on-year decline in the pandemic year.
- Brand damage. Peak cancellation complaints, negative press coverage.
- Legacy platform. Slow, not designed for transactional management.
- Distributed team. Developers, designers, QA, and business analysts across three time zones, fully remote.
The solution
An online membership management platform that let members cancel, freeze, upgrade, downgrade, and transfer memberships digitally.
My role
Product Manager leading a cross-functional team of developers, product designers, business analysts, and a product owner, alongside client stakeholders and other vendors. Ownership: requirements, delivery planning, sprint execution, and growth experimentation.
Strategy and approach
Phase 1, crisis response (first 6 months). Get core flows online fast. Prioritize cancellation, freeze, and modification over everything else. Reduce complaints and give members back control.
Phase 2, growth (months 6 to 24). Summer campaign, A/B testing across countries, lifecycle messaging, platform performance (React.js migration).
Making cancellation easy was the counterintuitive call, and a deliberate one. Complaints were eroding brand trust, and a member who could manage their own membership was far more likely to pause and return than one who felt trapped.
Planning
Detailed delivery plans in Jira tracked timelines, scope, and capacity. Sprint planning accounted for three time zones with documentation written to be consumed asynchronously.
A Kanban to Scrum transition ran alongside the build. The existing process lacked forecast accuracy for a platform with hard deadlines (summer campaign, fiscal reporting periods).
Cross-functional alignment
- Client. Regular alignment with the client's product owner and marketing teams.
- Vendors. Coordinated with other vendors in the broader digital ecosystem.
- Three-time-zone delivery. North America (BA), India (engineering), Brazil (design and PM).
- Marketing. Partnered on the summer campaign that hit 100K+ sign-ups on launch day.
- Growth. Collaborated with marketing and data analytics on acquisition funnels and retention cohorts.
Stakeholder trust
Trust came from delivery. Within six months the core flows were live and complaint metrics were already improving. The engagement scope expanded to growth experimentation, A/B testing, and the summer campaign, a direct result of seeing the numbers move.
Before and after
| Dimension | Before (Dec 2020) | After (Dec 2022) |
|---|---|---|
| Membership changes | 100% in-person | 70%+ online |
| Cancellation complaints | Peak, press criticism | Down 60%+ |
| Memberships | Declining | Grew 30%+ |
| Page load | Legacy, slow | 40%+ faster (React.js) |
| Session duration | Baseline | +25% |
| Summer campaign | No digital infrastructure | 100K+ participants day one |
| Agile maturity | Kanban, inconsistent | Scrum, 20%+ better forecasts, 70%+ fewer meetings |
| Revenue | Pandemic low | Record annual revenue, 150%+ growth across three fiscal years |
Tooling and reporting
- Product management. Jira (backlog, sprints, capacity), Confluence (requirements, delivery plans).
- Design. Figma.
- Experimentation. Optimizely (10+ A/B tests), Google Analytics (funnel tracking).
- Platform. React.js (frontend migration), the client's backend systems.
- Growth. Optimizely, marketing analytics for acquisition and retention cohorts.
Results
- Cancellation complaints fell 60%+ within six months.
- 70%+ of membership changes moved online.
- Memberships grew 30%+.
- 40%+ page load improvement (React.js migration).
- Session duration rose 25%+.
- 100K+ summer campaign participants on day one.
- 10+ A/B tests across multiple countries.
- Sprint forecasts improved 20%+ after the move from Kanban to Scrum.
- Meeting time dropped 70%+.
- 150%+ revenue growth across three fiscal years (verified against public filings).
Growth experimentation
The A/B testing program covered multiple dimensions.
- Country-level testing. Feature variations tested across markets with different regulatory requirements.
- Pricing pages. Tested presentation, copy, and CTA placement.
- Lifecycle messaging. Tested timing, content, and channel for retention messaging.
- Feature changes. Tested UI variations for membership management flows.
OKRs were defined alongside marketing and data analytics, tracking acquisition funnels and retention cohorts to measure the impact of each experiment.
Industry context
The fitness industry's COVID recovery gives the numbers context. The digital infrastructure built during 2020 to 2022 carried the record revenue years that followed.
Why this worked
Easy cancellation did the retention work. A member who could manage their own membership kept trusting the brand; one who felt trapped left for good. Frictionless cancellation cut complaints 60%+ and opened natural retention moments (freeze offers, downgrade paths, "come back" messaging) that a locked door never could.
Crisis first, growth second. Core flows took six months. Once complaint metrics moved, stakeholders widened the scope to growth experimentation, A/B testing, and the summer campaign. Stopping the bleeding is what earned the growth mandate.
Members came back because leaving was easy. That was the whole counterintuition.