How to Make a Gym Business Plan
Prepare a Gym Business Plan
The article tells you how to write a gym business plan, and also the next step – How to start a gym.
Today, the global fitness industry is valued 100 billion us dollar. IHRSA found that from 2013-2017, fitness club membership has increased 120+%.
If you plan to start running a fitness gym business but without experience, suppose you would need to prepare capital by loan or investor. And bank loan manager or potential investor would require a data driven business plan to ensure that you are ready to start the business. No matter materially or spiritually, they want to see that you’ve finished your homework at high score.
Even if the gym does not require external finance resources, a comprehensive business plan could also be a path diagram for long-term development of your gym. It requires well organized and detailed procedure to write the business plan, which could define key factors in association with any successful enterprise.
Gym Business Opening Plan Outline
Before entering into the details of every section, here below is an outline of major issues should be included within starting a gym business plan:
- Executive Summary
- Introduction of your gym
- Services and products
- Facilities and gym equipment
- Market research and Analysis
- Strategy execution
- Management summary
- Financial Projections
- Appendix
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY for your Gym Business Plan
A strong executive summary would be impressive for investors or loans, and if the first few pages aren’t compelling, potential investors or loan officers will have no interest to read on. Thus, it would be awesome to include some persuasive gym business cases in the summary.
Since it acts like the index of the business plan, it is recommend to finalize this section after finishing the rest of the article, so that you can extract the important content and data from the overall plan.
Please answer below questions in the executive summary:
- What is your business model and its strengths?
- What is your market volume? Where you get these key market data?
- Which market demand your gym can fulfill? What membership types will you offer and what will you charge for them?
- Do you have any unique and practical advantage?
- What is the bottom line of income, expenses, sales growth and profit/loss for the 1stthree years?
- How much your gym would require as funding?
2. INTRODUCTION OF YOUR GYM
You should already have a framework outline of your gym, the investor or loan manager may not, so it is necessary to introduce your gym.
- Ownership and investor structure, the legal structure of your gym, is it related to another company? And the company type it belongs to.
- Capital required and equity being returned, estimated ROI for investors and how they quit in future.
- Gym location, traffic, parking, nearby competition, and the environment around.
3. SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
Next, you are required to define your service philosophy, and the workout environment being created.
- How close your business will be intouch of your members?
- Will it bean aura of luxury or a no-frills fitness model?
- Would youprovide a revenue ornon-revenue services?
Like free weights for sale, such as dumbbell set, barbell bar, barbell plates, and kettlebell set could be included as well; or a babysitting service in gym might attract more young members.
4. FACILITIES AND GYM EQUIPMENT
If a site or facility has been chosen, please clarify its key advantages and benefits, such as size, accessibility, visibility, build-out possibilities, approx rent, area demographics, to show how you are familiar with your target market. And a map showing the location exactly is highly recommended.
If you are still in the stage of searching facilities, please provide the criteria you’ll use to evaluate potential facilities. In addition, there also need include a detailed description of what the gym will have, like cafe, studios, locker rooms, studios, cafe and/or amenities, and also the overall design aesthetic.
Finally, the gym equipment is the major part of costs, which includes:
Body weight machines
Cardio Equipment
Exercises bikes
Ellipticals
5. MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS for Gym Business Plan
First of all, understanding the fitness industry trends is so important, we could refer to industry reports researched by IHRSA, who provides data to prove the bright future of fitness industry.
Then, talk about detailed marketing positioning, including the where the local competition comes from, and the demographics of your primary and secondary markets in the specified area. Address the reason ideal customers would be attracted by your fitness club or fitness center according to the research, ie. babysitting service.
The market research and analysis makes you stand out of your competitors, which ensures you business to be successful and will help with messaging once start-up, so bloody time and brain cells would be spent around this info.
6. STRATEGY EXECUTION
- What is your competition advantage? Eg babysitting service, like free coffee or soft drink, or more gym equipment.
- Marketing and sales forecasts
You will outline your marketing and sales strategies on this section, and the sales forecast for the 1st three years.
Below questions might be involved:
- What are thesales forecasts looks like?
- What would you do to make the target customers join your club, absorb as members?
iii. What is your market strategy?
iiii. Do you have any promotion offer plan to support pre-sales and after-sales?
- V. What would you do to retain members?
7. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
1.Staffing
In this section, you can subdivide organize structure, salary and benefits plan.
2.Resume
If you want to manage the fitness company (such as club or center), please provide your personal resume and team member profile in the appendix, and an organize structure chart would be in need. In addition, you also need a declaration of any non-management staff the gym.
Besides the gym equipment and the rent, labor is the biggest expense for most fitness clubs, so salary and benefits structures is super important. Keep in mind, how you structure salary and benefits system will lead to attracting and retaining your team members. In addition, think over whether your business would be profitable or not, in long and short term.
8. FINANCIAL PROJECTIONS
This section will likely be the most head aching part of the plan.
Based on best and worst forecast, you will create cash flow statements, income table and balance sheets for the three coming years.
You would need to provide background by comparing with industry standard and ratios, start-up cost, salary expectations. And debt payment table is also important as well. Take membership and revenue raised service ramp-up, membership churn and staff salary into consideration.
9. APPENDIX
This section comes out to be the last section of your own gym business plan, all supporting docs included:
- Resume ofthe management team
- Job descriptions
- Demographic info
- Road map
- Promotion plan
- Marketing plan
Understanding your Goals
Whether building a gym from scratch or aiming to revitalize an existing center; it’s very essential to recognize your very own goals. If you already have a gym as well as are seeking to contribute to it after that you should consider the complying with inquiries:.
What equipment do you presently have?
And also how much time have you had your equipment; there is a life time value for every little thing. Equipment is used with use as well as it is necessary to change often adhering to the guarantee standards. This helps prevents user frustration.
What works well with in your facility?
Your customers will have their very own training timetables and also liked items that they make use of. When examining any kind of change, your user needs have to be taken into account. Do not simply adhere to trends– your consumers will certainly be with you a lot longer than passing trends.
What difficulties are you currently dealing with?
Is there a new competitor in your location? Taking advantage of a location you do not use? Supplying customers that little bit a lot more included value could make all the difference in their experience at your center.
If you are considering opening up a gym, there are 2 inquiries we would certainly begin with:.
1) What kind of gym are you aiming to open up and that is it for?
What type of user are you attempting to bring in; ought to you consider a performance gym constructed for professional athletes that have particular training in mind. Are you developing a team training room, or are you creating a room easily accessible for everybody regardless of their fitness rate of interest.
2) What is your neighborhood competition?
This would offer us an indication of the neighborhood market as well as support you in establishing ideas that will draw in clients. What’s missing in your local area, the group and also what would certainly perhaps urge others to train with you rather?
A listing of useful effects prior to you begin:
- Limitations of room: don’t jam-pack your facility– people require space for training, particularly when users like to create their own solo training areas.
- Elevation of ceilings: particularly important for building racks as well as rigs.
- Sub-floor: The requirements of each flooring type; ceramic tile, lawn, as well as roll, need a details sub-floor to make certain the most effective fit as well as the defense of both the equipment and also the user.
- Parking: gym design is not just concerning what occurs inside your center, think about just how your clients will get to the gym — do you require a space with automobile vehicle parking for comfort?
- Windows: often forgotten about, the placement of equipment may entail a shuffle to make sure that all-natural light isn’t obstructed and the gym area is well aerated.
- Access & Circulation: your clients should be at the forefront of your mind, how does it feel and look as you get in the gym and does it attract you in to want to educate– large tools at the entrance can obstruct the view of the rest of your gym.
- Power: for illumination, machines, music as well as timers. Ensure you assess where your outlets are prior to you begin moving zones around.
- Facilities (water as well as waste): Being among one of the most expensive areas to develop or move, thinking about where these are or where they will certainly go (as well as their size) will affect your total design and also design.
Next Stage: Zoning
When you have your center and also have chosen on the vital factors from above, then the next stage is zoning. Zoning determines not just what equipment you can have within your gym yet likewise the number of members you can invite.
As an organization, you will currently know how many members you will certainly require to guarantee a profitable company. This number must be considered within the style of your gym as it will certainly determine the amount of equipment as a minimum you may need.
Just how much area will you need for the number of members you’re intending to have? How much equipment will be enough for the class numbers you are aiming to take? These are simply some basics to begin with when considering zoning within your facility.
Your room can be zoned right into 5 main areas:
1) Free Weights area
This area can quickly become the busiest area of any gym, make sure you have enough racks, plates, dumbbells and storage units on the gym floor. Functional storage units are a good consideration to keep the gym floor clear, permitting you to store all of your free weights as well as accessories whilst being a usable item.
2) Cardio area
It depends on the size of your gym you can produce a big offering for numerous users. After that focus on how you desire it to be made use of, if you have a smaller room;.
Studio: not just for courses, make use of these areas to permit your members to produce their very own solo exercise room when classes aren’t running. One-of-a-kind item options can aid create class principles as well as dedicated exercise solo exercise zones.
3) Gym Equipments area
If you’re designing a traditional gym and have room for free weights and cardio equipment, this is an obvious choice:
stair climber
treadmill
exercise bike
rowing machine
Smith machine
Cable pull up and down
Seated Overhead Press
Please note, having high enough ceilings and solid floors is crucial to ensuring the space is suitable for its intended use.
While you want to offer your clients a diverse mix, with the vast amount of fitness equipment available on the market, you’ll need to consider which equipment is best if you don’t want your space to be overcrowded, difficult to navigate, and unsafe to use. your membership. It’s better to have fewer choices and more wiggle room.
4) Functional area
It is typically integrated with studio training. However if you have the space, you can produce a separate location for it. You stay clear of shedding your useful area by making an extra open area when courses are taking place. Enabling participants to continue to educate the method they much choose to.
5) Personal Training area
Personal training ranked sixth in the ACMS 2022 Fitness Trends Report. This clearly shows that providing personal trainers with the space to work with clients in your space is well worth it.
You’ll want to consider providing an office space for your personal trainer to sit down with clients regularly to discuss their fitness goals and progress. Some gyms offer private rooms/spaces with exercise equipment for one-on-one personal training sessions.
Above all, it would be very complicated to wrap up all issues, even though open a new or small gym business is a so exciting thing. If you want to succeed, spending plenty of time to study and prepare the homework, making a business plan is necessary.
A complete gym business plan will help you assess the viability of your gym project, strength your ideas, set goals and learn how to achieve the goals, attracting capital to launch your gym, and get ready for the long term sustainability.