Do you sell supplements in your fitness center? If so, are you happy with this service as a profit center?
If you’re like a lot of club operators, you aren’t. According to Chris Page, the co-founder of S3 Supplement Success System, the majority of club operators are only turning a net profit of $2 per customer through their supplement profit center — and there’s potential for that return to be much higher.
As Page explained in a recent webinar hosted by Club Solutions, the supplement business is a highly profitable one in the consumer space as a $37 billion industry. However, in the fitness market, club operators really struggle to make supplements a highly profitable service.
Why? Well for one, explained Page, club operators are oftentimes at a disadvantage right off the bat due to the buying power supplement retailers like GNC have, allowing them to offer much lower prices for supplements than can often be found in a health club setting.
This is why Page explained clubs can’t compete on price when it comes to their supplements. Value must be built in, and “that happens when supplements align with your mission, vision and core values,” he said.
This means they must be nutritional, something that many supplements sold in retail stores are not. According to Erin Brodwin of Business Insider, “Over the past two decades, U.S. poison-control centers have gotten about 275,000 reports — roughly one every 24 minutes— of people who reacted badly to supplements; a third of them were about herbal remedies like St. John’s wort.”
With this in mind, Page gave an overview of the questions it’s vital club operators ask before offering supplements within their club, to ensure the products align with their core values and truly add value to the facility.
This is just one way clubs can increase their supplement profits. Page provides an overview of additional profit-boosting strategies that can benefit club operators of all shapes and sizes. And in many cases, this doesn’t necessarily involve selling new or different supplements than what you already have.
To watch the full webinar, click here.
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
