By Bob Meyer

I’ve always found the nation’s $11 billion health club industry fascinating, especially around this time of the year. Every January millions of Americans make a resolution to get in shape and go to a health club or fitness center with the best of intentions.

Around April there is a dramatic drop off that as the “get in shape” resolution pales. Bally’s, the second largest health club behind 24-Hour Fitness, had 2% sales growth last year, (a billion in annual sales) and they reported a negative net income. Needless to say they are facing some real financial challenges.

Over the years I’ve wondered why more of these fitness chains aren’t pursuing barter activity with a greater vengeance. Going after after valuable incremental business through another conduit…corporate barter companies and trade exchanges. Although they’ve dipped their toe in the water, so to speak, with the commercial barter industry, it really been done without much of a passion.

There’s a low variable cost in getting barter clients through the door yet the payoff could be significant. By working with a corporate barter company, national advertising could be expanded. On a local level, a trade exchange would provide different services. The health club could use the trade dollars earned very effectively by turning right around to focus on needed local promotional, marketing and advertising efforts, and these expenditures would be offset by the trade earned.

Side benefits would be the accompanied referral business, up selling of personal trainer services, as well as the various products and services unique to the particular location. Not to mention various side promotions they could devise, as well as perks for a well-motivated staff.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurs & Small Business, Marketing, Purchasing & Financing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.