When we founded Zoom Room in 2007, the idea was simple: build a place where people learn to train their own dogs. Not a drop-off facility. Not a daycare. An indoor gym where the human is the student and the dog is the willing partner. Eighteen years and 60-plus locations later, that founding principle hasn’t changed. But the way we deliver on it has — and our most recent move might be the most significant evolution yet.
In late 2025, Zoom Room became one of the first national dog training franchises to embed wearable fitness technology directly into our clients’ day-to-day through a partnership with Fi, the leader in smart pet GPS technology. New clients at participating locations received a free Fi Mini GPS tracker — a $99 value — plus six months of complimentary service with a qualifying purchase. But this isn’t a promotional gimmick. It’s a fundamental rethinking of how a service franchise can extend its value proposition beyond the four walls of a physical location.
This side of the year, we’re taking our partnership even further with the release of Leaderboards across participating gyms. Select Zoom Room locations will feature in-gym activity displays highlighting the dogs who log the most movement and visit the gym most consistently — turning individual progress into a shared, community-driven experience. We’re also rolling out nationwide challenges that connect clients across markets, giving dog owners a reason to stay engaged between sessions and a little friendly competition to keep the momentum going. It’s one thing to hand someone a tracker. It’s another to build an ecosystem around it that makes training feel like something you’re part of, not just something you attend.
The Problem With Invisible Progress
Every service franchise faces the same challenge: what happens between visits? A personal training gym can prescribe a workout plan, but can’t verify whether a client followed through. A tutoring center can assign homework, but can’t watch the student study. In dog training, the gap is even more pronounced. Owners come to class once or twice a week, practice at home to varying degrees, and then wonder why progress feels inconsistent.
We’ve always said at Zoom Room that we train the people — and what owners do outside the gym matters as much as what happens inside. The challenge was that we had no way to see what was happening during those other 166 hours of the week. Fi changed that.
With real-time activity tracking, our clients can now see patterns that were previously invisible. A dog whose daily activity has dropped may start showing more destructive behaviors at home. A puppy who isn’t getting enough stimulation between sessions may struggle to focus in class. When you can see the data, you can adjust the approach. Training stops being something that only happens in a gym and starts becoming a lifestyle clients can measure.
Why Technology Integration Matters for Franchise Brands
The pet wearable market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of roughly 13% through the end of this decade, and dogs represent more than 70% of that demand (Fortune Business Insights, USD Analytics). But this isn’t just a pet industry trend. Across every service category, consumers are developing higher expectations for data-driven experiences. They track their own sleep, steps, and heart rate. They expect their financial advisor to surface insights from their portfolio data, their doctor to interpret wearable health metrics, and their fitness coach to analyze recovery patterns. The question for franchise operators is straightforward: are you meeting that expectation, or are you still asking clients to trust the process on faith?
For franchise systems specifically, technology partnerships create a form of competitive differentiation that is extremely difficult to replicate at the independent operator level. A solo dog trainer can recommend a GPS tracker. A national franchise can negotiate a perk-filled integration, build it into the onboarding experience, create in-gym leaderboards, and run nationwide challenges that connect clients across markets. That kind of infrastructure-level advantage is exactly what franchise ownership should deliver — and exactly what prospective franchisees should be evaluating when they compare opportunities.
Making It Operational, Not Just Aspirational
The biggest mistake franchise brands make with technology is treating it as a marketing announcement rather than an operational tool. A press release is not a strategy. For the Fi integration to actually work at the unit level, we’re thinking through every touchpoint.
First, we positioned Fi as an acquisition lever. New clients received the tracker as part of their onboarding during the holidays, which immediately differentiated the Zoom Room experience from every other training option in their market. It gave franchise owners a tangible, high-perceived-value offer to lead with — one that costs them nothing from their own margin. And we’re doing it again this year.
Second, we designed retention and engagement layers on top of it. Starting this year in 2026, select locations are rolling out in-gym activity leaderboards and nationwide challenges that highlight dogs who log the most movement or visit their gym most consistently. This transforms a tracking device into a community engagement tool — and gives franchise owners another reason for clients to keep coming back.
What This Signals for the Industry
Pet industry spending in the U.S. continues to grow, driven by the ongoing humanization of pets and rising expectations for premium, personalized service. Pet owners aren’t just buying food and vet visits anymore — they’re investing in experiences, data, and wellness ecosystems for their animals. Franchise brands that recognize this shift and build infrastructure to support it will capture disproportionate market share.
But the principle extends well beyond pets. Any franchise brand operating in a service category — fitness, education, healthcare, home services — should be asking: what data do our clients wish they had between visits, and how can we be the ones to give it to them? The brands that answer that question well will build deeper client relationships, higher retention, and stronger unit economics.
At Zoom Room, we’ve always believed that the best training is a partnership between human and dog. Now, with the right technology, that partnership extends into every hour of every day. That’s not a disruption. It’s just the way service should work.
Mark Van Wye, the CEO of Zoom Room, the nation’s highest-rated dog training franchise, and author of
the #1 bestselling book Puppy Training in 7 Easy Steps.