Figuring out how to generate revenue has been a large goal in 2020. Whether it was from being forced to close for an extended period of time, increased caution towards gyms, or more people purchasing home gym equipment, a lot of health clubs have taken a hit this year to varying degrees. Even if you were business as usual this year, who doesn’t want to bring in more money — especially easy money?
The following two ideas are relatively easy ways to bring in a little more cash on top of your regular revenue. These are assuming you are already generating revenue from memberships, personal training, supplements, vending and whatever other value-added services your individual facility offers.
Partner to Sell Clothing
Since earlier this year when we were forced to close, we have had success through “limited release” clothing drops. We began working with a local print shop to set up online stores. This has taken all the hassle out of selling clothing and costs us absolutely nothing.
We just send them the design idea and they create it. Once we approve it, they open up the online store for a time period we determine. We blast out emails and social media posts hyping them up with the link to the online store, and people order whatever size they need. Once the sale closes, the shop prints them and ships them directly to the customer, and they send us a check from our profit on the sale.
No more guessing how many of each size to get, no more overhead of paying for them upfront and hoping they sell, and no more low margins. We incorporated our first T-shirt sale right when we were forced to shut down as a way to support the club, and we brought in almost $2000 between two locations on a single T-shirt design.
That was a special occasion, but since then we have averaged around $500 per month on these sales. It may not be making anyone rich, but when you multiply that over a year or two, it can really help cover some lost revenue from membership cancelations.
I highly recommend trying to find a local print shop that has this type of arrangement. They could probably use the extra business as well, so two local businesses can help each other generate revenue.
Sell Tickets to Events
This is new for us and we have currently held one event at each of our locations. We put together a “Weights. Wings. Beer.” event and sold tickets for $15 per person. We had between 12-15 people for each event which included a bootcamp style outdoor workout with wings and beer afterwards while everyone hung out.
For both locations, we had the wings donated from a local restaurant, which kept our costs to just two cases of beer. It was a great way to get some people involved with the club outside our normal training clients.
Again, you can do the math and see we aren’t exactly breaking the bank with this. However, this can really add up to generate revenue for advertising or whatever your current needs may be when done a few times a year between multiple locations — especially when you start stacking some of these ideas.
Give these a shot and comment below if you have had success with something similar or with any other creative ideas — I would love to hear your thoughts!
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Ryan O'Toole is the regional manager for Anytime Fitness Cheswick, Leechburg and Kittanning, and the founder of Culture First Fitness. He can be reached at ryan@culturefirstfitness.com.
