Apr 17, 2007 5:14 PM
Interview with Jim Gerber, Owner of Western Athletic Clubs, San Francisco CA
Q: What changes do you foresee for Western Athletic Clubs during the next five years?
A: The only thing that I know we are going to do is add more of a medical component to our clubs. As our Boomers age, I think there’s more interest in using our clubs as upstream health care or preventive health care and having a medical component. Staff working closely with personal trainers and behaviorists and nutritionists on staff will add a continuum of care.
Q: What will the medical component include?
A: It’ll include a doctor in house who is a believer in the healing qualities of exercise and nutrition. We won’t be the first ones to do this, but we’ll do it well.
Q: Will it affect pricing?
A: Most of these doctors are available on a part-time basis. It will be a profit center of its own, I hope. It’ll stand on its own.
Places that offer fitness and nutrition and well-trained personal trainers have a responsibility to take the upstream role that they are being given and let the community know about it. What is different now from the 1970s is that the population is so much smarter about their health, and we have to be smarter. Now, our trainers almost have to be physical therapists. All through the 1990s and early part of the century, we were the only club co-authorized by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) to teach and certify trainers with the ACSM certification. We required then that all of our trainers have an ACSM certification, which we consider to be the gold standard.
Q: How has the industry evolved since you’ve been in the business?
A: I sort of touched on that with the fact that our members are smarter. The industry has gotten a lot more professional. Fewer contract clubs are closing their doors. Because the market has matured intellectually and from an age standpoint, I think their [members’] needs are a lot different. It used to be a lot of people came in to meet people and improve how they look. I think that’s still a component, but now a lot more people are interested in improving their health and living longer although nothing will ever replace the vanity aspect of working out.
Q: What should be the biggest concern for club owners and managers today?
A: Because the market is so much more educated, I think the biggest concern we all should have is to maintain our staff’s education about what our product is and what we should be offering. We’re always concerned about quality rather than offering a commodity.
Q: Your club company has a philanthropic mission and raised $2.25 million last year for charities. Why is that important to you and your club?
A: Why wouldn’t it be? We think it’s every business’s responsibility to be involved in the community as it is with every individual. We have a mission statement and six value statements, and one is to be involved. Every club has a community outreach director who champions that.
We picked three areas of involvement. One is healthy aging, so we are involved in lots of senior exercise programs in the community. The second is disadvantaged children in our area in need of opportunities—not just fitness-related needs, but usually it’s focused somehow on what we do, so we can leverage our skill sets with money to create some programs. Jeremy Howell, our director of philanthropy, is also a professor, so he has access to students interested in doing their internships. So we have funded the first lacrosse team in Hunters Point—an all black team—and a skating program with Brian Boitano, bringing kids while in school to learn how to skate; but then also more meaningful programs like getting out the importance of exercise and eating right.
The third area is disease prevention and care. We offer a program that links an oncologist with his patient and a person we put in the oncologist’s office. We focus on breast cancer. One of the things we found out is that when a patient and oncologist talk about treatment programs, one [program they talk about] is to exercise. We offer that at no cost, and we pay for the trainer. We’ve taken 350 women through that. It’s a six-month program for free and then a low-cost program beyond that. Women have raved about that. It helps them during chemotherapy and radiation.
Tied into that is continuing education for our staff. If we “spot” them free training in something—like the cancer training program—then it’s implied that they have to go out and do community outreach to pay us back. So it’s been a great, successful venture on our part.
Of that $2.25 million, we raised about $1.1 million and matched about that much. So we are involved in cash but also in doing fundraisers. We raised $400,000 for the American Cancer Society last year.
Q: What are your thoughts on competition in the market today?
A: There is a lot of competition, but I think we learned a long time ago to focus on what we do best and maintain our own niche and keep our own focus and not worry too much about other competition. It keeps us keen but focused.
Q: A lot of low-priced clubs have entered the market. You charge a lot more than they do. What are your thoughts on setting the right price?
A: Our mantra is to charge enough to provide our members with the best-quality service and products that we can. We have to deliver. So our members say charge me what it takes, but deliver me a great product.
Q: The obesity issue gets a lot of media attention. What are your thoughts about how the industry can deal with this issue?
A: It’s a huge problem. The diabetes that follows it is the real issue. I don’t know how our clubs are going to address it without a ton of public support from food manufacturers and advertising. The whole mindset needs to change.
Unfortunately, the people who really need to come in don’t darken our doors. It’s intimidating to be so out of shape and come into a club. Also, someone who is so overweight that they are going to develop a lot of medical problems isn’t taking control of themselves enough to come in. Clubs like Curves and entry-level places might be the groups most effective in reaching the overweight. In a number of our clubs, we have women-only areas, and those areas seem to attract the people who are trying out memberships.
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