The third circle of fitness
The potential of digital tools and channels for wellness centers, clubs and independent trainers to look after, support and guide their clients is started to be accepted even by the most traditional purists of the fitness industry.
Key scandinavian players like SATS, Fitness 24 Seven and more are investing in offering their members a richer online experience. But why members only?
Independent coaches and health influencers have seized this opportunity and are already embracing a broader approach (for natural reasons; they don’t have members) — however, gyms and clubs have the same opportunity to start opening up their services also to non-members. Basically applying a freemium sort of model, which is commonly used in digital business models.
Instead of focusing all efforts on what happens within the four walls of a club or amongs the existing members — there are plenty reasons why a club should start thinking in circles of expansion.
To give a bit of context I’ve created a quick model over how one can target different circles (or audiences if you like) with digital services and products.
First circle: Your club and its members
This is naturally the first stop where clubs are getting savvy right now. There are plenty of value to be created and money to be made by simply focusing on digital up-sales or added value to club members;
- Online services for membership management and club communication
- Wellness Online memberships
- Gym instructions and remote training assistance
- Personal training
- Member competitions based on activity
Second circle: Friends of your club and members’ friends
Within the geographical reach of a club there are plenty of potential customers that may not at all be relevant as members right now, or even in the future.
- Utilise local relevance and recognition to offer online memberships or products
- Offer online corporate wellness and employee bootcamps online with access to the gym also for non-members
- Build a circle of prospect members through club-agnostic training groups online
Third circle: The world
The online opportunity is global. No kidding. Competition is fierce and the noise on the market is massive, but the scale is close to infinite if you define a concept that flies beyond your local reach.
- Create online bootcamps, memberships or programs and market openly on social media
- Build online-only products with specific pricing
- Don’t expect this to generate traditional members
The definition of the boundaries of the third cicle is highly individual. Each club or coach need to consider their respective strengths and proposition and also choose what consumers to target. Using Sweden as an example, close to 80% of potential target audience are none gym members — but this group naturally includes multiple targets and individuals with very different dreams and equally varying reasons for not being gym members. By activating just a small part of this large group any club or freelance coach could build a strong business.
So why isn’t everybody doing this then?
When speaking to clubs and chains, the third circle is often considered dangerous territory. Understandable. Change hurts and requires investment. Needless to say, many people who are experts within the traditional fitness industry will advice you to be cautious. The same was true when retailers started taking their goods online in the early- to mid-2000s.
There are plenty of learnings to be drawn from retail in particular. Even retailers with a very wide reach through their network of stores (swedish super retailer H&M for one) are getting increasingly dependant on e-commerce to compete. In retail it’s also clear that the original market leaders were not the ones seizing the online opportunity first or even second. The fitness industry will be no different!
Waiting is, however, not a very attractive option. The open market and consumers are starting to make their own patchwork of services for working out — and it doesn’t always include a specific club as center or even part of the plan. The Freeletics app, focusing on providing workouts and online coaching not requiring a gym or gym equiptment have more than 36M registered users, services like ClassPass which allows you to do (wellness-)clubhopping are rapidly expanding globally. This obviously moves customer loyalty outside of specific clubs or chains. All because they solve a customer need.
Striking in this context is that consumer friendly apps and online coaching services threaten to leave the existing industry players in the dust unless they start putting serious work into building a sustainable digital business.
Sure, most certainly there will be a fairly substantial market for people who loves the vibe of the club, the social aspects of attending classes and the physical meeting with a trainer — just like there are people who need or want to visit physical stores for shopping. Just as certainly, the number of these will shrink in proportion just as they have done within retail as alternatives grow, technology moves forward and user experience online improves.
One of the hardest hurdles to overcome for clubs and coaches with an existing business is to get started. Clubs need to identify what e-commerce does to their business and how it can be an integral part. opportunity spans across all circles and the starting point may well be to begin with selling the physical memberships online, offer personal training online or start selling online bootcamps to members.
Key is, as always, to dare.
