Baby Otter Swim School
- Traveling swim instruction and swim lesson school in the US, to teach children (and adults) to swim and prevent drowning
- National franchise: started in 1975 as a business and as a franchise since 2022
- 34 territories covered by 7 franchisees and also 34 covered by corporate
Baby Otter Swim School is a state-certified swimming school that specializes in teaching both children and adults how to swim using its proprietary Turn, Kick, Reach® system. Founded over 40 years ago, the program is designed to teach swimming in just five lessons, focusing on drowning prevention. The school has locations across Florida and offers franchising opportunities.
Chelsie Maltez
VP of Franchise Development
I’ve been in franchising for about 20 years, I joined Baby Otter in 2022. I started working with Baby Otter because I fell in love with everything having to do with their concept.
The challenge
We had to make sure that the franchisees had a very clean and organized demographic for their territory, so that’s where Smappen came into play.
Even though, Baby Otter doesn’t have any physical locations, it doesn’t change the fact that we need to make sure that we have the right amount of population, the right household income, and the appropriate amount of children in the area, because that’s our bread and butter. So by having the ability to find those different demographics, we know that it’s gonna be a successful location for a franchisee. As well as an opportunity for expansion and scalability.
Back in the day, I used a lot of websites to find demographics and it was very much a “do it yourself” research and investigation… it worked but it was a lot of effort!
The solution
Easy on the eyes and very user-friendly
I chose Smappen for a couple of reasons: very user-friendly, extremely easy on the eyes, and extremely functional. It’s not a big long learning curve!
Up-to-date data
With Smappen, I have up-to-date data and it is essential for us as a franchisor to make sure that the location I’m not particularly familiar with is gonna be a successful location.
You can use the magnifying glass down to search different criteria, and access an extensive range of data like household incomes, points of interest, and more…
Data reports in one click
The report feature is exactly what you’re looking for, it centralizes all the useful information in one place.Other companies supply reports, but not quite as professional and complete as Smappens and I was really impressed by that. We share it with candidates and prospects, and also use it for franchise agreements and legal documentation.
You just have to click a button and you have everything at your fingertips!
Smappen according to Chelsie
“The app is extremely functional and useful, it’s quick, it’s very responsive and the team's support is wonderful! [...] You can know if an area, a state, a city or zip code will be successful or not. And you don’t have to only use Smappen when you have an incoming request for a territory; it can be used in different ways, you just have to be creative with it, and that’s all available for you!”
Chelsie Maltez
Vice President of Franchise Development at Baby Otter Swim School
