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TomK · 09-02-2007, 07:47 PM

I belong to a large corporate franchise gym. It is one of 4 similar facilitates within 5 miles of my suburb. There are only 50,000 folks in our burb. This gym already has 2,000 members. However, the gym is only crowded from 4 – 8 pm Monday thru Friday.ffice

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The gym has a typical membership: Lots of cardio bunny moms who drop the kids off into the free day care and hit the treadmill for 60 minutes – just enough teenage boys working on bench and biceps (getting all swole) to be annoying – group class junkies – a few characters and of course, a lot of folks just trying to move iron every day.

It strikes me that the gym makes real money from selling extra services – personal training, nutrition planning, drinks, supps and clothing. Everything else is covered by the base fees. However, that doesn’t match the managements’ behavior. Instead they are solely focused on selling and upselling memberships.

Does this mean that the business model is based on expecting the client to fail? For example, they get them to sign up for a year – fully expecting x% to fail out in 90 days or less? If so, then it seems to be an unsustainable model – at some point they will exhaust the population of people willing to try the gym out (or does the same bunch of lemmings just move to a new gym each January?).

I’d appreciate any insights.

09-02-2007, 07:47 PM	#1 (permalink)
TomK Member Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 87 My Profile	What makes a Gym Profitable? I belong to a large corporate franchise gym. It is one of 4 similar facilitates within 5 miles of my suburb. There are only 50,000 folks in our burb. This gym already has 2,000 members. However, the gym is only crowded from 4 – 8 pm Monday thru Friday.fficeffice" /> The gym has a typical membership: Lots of cardio bunny moms who drop the kids off into the free day care and hit the treadmill for 60 minutes – just enough teenage boys working on bench and biceps (getting all swole) to be annoying – group class junkies – a few characters and of course, a lot of folks just trying to move iron every day. It strikes me that the gym makes real money from selling extra services – personal training, nutrition planning, drinks, supps and clothing. Everything else is covered by the base fees. However, that doesn’t match the managements’ behavior. Instead they are solely focused on selling and upselling memberships. Does this mean that the business model is based on expecting the client to fail? For example, they get them to sign up for a year – fully expecting x% to fail out in 90 days or less? If so, then it seems to be an unsustainable model – at some point they will exhaust the population of people willing to try the gym out (or does the same bunch of lemmings just move to a new gym each January?). I’d appreciate any insights.