Big Vanilla

A lot of clubs emphasize programs and the impact that programming can have on the club. Chuck Hall, the executive director/membership director of Big Vanilla Athletic Club (Big V), with locations in Arnold, Md. and Pasadena, Md., a suburb of Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Md., said it had been the vast development and execution of programs that set them apart in a market flooded by major fitness clubs. Programming was also the beginning of growth for Big V.

The true growth began seven years ago for Big Vanilla. Growth spurred with the hiring of Hall and General Manager Lee Sallustio. According to Hall, that was when Big V made its transition from being primarily a tennis facility with some fitness, to a family recreation center positioned around “Fun. Family. Fitness.”

Programming for Growth

When Big V opened its doors in 1977, it was opened as a tennis facility. In 1977 tennis was a major trend that was captivating American consumers. However, when Hall and Sallustio came aboard, the fitness desires of Americans had altered.

According to Hall, consumers weren’t looking for tennis, but still had a desire to be fit. Big V decided to redevelop its focus to target people’s fitness needs that included personal training, Group X, small-group training, weights and cardio. People weren’t spending as much time on the tennis courts as they once were. Instead, they were lifting weights and running or walking on treadmills. They wanted to workout with instructors and take modern group classes, and they had a desire to be able to do this as a family.

Hall said that Big V wasn’t strictly a family club — it still has singles as members — but the vast majority of its clients are families. Focusing on these people has played a major role in the success of Big V. It enticed the club to eliminate tennis courts, increase fitness areas, and install a rock wall and outdoor swimming pools.

Sure, everyone hears ‘outdoor pool’ in Maryland and delivers a perplexed look, but they make it work. In the winter they have a temporary dome that they put over the pool to keep the temperature consistently warm and allow for continued aqua programming. In the summer, the dome is removed to give people the enjoyment of swimming outdoors in the warm summer air.

With all the amenities throughout Big V, it’s still not the contributing factor to its growing success, and differentiating factor against competitors within its market. According to Hall, all the growth has been attributed to its vast amounts of programming.

Big V has created programming for practically everything. Hall tells his team when they pitch new programs — if it’s fun, family and fitness, it can work. The idea is to give members the opportunity to workout together, with their entire families. “Big Vanilla, was in this community, a 32-year-old club, but up until 1996 it was predominately a tennis club, and that’s when Larry Ray bought it,” said Hall. “His vision was to turn this from a tennis facility into a community wellness center. And that’s where we came into play.”

Hall joked saying, he wanted to have members from crib to crypt. “We want to have activities for everyone. Fun, family, fitness became our mantra and basically every decision we make is based upon those three words.”

Big V has programs for everything, from your typical Zumba class to Martial Arts. “IHRSA has put out statistics that they want 30 percent of [a club’s] revenue to be non-dues generated revenue. We adhere to that policy and we are a club that consistently does those numbers. In the tough economic times, we’ve actually grown our programming numbers and those kinds of things have helped us maintain, while membership sales were relatively flat in 2010, it was our programs in 2010 that helped us do extremely well.”

“Unlike a lot of places where all you get when you walk in is a treadmill and a set of weights, you get relationship opportunities to make teams with other members, friendships and a lot of great energy,” said Sallustio. “Because of all the programming we do, results create a stronger fitness community inside our walls.”

Big V didn’t begin with a long list of new programs. They began with a couple and as the success grew, they added more. “We started with just a couple programs,” explained Hall. “We introduced some dance classes to the club; we introduced our camps to attract children and families in the summer time.”

A lot of the programming that Big V has implemented differed dramatically from other clubs in their area. They provided scuba and kayak lessons in their pools, they had rock climbing classes for all age groups, including a master rock climbing class that allows a person to climb whenever they want — creating a lot of experienced people throughout the club. Additionally, the clubs have a wide range of Group X classes that extend from AM Yoga to a Total Body Bootcamp.

In order to execute the different pieces of Big V, Sallustio has had to empower her leaders in every sector of the club. She urges them to read certain industry publications and use them to develop new ideas that can be discussed at each company meeting. “It comes down to everyone working together as a team,” she said. “There weren’t any programs when we got here, at all, except for tennis.”

Prior to 2005, Big V had six tennis courts, but when Sallustio arrived — six months prior to Hall — Big V had dropped to four. “Fortunately, we are down to two, but the tennis community isn’t a growing community, we’ve found,” she said.

Tennis was a separate entity for Big V. Members had the ability to be a member of Big V, or just a member of tennis at Big V. “The 250 tennis members we had, compared to the about 4,000 members we had at the time — although it was important, in all that square footage, you are only servicing two people or four people at a time. Obviously over time we’ve frustrated those people, but I would say we have about 100 left. But, at the same time, we weren’t telling them they couldn’t come here, they weren’t coming as much.”

According to Sallustio, it’s always hard to lose members, but the small amount of tennis enthusiasts that Big V had, primarily had tennis memberships, as opposed to Big V memberships. Today, Big V has more than doubled its membership to about 9,000 members at each Big V location, due to its switch from being a tennis facility to a family wellness facility.

When it came to children, Big V started looking at the programming that was surrounding the facility. “Our whole philosophy was, if people had to go to five or six different locations if they wanted their kid to be really involved, we want to put it all under one roof,” said Hall. “You didn’t have to take your kid somewhere for Martial Arts, you didn’t have to take them somewhere else to climb a rock wall, you didn’t have to take them somewhere else to play tennis. Big Vanilla could house all of that under one roof. When you start out small, we created a program guide and got the message out to our community.

“Members started seeing that Big Vanilla was offering a lot of children’s programs, and then we built our camps up in the summer time. Then we started with our one-day camps whenever a school day was off, we called it Camp V-Days. If a kid was off school on a Tuesday for a teacher’s association meeting or something, you could count on Big Vanilla for a camp day. That’s grown now, and those things are sold out well in advance. Our camps are sold out every summer and we’ve grown into this full-fledged family community center.”

Hall said that Big V would put program guides all over town for people to see exactly what they would receive with a membership to Big Vanilla. They would update the guides annually and continually convey new programs to the community through additional advertisements.

For Big Vanilla Athletic Club the facility is more than just a gym or a tennis club — it’s a place for everyone to come, year round, to get healthy and enjoy community. “To be competition, you can’t be like everyone else,” said Hall. “We’re not really a cost-sensitive club, but we know that if we can get the entire family involved that our retention numbers would go up dramatically. We felt that we wouldn’t lose members, because if we got the whole family working together, playing together, they’d stay together.”

Chuck Hall, Executive Director/Membership Director at Big V

Hall, the executive director/membership director of Big V, has spent the majority of his life in the fitness industry. His experiences, and the vast variety of fitness clubs he has seen over the years have helped him in molding Big V. “We want to be for the well-rounded, we want to be fitness for everyone,” said Hall. “We aren’t interested in power lifting or bodybuilding, we have a tremendous weight room and we have a tremendous fitness floor, but the fact is, if you’re the guy that’s trying to bench 400 pounds or squat 500 pounds, this is probably not the place for you.”

Understanding the objective clearly has been Hall’s focus. He graduated from college in 1984 with dreams of becoming a stockbroker. However, like most of us, his dreams were shifted when he was handed the opportunity to work at a fitness club — although, he was hesitant at first.

“The owner of the gym I was working out in asked me if I wanted to be in the fitness business — I said, ‘no,’” said Hall. “He talked me into a sales position and made some promises that if I performed at a certain level he’d make me a sales manager and that would be in line with what I should be making out of college. So, here we are now, I worked for 10 years for that company, then left the industry for 10 years, and now I’ve been here for about seven years.”

Hall was with National Fitness Centers for the first 10 years, and for three years after he left he worked for Lifestyle Fitness Center. When he left the industry all together, prior to reentering at Big V, he turned to public speaking.

Hall spoke about sales and leadership training throughout the U.S. and Europe. Seven years ago, Hall had a newborn son and didn’t want stay on the road. “In our area, the new owner of [Big V], Larry Ray, was building another club in our area. Each club was about 100,000 square feet. Him and I ran into each other in an Atlanta Bread store and he told me how great things were, and he had five names in his pocket that could be directors of his company.” Hall hadn’t spoken to Ray in about six years. “We decided to meet and have an interview. He was the original guy I met with when I got into the business in 1984. I’ve worked for Larry for almost all my 18 years of my fitness industry experience.”

Lee Sallustio, the General Manager at Big V

Sallustio, the general manager of Big V has been teaching aerobics since she was 14 years old. “I was blessed at a young age, that I had health nuts, exercise nuts, nutrition nuts as parents,” said Sallustio. “I remember being 7 years old and going running together. We all had matching running suits — my parents were very much into it.”

Throughout her adolescents Sallustio’s parents continued to go through different phases of nutrition, always bringing her and her siblings along. “We were the only kids we knew that went to health food stores,” she said. “They were really into feeding the child a healthy diet.”

When Sallustio was 14, she started going to an aerobics class to perpetuate her, and her families, life-long passion for fitness. “The instructor didn’t show up, and one of the ladies said I should go teach the class,” explained Sallustio. “Pretty much, when I was 14, I taught my first aerobic class, and I’ve been into it at a professional level ever since.”

Salllustio continued to teach aerobics from about the age of 18 until about 36 years old. “I went to college, majored in health and fitness management. When I got out, I managed about three or four fitness centers.” Sallustio then went back to school to get her Master’s Degree at James Madison University in business, nutrition and exercise science. After finishing her degree she continued to work in the fitness industry and has taught everything in the club except tennis. “I had my own personal training studio for 13 years,” she said. “I worked at high-end clubs, low-end clubs, I’ve worked at a JCC (Jewish Community Center).”

Seven years ago, when she joined Big V, she was prepared to help launch some major changes toward making the club a family wellness center. It has been her passion to work for a large facility, such as Big V, in order to touch more people’s lives on a regular basis. She said as a personal trainer she felt that she directly touched people’s lives, but not on the scale that she could at a full-service facility like Big V.

“Being able to see the results, and having a big impact on touching thousands of people’s lives versus just teaching a room full of 20 or 25. I love the idea with working with a team of people on the same mission.” Sallustio said she misses the “a-ha” moment when someone finally realizes what they must do to have success in fitness. However, she has received a similar feeling from her team when they get “a-ha” moments from clients and employees within the Big V staff.

In order to affect thousands of people on a daily basis, Sallustio has had to empower and lead teams at both Big V locations. Empowerment, she said, has been the key to developing great programs and succeeding at Big V. “It takes a dedicated focus on our end to keep everything moving,” she said. “It’s all about our department heads. Without them, none of this can happen. We have guiding principals, that Chuck and I continually try to drive home, that everyone’s mission is ‘What’s best for Big Vanilla.’ We try and teach our department heads how to take ownership and be small entrepreneurs within the company. They understand that their effort in coaching their teams is what makes us successful. It’s not about me, it’s not about Chuck, it’s not about just the facility, it’s about them helping to empower what’s best for Big Vanilla with their staff.”- CS

By Tyler Montgomery