01907 Spring 2021

SPRING 2021 | 15
Carley, Misty, 3, and Eddie Alvarez, of Swampscott,
look out from their boxing ring in Salem.
PHOTOS: SPENSER HASAK
When town residents
Eddie and Carley
Alvarez opened the
doors to Alvarez Family
Boxing back in late November, it was a
culmination of a lifelong dream and a full
year’s worth of hard work. And if you ask
them, it was all worth it.
“It’s been a lot of work, but I always
tell people that it took 25 years to get
to this point and we wouldn’t change it
for anything,” said Eddie. “This whole
experience over the past year-plus has
really centered us and made us realize the
importance of your little 'pod' and the
health of those around you.”
“When we made the decision to move
forward, we said that nothing would stand
in our way,” said Carley. “We already had
money saved and we’ve always wanted
this, so there was no looking back once we
decided to go for it.”
But opening their dream business
didn’t come without some pandemic-sized
obstacles.
On the day the Alvarezes were handed
the keys to their new space back in
March 2020, there were rumblings of the
COVID-19 shutdown. One week later, the
entire country shut down for the foreseeable
future.
“It all came down to one question for
me, and that was, ‘would you let a hurricane
stop your dream?’” Eddie said. “We just said
to ourselves that we had to find a way. We
gutted the whole place and worked on it
every day.”
“We had so many people step up to help
us, and we honestly couldn’t have done all of
BY MIKE ALONGI
this without their help,” said Carley. “There
were months where we only had enough to
pay rent, but people still came through to
help us keep pushing forward.”
The Alvarez family, made up of Eddie,
Carley and their three-year old daughter
Misty, moved to Swampscott from
Somerville a little over two years ago. Eddie
and Carley have both been involved in the
fitness industry for more than a decade,
with Eddie working as a boxing trainer and
Carley as a health coach. They had always
wanted to own a gym of their own, but fulltime
jobs and a young family made it feel
like the dream was always just out of reach.
But after the move to Swampscott,
Eddie and Carley decided that the time was
right.
Alvarez Family Boxing, which is located
at 17 Canal St. in Salem, is a smaller space
where the focus is on training in a safe,
family-friendly environment. The small
size makes you feel like you’re training in a
private facility, but the variety of workout
programs and equipment means that there’s
something for everyone.
“There’s something about the feeling of
being in a private gym that motivates you to
work harder, and that’s something that we
strive for,” Eddie said. “It’s an ‘Instagramfriendly’
space and that’s a draw for some
people, but the majority of our clients have
been families with kids. The kids can get
a workout while the parents do their own
thing and vice versa, which is really great.”
One of the biggest draws for Alvarez
Family Boxing is the fact that they don’t use
the typical membership approach that many
other gyms do. Instead of locking customers
in for months or even a year at a time,
Alvarez Family Boxing offers weeks-long
memberships with much more flexibility.
“We’ve both worked at big gyms
and seen what it’s like to try and cancel
memberships and how people get locked
into long-term memberships,” said Carley,
who has previously worked as a fitness
director. “We understand that, especially in
these times, people sometimes need more
flexibility in their lives. That’s what we try to
provide.”
When the Alvarezes started building
out their space and the gym began to take
form, people walking by on the street began
to take notice. Eddie says that they basically
didn’t need to do any marketing for the
gym because so many people had heard
about it through word-of-mouth. That only
intensified once they opened the doors, as
the “Instagram-friendly” setup of the space
acted as a marketing tool in itself.
“People just walk in off the street to see
what’s going on, and everyone we’ve met is
glad to see that a healthy place where people
can feel comfortable is close by,” Carley said.
And the reception from the community
has been remarkable, as Alvarez Family
Boxing is currently booked to near capacity
for the next two months.
“The reception has been amazing and
off the charts,” Eddie said. “I don’t think we
realized the kind of market that a place like
ours would have, and the support from the
community has been unreal.”
“It’s more than we ever expected,”
Carley said of the reception. “We feel so
ALVAREZ, page 16