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Think about a professional mother named Catherine who wants to make training after work. In weekdays, she finishes her work at 17.00 and moving to home. Her first move will be cooking for children and having a dinner as a family. After she spends time with her family, she will go to gym center, generally so crowd at nights, approximately at 20.00, and as usual, gym center will close at 22.00. She has only two hours for training, shower, and may be a good smoothie.John however, he is a young collage student and his social life his first priority after his education. He loves hanging out with his friends and you can think that GYM Centers are social places however it is hard to invite all of his friends to one GYM Center and it is hard to socialize if you are not in the group session. This is our current situation specially in big cities of economically developed countries. Every government and municipal is trying to boost active life for citizens however what is the market for that? Who is the real active players? In this series We want to examine those questions.
First Mover: GYM Centers
GYM Centers are the first mover of the active life concept. Definitely everyone is familiar with them. There is roughly 48K clubs in Europe with 44M members where revenues estimated as 25B € (35B $) While the economic environment has challenged select leading markets in recent years, the industry has posted growth in key countries, including Germany, Norway, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Germany leads all markets observed in number of clubs with more than 7,500 facilities as Norway claims the greatest membership penetration rate at nearly 16% of the total population, 25% of Norwegian sover the age of 15.
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Challenges and opportunities remain in Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Greece, where high VAT rates and debt have affected growth in recent years. Nonetheless, experts believe opportunities remain for clubs to address obesity rates, facilitate regular physical activity, and complement sports participation outside of the club. Spain and Italy still rank among the top 5 European markets in market size, number of clubs, and memberships, while Portugal and Greece maintain member penetration rates well below the average for EU markets observed (6%), signifying potential for growth.
Emerging markets in Eastern Europe account for roughly 1.1B € in health club revenue, 6,900 health clubs, and 2.3M members. Poland and Turkey lead emerging markets in market size, club count, and memberships. Economical growth of a country is strongly effect to fitness market growth.
This is the pure market facts and conditions however why people are prefer GYM centers? First reason is there are social conditions. Because this market is immune to economical conditions due to globalization. Sure, the fitness industry was not immune to the side effects of the tough economy, however globalization will make this industry immune to though economy conditions. We saw this immune situation in the cosmetic industry. In the United States, cosmetic surgery spending is $13.1 Billion yearly and now it’s not affecting from though economic conditions. When we look at the all signs, this industry will be immune too in a short time. Second reason is lack of opportunities and options. Simply, for a metropolis there is no better alternative then GYM centers in the market if you won't prefer to work out at home with a digital assistance. As you can guess, digital sport assistance work-outs are much more lonely activities then the GYM center work-outs.
High Competition Intensity In Lack of Opportunities
London mayor Sadıq Khan mentioned that he wants to make London best sports city in the World.There are several reasons behind this words. First, sports is a good PR material. A World Cup game in London is great for city’s PR. However, there is an another thing. Like every developed countries in the World, United Kingdom is suffer from overweights and obese people. Let’s look at the health survey of England made in 2016.
%26 of British people suffering from obesity. For example, Norway is leading the GYM industry about attendance and this good rates give them a price. Low obesity rate! So if you are planning to open a GYM Center in Norway, please eliminate the obesity as a motivation.
Percentage of overweight people is %38, and it is decreasing. However obesity is increasing year by year in England. We started to search for decrease in overweight. One of the reason we found is networking. Social media is very active and it’s motivate people to show normal Youtubers.
Another thing is goverment’s movement. They are pushing people to healthier life however it’s not still effecting to obesity rates.
This map shows the outdoor training areas in London. This areas are increasing everyday in all over the England.
This photograph from one of the outdoor training areas in London from Primrose Hill. Like every outdoor training areas in London, this place has great tools to use your body for exercise. Also, England has already have movements for outdoor training for healthier life. In 2015, they started a UrbanTraining movement in London and Bristol. It’s totally active right now however it was really have a great impact as we understood from Guardian’s article.
Outdoor Training: Opportunity or Dream
Since GYM centers are increasing their prices and our active life become more and more lonely with digital assistances, outdoor training could be our saver. Think about the Catherine and John from first paragraph of the article. Whatever your city is, you can see people while jogging, making fitness training, playing chess, also boxing! Also we can’t ignore that, many municipal made great outdoor sports areas and people loved it. Sites can be used for everything from organized classes to informal gatherings or individual use. Perhaps the biggest factor aiding the growth of outdoor fitness areas is a nationwide investment in fitness. To combat the nation’s sedentary lifestyle and inactivity epidemic, more communities are prioritizing investments in fitness, a move many private corporations and public-interest groups are eager to support. In many cities, fitness professionals create free or paid sessions according to their profession in rooftops, public areas, parks and more interesting places.
So, why people prefer outdoor training more and more? There are couple of categorized reason:
1. It’s cost effective
2. It’s motivational
3. It’s time flexible
4. It’s healthy being outdoors
5. It’s commonly tailored
If we want to look this topic from the government side, outdoor training decreases the obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases. If we want to look to cons of outdoor training, firstly generally it is hard to find professional/personal trainer, it is hard to create training programs, there is no regulations in many countries.
Industry is looking for something new and we need to create new opportunities. Stave (our company) is creating new alternative for training market. In 2019, you can test our first web based project. If you want to be our test user in your country, please email us or just receive a comment.
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