The Little Gym Franchise Network Tops 30 Locations as Somersault Scales

Somersault’s growth at The Little Gym rests on a mix of an established children’s activity brand, a repeatable operating model and experienced operators. Since investing in seven North Carolina locations in 2023, Griffin Gordon and Kevin Condon say they’ve expanded to more than 30 locations, with another 10-plus in development. The business generates nearly $20 million in revenue.

The investors came to the opportunity with direct experience as customers. Their children attended classes, and Condon says they left sessions after 45 to 60 minutes, sweaty and tired, asking, “Can we do that again?” The family experience also gave Gordon an early view of how the gyms build relationships: staff knew children by name, greeted parents and made families feel welcome.

That personal familiarity was one part of the case. Gordon and Condon also saw a chance to invest in a business with a long operating history and expand it alongside an experienced franchise operator. They had met at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, then pursued different careers. Condon co-founded Hidden River Strategic Capital, a Philadelphia-based private equity firm focused on small businesses. Gordon worked in private equity and ran small and midsize companies before founding a firm focused on franchisees.

Pairing capital with operating experience

Their paths came together through Richard Moore, a longtime The Little Gym operator whose family had spent nearly three decades building the business. Moore wanted to continue growing, while his parents were ready to retire. An advisor connected him with Gordon and Condon, who saw a potential fit between Moore’s operating experience and their investment resources.

In 2023, the partners’ firms invested in seven North Carolina locations and formed Somersault. Their expansion has combined new openings with purchases of existing locations. Condon describes the model as repeatable: build or acquire a location, then use an established operating playbook with capable leaders. Gordon says the business appealed to his firm because it combines a growing market for children’s services, a recognizable brand and unit economics he considers attractive when locations are run well.

For Gordon, the management team is central to the decision to keep expanding. Condon says the quality of the organization has given the partners confidence to continue investing. The model depends on both the brand and the people responsible for delivering its classes and running each gym.

Building on a 50-year-old curriculum

The Little Gym marked its 50th anniversary in the year described in the interview. Condon sees that history, along with the franchise’s curriculum and operating methods, as a foundation for expansion. Gordon says he views the brand as a leader in its age range and believes imitators don’t match its curriculum and operating approach.

The company has also been updating how it serves families. Gordon says the business previously had limited technology, systems and infrastructure, and operated more like a small owner-run enterprise. Since Unleashed Brands acquired The Little Gym, he says, the business has combined its longstanding strengths with changes to internal systems and the tools customers use.

Those updates include a more deliberate approach to marketing and customer acquisition, continued work on programming, and an app introduced by Unleashed this year. Condon says the app lets parents follow their children’s classes and see milestones and pictures. In his view, the technology adds a current feature to a curriculum that has been central to the franchise for decades.

The stated aim is to keep classes relevant to parents’ changing expectations and schedules while preserving the activities that define the experience. Gordon describes the fundamentals as hiring and investing in a strong team, caring about the curriculum and building real connections in local communities. He also says the program should help children develop confidence and become physically active early in life.

Condon says the experience is particularly visible among children ages 2 to 6, though the gyms serve younger and older children as well. Classes combine movement and play: children may try cartwheels or somersaults, jump, run, sing, follow directions and interact with other children. His own children’s enthusiasm, he says, is consistent with what the business sees across its locations.

What the franchise structure provides

Gordon and Condon invest in both franchised and independent businesses. Condon says the appeal of franchising is the ability to join an established system that would be difficult to build from scratch. Starting a competitor would not give them The Little Gym’s 50 years of history, brand recognition or operating structure.

That structure comes with costs and constraints: franchisees pay royalties and must follow system rules. Condon’s view is that, in this case, the brand and playbook offer enough value to make those obligations worthwhile. Gordon describes the aim as combining the focus of a small business with the reach of a larger platform. The result depends on the franchisor and franchisees working together, he says, and on the operator carrying out the model effectively.

For people considering a franchise, Gordon recommends speaking directly with existing owners. He points to the franchisee list in the franchise disclosure document as a starting place for finding operators who can describe what the business requires. Condon adds that an owner should care about the business even if they won’t run it personally. Investors still need an operator who can execute the system.

Growth depends on people

Gordon says the most persistent operating challenge is staffing. The business may be easy to understand, but running it well requires finding and training capable employees, then giving them room to advance. A teacher could take on more responsibility at one gym or move into overseeing several locations. Those career paths matter to the day-to-day operation as the network expands.

Somersault has more than quadrupled its location count in three years, from seven to more than 30. Asked whether revenue could eventually reach $100 million, Condon welcomed the possibility. Gordon said repeating the same pace of footprint growth over the next couple of years would be aggressive, while reiterating that the partners want to keep growing.

The next phase will test whether the company can add locations while preserving the staff quality, customer relationships and class experience that helped attract the investors in the first place. More than 10 locations are in development, but the partners’ own account makes clear that expansion depends on people who can deliver the playbook locally.