A Gym within a GYM
or
Billy Banks is Still Alive and Well...In a Way
Slaving away at this new Combat Centric News Service the month of December, 2008 also meant researching and interviewing several hundreds of new contacts and related business issues. AND I could not help but notice a martial business trend these last years. I report this with no MA politics involved. Just clean, business observations.
What I want to talk about is the "gym within a gym."
That is to say, a health club, with many services and traditional martial arts and maybe a little more. In fact, this is where I started, teaching for almost ten years in a Golds Gym. But I was virtually ignored and unsupported by the staff. But there was people traffic, and I NEVER cleaned a bathroom. If you get my drift.
I have taught all over the world. I took a long look at many schools and organizations and could not ignore the fact gyms within gyms can work. And lately, in these bad economic times, take for one one big example case study, the Los Angles based, Levine Krav Maga.
The Levine Los Angeles Krav Maga business model still has a large pack of survivors after their worldwide, financial bloodletting, since their explosive appeareance years ago. Water eventually seeks its own level. Their deathknell was from two major business points -
a) they just cost way too much, and
b) Israeli-born, Krav competition moved in and undercut them - real military vets from
the homeland "invaded" in at cut rates.
If you make a study of these L.A. Krav survivors you will see many of them are also in the fitness and gym business from Cross-Fit to regular gym set-ups. They are in essense, established full-blown gyms and fitness people, who also do Krav Maga and old Billy Banks Thai Bo style. The owners/managers are usually actively involved. You might say they are also in the lose-weight/diet industry and we know what an outreach program that can be!
The drop-out failures were mostly people who just do just fighting, do only martial arts, who for years used their -say - Tae Kwon Do incomes to also pay off their L.A. Krav franchise fees. The MA and MMA people had financial problems making it work. Why pay these L.A. franchises now when the actually Israeli, vet guys are way cheaper? The organization spiraled world wide. But looking at many of those who are left? Many are very health-industry connected, with other out-reach methods of income.
Over-priced L.A. Krav was crashing for many years, before our current economy. I am told they have had to re-adjust their business plans, customizing it even for individual schools. But, now when the dust settled, these and many survivors of the newer 2008 economy crash, are gyms within gyms. In fact, wasn't/isn't the very headquarters building of L.A. Krav...a gym? A gym within a gym? Didn't Billy Banks help inspire the fitness module that inspired them? Isn't that module what turned the heads of all the Tae Kwon Do people to begin with? The gym within a gym model works.
Don't run out to a garage sale and buy a tattered weight bench and rusty weight plates and stick it in the corner room of the school boiler room and call yourself "a gym." That is not going to work. If you can create an environment were non-martial arts people want to go regularly and exercise, then you have a stand-only gym.
Of course there are still a million things that can go wrong and topple any business. Like bad locations for one. But a martial-gym-within-a-fitness-gym is a good idea and extra insurance to survival.
Incidentally, in 2009 I have a few new seminars booked in these bigger gyms. It is a success trend. This doesn't mean its foolproof. Some struggling gyms demand all class attendees be members of the gym too! That just doesn't work in the long run. Some just want rental fees for your room (you'll never clean a bathroom!) and let your students in no strings attached-like my old gig at Golds. But, there are always a few chinks. Gym owners must understand the nature of these problems. Usually the owners in our sucess profile are young and involved in the MA courses.
I know of several martial arts schools that have had to combine in 2008. Some were once even business competitors, and now are struggling together to pay the rent.
All dedicated fighters need to be in shape. Many of us don't like to formally mix the fitness with the fighting and consider it two seperate, work-out sessions. I do. If I have two hours to fight train, I want to fight and not do push-ups. I do push-ups tomorrow night. I am just a traveling circus act anyway and can't institute fitness into seminar workouts. You should see the great variety of ages and conditions of people I see week after week! But on the local, grass roots, multi-days a week level of a local school, perhaos you can.
The gym within a gym....is an equation for success... and growing. Survival of the fittest has a new meaning.
Hock
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Topic: A GYM within a GYM? (Read 977 times)