Fitness

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.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Finding Gaps | Fitness | Gold's Gym | Paul Wright | Twelve Month Goals

In this 10 minute segment (download iPod compatible, 51MB), Paul Wright, owner of Gold's Gym, Ann Arbor, discusses his branding strategy and expansion plans over the next 12 months. Paul is working with a marketing firm to develop a message and a brand that will attract all segments. He sees having multiple brands in each facility: Les Mills for classes, Shake This for shakes, and Gold's or another brand for fitness. You might say that Paul is trying to combine name brand products with excellent customer service at an affordable price.

He is focusing his expansion strategy on small to medium size gyms where he finds the strategy of strong brands coupled with excellent customer service to be poorly executed. As we mentioned in a previous segment, landlords find having a gym is good for their other tenants' business, so they are willing to do things like offer attractive lease terms and build-to-suit.

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.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Finding Gaps | Fitness | Gold's Gym | Novi, MI | Paul Wright | Saline, MI

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.