Paul Wright: Expanding with Premium Gyms

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Paul Wright discusses how he intends to expand beyond his current base of Gold's Gym, Ann Arbor. The plans focus on targeting affordable, premium services at communities that are underserved by overly large or overly small facilities.

In this 10 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 54MB), Paul Wright begins to describe how he intends to expand into the Michigan gym market. The strategy is essentially an extension of how he penetrated Ann Arbor: offer a a premium facility that meets users needs at an affordable price. He offers more than pure store front facilities at a slightly higher price but less than mega-facilities but also at a substantial savings. Essentially, he is hitting a spot in the market that neither one of these other players can reach.

Paul discusses two new facilities in this segment:

  • Saline, MI: This is a store front operation in the 10K square foot range that will open later this year. Paul will orient it toward the quick cardio and weights workout, again with high quality equipment. There will be no child care or class exercise rooms.
  • Novi, MI: This facility will be more than three times the size of the current Ann Arbor location with basketball and swimming. He expects that that facility will draw over 1000 workouts per day compared with 400 for the Ann Arbor location.

An interesting feature to the Novi location is that the landlord will build out the facility for him. In addition to the increased rent this service offers, landlords want the kind of high traffic a gym can bring.

The following map illustrates Paul's current location and expansion plans as he lays them out in this segment. In future segments, Paul will talk about longer range plans that include further expansion.

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After watching another clip of Paul Wright I learned that he has plans to open two new Mega Gyms - One in Saline, and the other in Novi. I think that they will do very well, especially with the competitve... Read More

» Paul Wright: Branding Strategy and Expansion from Michigan Innovators

Paul is pursuing a strategy of combining name brands with excellent customer service. He is also finding that real estate developers like the foot traffic that gyms pull in. Read More

1 Comments

Jessica Stadnika on November 23, 2010 12:33 AM
Physical activity has always been important to me. It is greatly needed in America where our country is becoming obese. Having more cardio machines is a great way to start turning gyms around to not have them portrayed as muscle building places. Expanding can always be tricky. Like Paul said in his interview people who attend the Ann Arbor location may quit and go to the new location where he is really not making any extra money from opening the new facility. However, it would get people from further out on the west side of saline to join a gym. However, people may stay because there will not be a day care in the Saline facility. Looking at the Novi facility, it would be a good idea to put the gym where there are a lot of restaurants in and things to do because then even the people who work in the surrounding places my not live in the area, but would join because it is close to their work. I myself am from Novi and I am getting a sense of where the location is. It hasn't happened yet, but I hope that it will come though because that area only has a really expensive gym in the area. I also think it is important to have other activities like basketball and swimming. Not everyone has access to those facilities and it would be a great way to allow people to be able to do those activities. I am a part of a gym that is further away, but it lacks things like this and classes that I might be interested in. It is cost friendly that the landlord would build the facility to your likings. By doing this it is easier to pay the landlord back through the rent. The location in Novi would be a great place to start and I look forward to it happening an hopefully it does one day! Best of luck with expanding! Yours, Jessica Stadnika

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