Not all club members are made the same. Many of them lift free weights and workout on resistance machines, while others play tennis. Some members are only interested in aerobic activities, and still others simply enjoy sitting by the pool with friends. While weight-training machines, treadmills, ball sports, and pools are all mainstays of the fitness industry – and essential for member retention – once a club customer has become a club member, they are no longer, in and of themselves, profit centers.
Many fitness clubs generate additional revenue with juice bars and casual dining bars; day spa therapy; apparel and racquet sales, and niche services, like personal training, But, when it comes to growing your business and achieving lucrative results without increasing your staff, it is hard to beat the speedy return on investment, and the impressive profit margins that tanning beds can generate. Once installed, the right tanning beds will have a three-year warranty on parts and lifetime warranty on the frame, and they should require almost no additional workload or maintenance.
In the space of 72-square-feet, a tanning bed, used ten times a day (that’s 20% of capacity, based on an 18-hour business day), will generate more than $18,000 in gross sales (with a fee schedule of $5 per session), and that tanning bed should pay for itself in less than 90 days (at a purchase price of $4500). Since a tanning session costs less than $.50 to deliver, a single tanning bed has the potential to be the most maximized profit center for any fitness club, big or small.
More than 30 million people use tanning facilities each year in the United States, resulting in a $5-billion-a-year industry. Almost all of the people who enjoy tanning facilities are 18 to 54 years of age – dovetailing with the membership of fitness clubs, which is 70% of that demographic. In a very real sense, members of health clubs are both receptive and captive audiences for tanning beds. After a workout, and before a shower, the opportunity of using an in-house tanning bed saves members from making an extra trip to their local tanning salon.
When you decide to offer tanning to your club members, look for tanning beds which are: built to fitness club specifications; easyto- use; all-steel for reliability; equipped with multiple safety features – such as redundant back-up timers, on-board fuses, and after-cooling relays – and deliver visible results, every session.
Ed Staskus is the Sales Director at International Tanning Technologies. He can be contacted at 800.832.8267, or by email at ed@uvlco.com , or visit www.sunsourceusa.com .
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