I had the pleasure of meeting the beautiful Christina Landry last year at the annual AUSA conference in Washington D.C. and was impressed with the awesome business she had started called “Dumbell Fitness“. I think I was most impressed that she was able to walk in heels in D.C. and feel no pain. I was in admiration of that for quite sometime. She is my inspiration to get in shape so I can do the same thing.
I digress! Christina started Dumbell Fitness, a business that allows fitness on the go via online sessions and local fitness boot camps.
The best part of Dumbell is that Christina ( a military spouse and vet herself) also employed 20 other military spouses and created a way for moms to work out and have childcare provided while they do so.
The Setting
Dumbell Fitness has held their local bootcamps at Hickam AFB in Hawaii for over 4 years and recently had to bid in a contractual type situation to keep teaching her fitness classes in the same green patch of field that she had been using for all these years. Now ALL OF A SUDDEN the base wants to make things LEGAL (mmmhmm)!!
The End Result
Christina lost the contract to another company who most likely could pay more as the fee Christina would have been forced to pay would have equated to all of her small business’s profits. To add insult to injury the 20 military spouses she employed are now OUT OF WORK.
Click Here to Read The Official Details of The Story.
Hear From The Military Spouses Who Lost Their Jobs
Yes you heard me correctly!!! Here is a spouse and VET who fulfills three needs :employment , childcare, and fitness and all she was using is a small field of greenery. According to Next Gen Milspouse the new contract does not offer childcare and the cost to participate is higher than that of Dumbells. Not to mention the higher cost doesn’t include childcare and Dumbell’s did.
My Thoughts
I talked to my husband and asked him what he thought and we both concurred that it seems like when Christina’s business was a small fitness meet up it was no big deal , but now that this hard working Veteran is generating some profit MWR wants to get their hands in it. Of course officially that is not the case because “they just want to make sure everything is done legally”. If that was the case then why is Christina no longer able to hold classes on Hickam? She went through the process of bidding for the contract and did everything she was instructed to do! Ohhh I know what it is..although it’s not about money it was about the highest bidder and you got more money from another company. Oh , and to make matters worse this type of fitness program wasn’t even happening prior to Christina’s. So in essence not only was her business stripped from right under her , but seems like her idea was duplicated too.
Now that the big man has knocked the small man off their post I really hope you hire the military spouses to do the same jobs that they just lost! So much for helping Military Spouse Entrepreneurs!
Click the links below to see what others in the military spouse blogosphere are saying about this :
NextGenMilspouse: What Booting DumBell Fitness from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Really Says About Military Spouse Employment
SpouseBuzz: Hickam MWR Gives Spouse Owned Business The Boot
Comments
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You’re not getting the whole story. There are legal issues with the way they run their daycare, this is on the state of HI not the Navy. The company that put in the bid is willing to pay the money to get proper daycare. DBF refuses to raise their rates by $2 in order to fix the issue. The Navy is not legally allowed to say anything because of the contractual stuff not being done yet. It has zip to do with military spouse employment.
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