The Gym Design A+ Game

TOP GUN: Slang, a person who is the best or one of the best in a particular field; the top ranked person in a group.

I admire the insights of Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki, former technology evangelist for Steve Jobs at Apple states that A players hire A+ players, and B players hire C players, and C players hire D players…obviously metaphor for the valuesmart leaders (A types) desire when hiring top (A+) talent for their team.

This post asks… “Why would one hire B players to execute when the ROI generated as a result of the A+ player’s pedigree and skill set is known widely in the marketplace?”

Well, a number or reasons. 

Often B players are in close proximity to the principal. B players are understandably less expensive to retain than A+ players. B players, on occasion, are friends or family. B players are peripherally familiar with the skills required to design but they’re not A+ specialists…in other words, architects and designers who design homes possess design skills….however they don’t have the expertise or insights required to design gyms. Be forewarned. If your objective is to scale and grow your gym business and compete in this oversaturated fitness marketplace, your B player gym design is sooner or later going to encounter A+ gym design delivered by your competition.

If your objective is to scale and grow your gym business and compete in this oversaturated fitness marketplace your B player gym design is sooner or later going to encounter A+ gym design delivered by your competition.

The pool from which gym designers are often sourced is deep and robust.

1. Friends

2. Lovers and Spouses

3. Local Architects and Designers

4. Residential, Retail, Hospitality Decorators, Designers and Architects

5. Some hybrid matrix of any of the above

Friends:  Friends, or friends of friends whose design expertise is limited to building man caves and consumed episodes of HGTV will assuredly undermine any effort to create a dominant gym brand.

Lovers and Spouses: Gym developers who enable spouses to specify design based on having, good taste, design knowledge of gyms they’ve frequented, a stack of Lifestyle Design magazines and access to Google Search, place their investments at risk as the preceding are not prerequisites to pedigreed gym design or branding.

Local Architects and Designers: Proximity to your facility might seem like an advantage in retaining a design firm however the advantage gained is soon lostwhen designers unfamiliar with the ethos of fitness place their aesthetic stamps on your facility resulting in nice design…. but not outstanding gym design.

Residential, Retail, Hospitality and Office Designers: The least effective way to develop a gym brand is to invite home designers and decorator’s to brand your gym. Resultant aesthetic…the Boutique Design Trend, an over exhausted style exploited across all of commerce that says nothing about fitness nor your brand.

Boutique Design (above) says nothing about fitness, nor does it exhibit energy or excitement, nor does it reinforce the brand, yet the aesthetic continues to be sold to gym developers as sophisticated and relevant. The design firms who promote this aesthetic are less interested in creating a dominant gym brand and more interested in creating design that embellishes their portfolios. Don’t squander your investment on this over exhausted cliché.

To be clear, when savvy gym developers hire A+ talent and Top Gun consultants their strategy is to enter the market with a gym brand that is exponentially superior to the competition. Their objective; market domination and supreme ownership of the target demographic. I.e., they retain the A+ players because the skill sets A+ players bring to the table results in a superior brand that upstages the competition. This strategy also provides a hedge against those who are considering entering your market in the future but are unable to deliver an equal or greater brand or brand aesthetic.

Gym Branding and Design should telegraph fitness, reinforce the brand, promote the mission and exhibit excitement, energy, and power, as metaphors for exercise, strength and fitness. Friends, spouses, home decorators and local designers don’t roll this way, they’re simply interested in creating nice design.

Design Takeaway: Be the A+ Gym Brand..be the Top Gun

Mid City Gym’s entry in Manhattan’s Times Square is an uber-cool and innovative design that immediately telegraphs fitness. It exhibits energy, excitement, and the interior color scheme and concept in a unified aesthetic that powerfully reinforces the brand. This is a marketing strategy that seduces prospects to buy into the brand.

Learn more at: www.fitnesscenterdesign.com

About Cuoco Black:  Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He’s 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. Cuoco Black is additionally the designer of the Experimental Cocktail Club, Paris France, rated one of the top 20 Bars in the world by foodandwine.com

The designer is additionally developing new gym models across diverse fitness market segments including luxury brands, functional training franchises, independent gyms and residential fitness facilities.

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