Setting up a Gym at Home

admin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:31:28 +0000

In order to successfully set up a gym at home, there is a need for the owner to establish a home gym set up plan. The home gym set up plan would serve as the link between the established standards and practices in the house. It would be able to articulate, organize, and most importantly integrate the content and processes of the gym with integration of appropriate technologies. It would facilitate multiple levels of gym ideologies and decision making.

In general, the home gym set up plan must be an ongoing process that would translate the fitness needs of the individual into concrete actions. It allows the individual to take advantage of the latest gym equipment innovations while at the same time minimizing the negative impacts of unexpected challenges in setting it up at home. The home gym set up plan provides a clear pathway for the implementation of the gym activities at home which could result into a more efficient expenditure of resources and an improvement in the health of the individual.

The home gym set up plan should reflect the goals of the individual and type of home environment where the gym will be set up. However, the home gym set up plan cannot guarantee the needed changes. The home gym set up plan must ensure that the processes of gym development, purchase of gym equipments, and evaluation of a conducive gym environment at home are included as the integral components of the implementation of the necessary home gym set up plan. A well-designed home gym set up plan would be a dynamic tool that will serve as a guide for the individual’s innovations. This plan would also represent opportunities for fitness development that enhances overall well-being.
The occurrence of problems in setting up a gym at home reflects the growing difficulty in their management and implementation that require the effective use of valuable resources such as money, materials, equipments, and people. And nobody is exempted to these. This is the reason why the home gym set up plan must be done by the individual in order to determine the most effective ways to coordinate these resources.

The home gym set up plan should:

Be an organized and continuous process, utilizing a simple yet direct planning model, and resulting into a process which would improve how the various resources in the home are used for the gym’s management and integration.
Take into consideration the objectives and philosophy of the health individual. While outside assistance, such as those that can be provided by gym experts and owners, can inject broader perspectives to the set up process, the process requires the total commitment of the health individual concerned
Be broad but realistic enough in terms of its scope. The home gym set up plan must also include economical and technically feasible solutions.
Involve all the stakeholders—including the family members, potential clients, and fitness experts–with experience in managing a gym.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the home gym set up plan and how each will impact the implementation of the plan.
Be driven by the goals and objectives of the health individual rather than by technological developments.

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Gym Management

admin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:17:03 +0000

Gyms are widely considered as the leaders in the fitness industry with more than a million facilities in various countries worldwide. Gym management highlights the potential of human strengths.

In the management of most gyms, risks are intolerable to aggressively innovate new products and services. They expand even to other countries but offerings remained the same. This can be emphasized with the licensing feats that control the operations, advertising and products of franchisees. Because of this centrally-planned structure, it added impediments to search for value-adding products apart from weight lifting. In addition, the location of a gym’s franchises abroad near the urbanized areas or near the capital of the country could suggest that it is limited to cater in the high-end slice market. This lack of entrepreneurial commitment of the gym will prevent them to achieve profitable income at the log-run.

The process of gym management typically includes the continued offering of modern equipment, personal and group training, yoga and its core niche, weight lifting and other exercises. Gym management also involves the core business portfolios which include franchising, selling fitness machines and fitness apparels while maintaining good relations with business partners such as real state developers, equipment suppliers, textile companies, internet providers and franchisees.

To have a suitable gym management, most gyms rely to the efficiency of their marketing channel. Activities involved in the process of gym management are gathering of information from customers and competitors, stimulating purchase, reaching agreements in price from manufacturers, placing orders, acquisition of funds, storing and moving physical products, providing customers intermediaries for payment and overseeing actual transfer of product to the organization or person. These activities are divided into two kinds of activities: the forward flow (promotion) and backward flow (ordering and receiving payment). In evaluating major intermediary alternatives, the gym should be informed and aware on the pros-and-cons in selecting a business partner in the marketing channel. The Internet and telemarketing are relatively cheaper but have limited value-add of sale. On the other hand, creating own sales force and building alliances like distributors and retail stores cost more but provide higher value to customers and suppliers.

There is also the gym management option for the gym to internalize the marketing channel activities through vertical integration in view to keep its core competencies private and gain market power over rivals. It can save operating costs, improve quality of products and services, and prevent unfair imitation. Franchising became popular in fitness industries where competitions among small gyms are prevalent because it consolidates independent gyms in contractual relationships. In the franchising, the franchisor controls the sharing of resources and capabilities with the franchisees.

Gyms must understand that excellent gym management includes being risk-averse and knowing the entrepreneurial pros-and-cons. However, without innovation and risking some investments to improve product and service diversification, gym performance will not improve while rivals will capitalize on the former weaknesses. To be the number one in the fitness industry and being such requires strong differentiation and customer-value apart from competitors. To get out from this bottleneck, the gym management must create a committee to operate the risk identification and evaluation in the gym.