‘No Contract Gyms’ Maybe Booming But Is The Fitness Industry?
Not surprisingly the headline ‘No contracts boom as gyms get set for summer’ grabbed my attention on the weekend in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph.
Expecting to read how the number of Aussies exercising has increased and perhaps even see a quote from Lauretta Stace from Fitness Australia I was sadly disappointed.
In just the 4th paragraph disappointment turned to disillusionment with the fitness industry.
If you haven’t read the article let me quote the fourth and fifth paragraphs that come from Nigel Miller the owner of Plus Fitness: “We love it when people still lock people into contracts because they’re feeding us. We can set up shop across the street from them, put a no-contracts sign in the window and take all their customers.”
Well three cheers for you Mr Miller! You have robbed Peter and paid Paul!!!
Here is what your quote tells me:
- You have not grown the number of people exercising;
- You have not helped the growing obesity levels in Australia;
- You may put an industry colleague out of business;
- You may have given people who don’t like your club or service offering nowhere to train if you put the gym across the road out of business.
In deed, it is possible that Plus Fitness are growing the number of people exercising, are helping with obesity and are not putting other gyms out of business. Nowhere in this article does it say this.
This is just another example where the fitness industry loses credibility with the consumer as we show less unity than the Australian Labor Party!
As an industry we have a responsibility to change the health of Aussies by educating them and giving them a place to exercise where they feel comfortable.
Further, what the article doesn’t tell us is if Plus Fitness charge less per month than the gym across the road or what services they offer that the other gym doesn’t – which is why people are attracted to Plus Fitness.
The assumption is people are joining Plus Fitness because of no contract.
I would suggest from 20+ years in the industry no contracts is not the only relevant feature for them joining. A major factor in creating the decision to join is what people are paying per month.
The real question I would like answered is “Are Plus Fitness gaining members from their competitors because they offer superior equipment, services and staffing or because they offer cheaper memberships not because of no-contract memberships?”
And if it’s because of cheaper memberships, then that doesn’t help anyone!
Missed the article, check it out here: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/no-contracts-boom-as-gyms-get-set-for-summer/story-fni0cx12-1226713172848
Justin is the Managing Director of Active Management, which he began January 2004. He offers coaching to businesses worldwide in everything from start up and design to marketing and sales systems. Justin also facilitates four Australian and New Zealand ‘fitness industry roundtables’ events, which allows him to see a huge cross section of business models.
I believe non-contract gyms are booming for one reason.
It’s because they listen to the market and its needs.
I don’t believe a client would leave their membership gym if they felt valued, cared for, experienced great customer service and felt their needs were being met?
Clients don’t leave when they’re happy. Being locked into a contract is not a business model! If your losing clients, going out of business or worried about non-contracts then adjust and fix the problem with your business. The fact is, its not the non-contract thats luring clients away, its the fact that gyms aren’t connecting to their clients well enough and meeting their needs. If they did, then these non-contracts wouldn’t be growing so fast.
We’ve seen it time & time again haven’t we Justin?
Good article mate. Keep the dream alive. Keep unifying.
[…] blog yesterday “‘No Contract Gyms’ Maybe Booming But Is The Fitness Industry?’ created a stir with many people making comments on social media and me receiving a terse response […]
Great article Justin as a dinosaur in the industry I hate contracts in gyms however I understand why they do it. What I hate about these 24 hr Gyms is that their business model is low membership fees so people will join and not come and not worry about the $10 a week membership. As stated by an owner of one of these Gyms at Filex 3yrs ago.
You know it’s not the lack of contracts that make members sign up to 24 hour clubs – it’s location and affordable memberships (in that order). We surveyed over 20,000 members recently and this is what they told us. If you would like to download the member infograph with this information on it go to this link http://www.ezypay.com/fitness-industry-survey/
As Simon Fox commented above, this is a great article and very relevant. I firmly believe the reason why no-contract gyms exist is because their offerings are average at best, and not at all customer-centric, meaning that the only method of enticing customers is to request their commitment until something better comes along.
Also, thanks for sharing the links to all of those great infographic of the Fitness industry Celeste, there’s some really interesting stuff in there (such as the 2014 Past Members infographic I am currently looking at).