“What is the Best Fitness Equipment to Choose for my Health Club?”

Once you have written your business plan, raised the capital, decided on the location and signed your lease (or built your building), you need to decide what you are going to put into the facility.  How do you decide what type of fitness equipment to use?  Although many new health club owners feel like this may be one of the most important decisions they are going to make regarding their business many experts would disagree.  The fitness equipment is very important but is secondary to the service and relationship you need to establish with your provider!

You will not go wrong with any of the following fitness equipment if you chose from one of the following fitness equipment manufacturers:

• Cybex, Intl.
• Life Fitness Equipment
• Matrix Fitness Systems
• Precor Fitness
• Star Trac Fitness

Many times the health club owner will make this decision very personal on what either he or she likes to use at the local gym that they train at.  This can be a fatal mistake!

When choosing your equipment for your health club look for the following things:

Trust in your provider.

This is going to be a relationship like none other.  You need to find a company that you trust and that has an excellent reputation not only providing a great product but, servicing your equipment, providing technical support, design layout and being there after the equipment has been delivered.

Warranties.

 Fitness equipment warranties can be a little difficult or misleading to understand.   Knowing up front what your warranty is can save you thousands of dollars over the life of the machines you purchase.  Often time’s warranties can be negotiated and what you need to know is if the warranty is limited or not.  For example: if you have a 3 years parts warranty on a treadmill and your belt and deck need replacing in 1.5 years, technically that is not warranted because it is a wearable item and the manufacturer will not cover that. When negotiating your equipment make sure you bring up the length of warranty and the availability of extended.

Understanding the Cost of Ownership.

Being new to the health club business or even someone that has been in the industry for many years you need to understand what the cost of ownership for that treadmill, bike or elliptical trainer may be.  This is very important to know for budgeting for service, parts and replacement.  If you do not understand this it is strongly recommended that you learn this quickly.  If not you will fall into one of the many pitfalls health club owners fall in; formulating an effective and a cost effective way to replace equipment.  What will happen too many is they try servicing their equipment and although it may save you money you will still have to purchase costly parts.

Parts availability and costs.

Before truly understanding the cost of ownership you need to understand the availability of parts and the cost.  It is often a practice in the commercial fitness equipment business to lower your prices during the initial purchase of the equipment only to find out that the parts are not discounted and are very expensive.  If the manufacturer makes their equipment overseas you need to understand the distribution plan for parts.  If you have a treadmill that goes down and cannot get a part you could be weeks before getting that unit back up and this is a major downfall for all health clubs, health club members don’t like to see broken down equipment.

Local Service.

Make sure you meet your soon to be service provider, make sure they are local (45 minutes or less), stock parts and are certified in the equipment that you are purchasing.  Your relationship with your service provider may be the most relationship you have in your business other than your employees and members. Building a strong professional relationship with him/her often times gets you preferential treatment and willingness to go the extra steps to get the problem resolved.

Brand.

If you purchase one or more of the above mentioned you will be certain to have made a good choice.  All of the brands mentioned above are reputable companies and have been proven in the commercial fitness market place.

Price.

 Although this is a very important factor in building a business is careful not to judge your decision solely on price.  By doing so you may end up with a lesser product, warranty, service and most of important wasted time.

As you can see the fitness equipment may not be as important as you once thought.  Although you want to purchase your exercise equipment that has a name brand, it is not as critical as developing the relationship with your service and fitness equipment provider.   Always remember that equipment does not sell memberships, people do.

For more information on What Type of Health Club to Open click here

-The Staff at EverythingFitnessEquipment.com

“For all of Your Fitness Equipment and Exercise Equipment Needs”