The David Barton Brand Command$ Top Dollar

$ = The David Barton Brand

Yes there are those who love the aesthetic, and those who hate it, but David Barton continues to expand the brand selling memberships at 15X the price of the big box clubs (you have to admire the EBITDA of this gym model).

A $160 per month membership in their new Boston club, now that’s a starting point. But DB is an isolated brand, what I call a macro brand, focused on major metropolises, and targets a demographic with “liquid” income….so what’s the point?

David Barton employs high design as marketing and a facilitator in the generation of revenue for a specific demographic, that’s the point.

The David Barton aesthetic defies the conventions of traditional gym design and transcends all the major design styles that which I had noted in an earlier post. It’s this design effort that best telegraphs their marketing message. Walk into any DB facility and know that you’re experiencing design on many levels and of a pedigree beyond what is typically practiced in gym design. It should go without saying, but it should be said, DB invests heavily in design and construction on the front end resulting in greater returns on the back end.

A gym brand should posses at least one of any of the following three features. It should endeavor to telegraph fitness, it should exhibit energy and excitement, and it should convey the brand, best case, it should embody all. Of the three, energy and excitement, I believe, can be a powerful motivator in the fitness environment and David Barton does just that, energy and excitement, with élan and wit. Consider the over the top stage sets (environments) and light shows for a WWE wrestling event. It’s an eye candy orgy of spectacular theater as a tool of “marketing”.

The David Barton aesthetic is all showmanship and theater and that is an environment that moves prospects as spectators to members and then brand ambassadors.

I’ve never really thought about it but perhaps one of the barriers to deeper penetration of the market is the lack of inspired facilities for a public that are already averse to fitness (a different part of that untapped consumer that Planet Fitness markets to, the Blue Ocean pool noted in one of my earlier posts).

I liken all this to Tesla’s Elon Musk’s comments  about focusing on signal over noise… essentially saying Tesla never spent money on advertising, they focused on efforts resulting in a better product or service….better still, he argues to reject trends and boil your company down to fundamental truths and reason up from there.

Is there is an untapped demographic market segment, that 85% of the American public who are averse to fitness, yet have liquid income, but have not been sold on fitness, perhaps because they are unmoved by the lackluster facilities/brands that populate the landscape?

That is a new question.

Learn more at: www.fitnesscenterdesign.com

Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He is a former faculty member and holds a BFA with Distinction and a Professional Design Diploma from the New York School of Interior Design ranked 4th in the World for superior interior design curriculums by US News and World Report.