My company Change Your Life Fitness is a non-typical gym. Our goal at Change Your Life Fitness is to put fun back into fitness. Change Your Life Fitness has been formed to meet a specific need in an ever increasing competitive market. How is Change Your Life Fitness different? We offer a plethora of services, but you only pay a small fee for the services that you want to take advantage of. Our fitness center has no sign up fee(s) and only a ten dollar a month membership fee, which can be cancelled at any time. We offer nutritional assistance for the people that want to lose weight, we offer professional trainers for people that wish to increase muscle mass, we offer yogi for people that want to learn proper stretching and relaxation techniques, we offer different types of Jazzercise as well as Zumba. We offer child care services for single and working parents. Regardless of your fitness level you can find something at Change Your Life Fitness that will appeal to you. Our mission statement at Change Your Life Fitness is- “Change Your Life Fitness- We will help you achieve results that will change your life”. I want to make our fitness center someplace that has something for everyone. Fitness is such an important part in all of our lives, and I want Change Your Life Fitness to be part of that. I am aware that a mere ten dollar a month fee is not enough to get rich with. I plan on selling nutritional supplements, sports drinks, snacks as well as calorie correct prepared meals for people that wish to lose weight. I don’t just want to sell people a weight lose product I want to sell them a weight lose solution, a place where they can come and get the support they need in order to achieve their goals and provide the tools that will change their life. As the chart shows there is an increasing number of fitness centers throughout the United States.
(Fitness & Recreational Sports Centers Industry (NAICS 71394). (2013)).
How are we going to stand out in a market where so many well know gyms and fitness centers are already established? We are going to provide an unpatrolled level of customer service. If the customers are meeting their goals then we are doing our job. Customer service is very important to the fitness center market. Fitness center customers' demands are increasing and diversified. Therefore, service quality is an index of quality assessment from customers for service-producing industries. The concept of corporate expansion and customer relationship has become the foundation of service-providers for higher profitability through customers' renewal of membership. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of service quality on the renewal willingness of fitness center membership. (Pei Chih, W., Huang-Chia, H., Hiu-Chu, Y., Hsu, Y., & Zhengwei, M. (2010)) If we can provide superior customer service to our members we can keep the monthly enrollment high. The primary competitors in my area are The Rush, National Fitness and Workout Anytime 24/7. I will briefly describe our comparisons between each of these companies and explain what makes us better than our respective competitor. The first competitor that we will analyze is The Rush which is open 24 x7, we will be also, and The Rush charges $29.99 a month for their fees. To join the rush it will cost you $108.98 up front at sign up which is the first and last moths dues as well as a $49 dollar activation fee.(www.therush247.com) Just from the signup alone you can save almost $100 dollars. The Rush does offer some training classes and access to a fit coach. The next competitor that we want to examine is National Fitness. National Fitness is the most expensive of the three competitors. National Fitness Center’s pricing method is quality not quantity principal. I had to visit them and speak with a sales person in order to obtain pricing information from them. The person that I spoke with was Jim and after a 45 minute tour and speech telling me all that they can do for me, I finally got a dollar figure. To join National Fitness it would cost me a $199 enrollment fee as well as my first and last month’s dues. My monthly dues were going to run me $85 a month. The worst part of the sales pitch was the mandatory contract that I would have been required to sign, for 36 months. The gym is not open 24/7 they open at 6 AM and close at 11 PM Monday-Friday, weekends are 7-7 and Sunday 12-7. The differences between our fitness center and National Fitness are easy to identify. National Fitness does offer more choices and options of the three competitors. The last competitor is Workout Anytime 24/7. Workout Anytime 24/7 has an annual membership fee of $25 dollars as well as a $15 dollar a month fee with no cancellation fees. Workout Anytime doesn’t have a pool or fitness trainers, they do provide names of professional trainers that are for hire. Workout Anytime has nice free weights as well as good machines, such as tread mills and elliptical machines. Workout Anytime controls member access with a badge reader, they are not staffed 24/7, they rely heavily on video surveillance. Workout Anytime is the club that most resembles our pricing structure. (www.workoutanytime.com). Change Your Life fitness will offer the flexibility of the 24/7 environment but with competitive pricing and the service level that members need in order for them to reach their goals. Change Your Life Fitness will sit down with each new member and conduct a thorough evaluation of each individual’s goals and current fitness level. Once the individual assessment has been established and a base line has been set, our fitness\nutritional instructors will help develop a plan that will keep you motivated and achieve your goals. One example of someone that wishes to lose weight would be the food replacements that can be purchased. These food replacements are specifically packed to meet all of your nutritional needs and keep you filling full to lessen the need to eat. There will be a morning, lunch and dinner meal as well as two snacks provided for a week for $100 dollars. The food replacement meals alone are designed to allow a loss of weight between 2-5 lbs. per week. What we at Change Your Life Fitness want to do is too combine the food replacement with an exercise routine designed especially for you by your fit coach. If you are the type of person that needs the moral support to help you succeed, your fit coach can meet with you prior to your workouts and go over your progress. If you chose this weight loss option to gain the additional support of a fit coach it would increase your monthly fee by 15 dollars. We want to get the members involved, one way that we will do this is by having competitive goals and each month a winner will be chosen. During these competitions no member’s data will ever be given out just percentage of change. If we hold a “who can lose the most weight in August” competition we could record each contestants beginning weight and the ending total. The member who lost the most weight would receive a free month’s gyms fee as well as a Change Your Life Fitness shirt of their choice. Child services will be offered at a rate of $10 a week with a snack and activities that will vary by week. Some activities that we would provide for the children would be arts and crafts, nutritional eating (where the kids would learn to make healthy snacks) and swimming lessons. We all know that joining a gym at the first of the year is the number one New Year’s resolution. We at Change Your Life Fitness want to help you make that a reality. Half of the newbies will quit within six months of joining. (Brannon, K. (2002)). We want to make sure that doesn’t happen to you. At Change Your Life Fitness we will provide dance lessons for our members, we want to take the non-traditional approach to keep you coming back to the gym. We want our facilities to become someplace that you enjoy going to and not the hated gym like our competitors. We believe that our unconventional training programs and our personalized service that you will achieve the goals that you have set for yourself. Growing the business from an international stand point. International business models need to be examined carefully because of all of the cultural differences. In order to minimize these differences we are going to focus on nations that have a large percentage of American military stationed there. For the purpose of this exercise we are going to use Japan, specifically Okinawa. Okinawa is a relatively small island with approximately 22,700 American military deployed there. Hook, G. D. (2010). The majority of the military personal deployed there are married and have their families living on the island with them. If you look at that number, let’s just say half of them are married that is potentially 35,000 people that are interested in changing their life through Change Your Life Fitness. Hook, G. D. (2010). In addition to the military personal and their families we would advertise to the locals and offer meditation and other local, cultural services. In closing I think that Change Your Life Fitness will capture a significant market share of the fitness industry. Change Your Life Fitness offers services and support unlike anything in existence today at a far less price than that of a traditional gym membership with no contracts. We all want to feel and look better and with Change Your Life Fitness it is a possibility.

Works Cited

Brannon, K. (2002). Excess of holiday goodies sends guilty droves to fitness clubs. (cover story). New Orleans Citybusiness (1994 To 2008), 22(29), 1.
Fitness & Recreational Sports Centers Industry (NAICS 71394). (2013). United States Fitness & Recreational Sports Centers Industry Capital & Expenses Report, 1-216.
Hook, G. D. (2010). Intersecting risks and governing Okinawa: American bases and the unfinished war. Japan Forum, 22(1/2), 195-217. doi:10.1080/09555803.2010.488954
Pei Chih, W., Huang-Chia, H., Hiu-Chu, Y., Hsu, Y., & Zhengwei, M. (2010). Examination Of The Influence Of Service Quality On Membership Renewal In Fitness Centers In San Francisco Bay Area. Journal Of Service Science (19414722), 3(2), 13-23.
The Rush www.therush247.com
Workout Anytime 24-7 www.workoutanytime.com