CrossFit Threat

by Nathan

WoD

Barbell Training-
Squat
1×20*
find true 20RM
Conditioning-
1500 meter row
then
6-11-16
KettleBell Swing 70/53#
Lateral Burpee
1 min rest
16-11-6
KettleBell Swing
Lateral Burpee

Before we get into this nonsense:
Here are the top numbers from today squats
Ben 301#- outdoing Ponch by 1 lb..hmmmm what a little competetion does
Kate 177.5#
Brit- 190#- 3 reps shy, but damn worth the mention!

From HQ Staff:
CrossFitters,

I have some important news for you. Anthos Capital wants to take control of the CrossFit affiliate system. Anthos is offering $20 million to a non-managing equity partner of CrossFit Inc. in order to establish a managing stake in the company. This is important because Anthos does not view CrossFit affiliates the way we all do. Anthos doesn’t care about professional trainers improving people’s lives; they see CrossFit affiliates as a mechanism to sell more supplements and equipment.

If they succeed, Anthos’s first step will be to force all CrossFit affiliates to morph from professional training facilities into supplement and equipment peddlers. In that case, affiliates will lose the right to choose between an array of competing brands such as Rogue, Again Faster, SFH, and Pure Pharma. Affiliates will be forced to sell the Anthos company’s endorsed line of products.

If Anthos gains control of CrossFit, then the CrossFit affiliate system will cease to exist as we know it. Affiliates will no longer pay a minimal licensing fee and manage their own CrossFit gyms as they see fit. Instead, they will report to a domineering bureaucracy that seeks to extract maximal profit from them while micro-managing every significant facet of their business. CrossFit facilities will be run like your neighborhood McDonald’s or Gold’s Gym.

CrossFit affiliates signed up to provide a revolutionary service for improving people’s lives. CrossFit founder Greg Glassman’s original vision is stronger today than ever: a network of CrossFit affiliates making peoples’ lives better through constantly varied, functional movement at high intensity and teaching them to eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. If Anthos takes over, however, this vision of CrossFit will end. CrossFit affiliates will become part of an organization that is the antithesis of what they believe in.

All this probably sounds a little scary, but the CrossFit community can stop this. CrossFit affiliates have the power here. If CrossFit’s affiliates oppose Anthos’ actions, then Anthos will never be able to gain control of the community – it doesn’t matter how much money they have. And Greg Glassman is 100% committed to keeping CrossFit true to its covenant with affiliates.

If you want to stop Anthos from ruining CrossFit, tell your friends and the CrossFit Affiliate owners you know exactly what Anthos is up to. Make a blog post on your Affiliate’s site, post to Facebook, Tweet about it, do whatever it is you like to do to get the word out. Let’s let the world know how we feel about Anthos trying to turn CrossFit affiliates into Globo Gyms.

Anthos wants to make money from CrossFit’s current seminar system, sure, but they told us their plans and they want to dramatically alter CrossFit’s business model. They see the fact that CrossFit affiliates don’t all push a particular supplement and equipment brand as money left on the table. In other words, they think that CrossFit HQ could be squeezing the affiliates for much more than the rather minimal affiliate fee that it currently is. And, of course, such deviations from CrossFit’s tried and true Affiliate system would not be optional.

As Greg says, “Never sell out.”

Reply from Coach Glassman:

Friends,

The existential threat to affiliates resides in the $20,000,000 desire to control them. Bryan Kelly made the Anthos intent painfully clear to a room full of CF Staff Tuesday May 10, 2011, from 6:30-7:00 pm in the Tony Gwynn suite at the Omni Hotel in San Diego, California. Jeff and Miki Martin, Dave Castro, Brian Mulvaney, Karianne Dickson, Dale Saran, Tony Blauer, and I were present. There, Bryan Kelly explained in clear and concise terms that we were leaving billions of dollars on the table with our current affiliate relationship. We all remember lines like, “Every time I go into GNC, you are losing money”. The talk, and several of us have heard it several times and on two coasts, revolved around “money left on the table”. We are well acquainted with the Anthos plan and Bryan Kelly’s intent. We’ve been preparing for this for almost a year.

Make no mistake about it, Anthos wants an equity share of CF in order to gain control of the affiliates. I stand squarely in the way. From the start, our promise to the affiliates has been to minimize rent extraction while providing the best education, protection, and brand development possible. Bryan Kelly sees 4,000 independently owned and operated gyms as 4,000 potential points of sale. The Anthos approach is short-term, rapacious, dishonest, entirely destructive of our culture, and toxic to the affiliates.

Anthos will NOT end up with an equity share in CrossFit. They’re holding a losing hand and will eventually come to terms with that fact. I’m honored to fight this fight and consider the opportunity and responsibility to lead the affiliates as the most significant facet of my life. None of it is for sale – at any price. I don’t care what this costs or how long it takes, we will keep our affiliates free.

- Coach Glassman

This is truly a sticky situation with real threats, basically a Venture Capital Company wants leach on the CrossFit affiliate. What we have here is a Venture Capitalist Greed. And here is what will happen if another entity ever try to tell me how to run our Box, We will change our name and carry on with business as usual.Ill be sure as lame if we let an outside entity tell us how and what we do here. I sell What i believe in, and we operate in the manner I feel is best for our community.
As an affiliate owner I have always based my business model and future based on Coach Glassmans advice and words. And As an affiliate owner I have trust he will take care of the situation, to the best intentions of the affiliates future as decision making.
My last Post touched briefly on the CrossFit inc Business models, CrossFit is NOT a franchise , but a community of Boxes and like we know; they are not EQUAL, some better then others (read my last post) but each with each having its OWN decision on how to run a box. And that is what has made CrossFit what it is.
There it is, the current CrossFit threat. Time will tell.