Moving Forward: What Comes Next

Neither this report, nor the industry's overall plan to reach 100 million members were ever conceived as single-shot initiatives.

Neither were ever perceived as anything but first steps in a decade-long series of initiatives focused on expanding worldwide health club membership.

Indeed, this initial report has significant limitations. To begin with, it contains all the abridgements of an "inside-out," rather than "outside-in," marketing approach. All the focus groups, informational interviews, and surveys that formed the basis for this report were addressed to "insiders," i.e., to club industry and fitness equipment company leaders. This "insiders" report now needs to be complemented by "outside-in" research that focuses directly on the consumer segments. The need now is to hear more- much more-from consumers themselves.This includes consumers who are already members of clubs, but even more importantly, we need to hear more from consumers who have never yet been members of any type of fitness facility.

Second, it has often been said that "if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." This report specifies only one dimension of where the industry wants and needs to go. That one dimension is here stated in purely quantitative terms and is represented by the 50/100 million member objective.

Clearly, the industry needs to do more than that. Clearly, the industry needs a richer, fuller, more tex- tured, more qualitative, more multi-dimensional vision of its future. Clearly, what the industry needs now is nothing less than to articulate its own full and closely-detailed "dream," much as Dr. Martin Luther King once painted a multi-textured dream for the future that he hoped for his children.

In the months ahead, as one of the first follow-up steps to this initial report, IHRSA and SGMA will look both "inside," to industry visionaries, and "outside," to the markets it serves, to begin drafting a preliminary "dream" or "vision" that will paint a detailed picture of the industry's desired future. This document will represent the collective wisdom of both industry and consumers. It will clarify the larger roles and larger purposes that this industry can serve. It will specify how the industry wants to be perceived by the public, the individual communities it serves, as well as by business, government, and the media.

This visionary document will delineate how the industry wants to position itself with respect to members and prospects: to children and elder Americans, to minorities and majorities. It will breathe life to the full panoply of future possibilities that now lie within the industry's potential grasp. Once this envisioned industry future is set forth, the real work of planning can begin in earnest. From there, the plan unfolds through a series of initiatives aimed at the progressive realization of the dream.

Nor is that all. In this first year of the 50 Million Member Plan, IHRSA will undertake the implemen- tation of a series of six tactical initiatives, each aimed at expanding the growth opportunities of every club the association serves. But none of these initiatives represents THE BIG IDEA.

In the year ahead, IHRSA and SGMA will search for that BIG IDEA, that outreach idea that can bring millions and millions more into the fold of club membership.