The Purpose of This Report

The plan to reach 50 million health club members by 2010 is different in five distinctive ways. First, it is not a company plan or corporate plan, but a plan devised and developed through a partnership of two associations. As such, it represents the collective wisdom and the best judgment of leading club operators, and the shared perspectives of leading club suppliers. As an association document, it is necessarily and preeminently voluntary. Neither IHRSA nor SGMA has the authority, or the inclination, to insist upon compliance. Every fitness facility and every fitness equipment company remains free to accept or reject the analyses, recommendations, and proposed initiatives delineated in this report.

Second, fitness facilities differ greatly in size, scope and scale, and are situated in widely disparate markets in terms of age, and income, and location. In order to accommodate these differences, this plan needed to be broader in scope and richer in application than would a plan designed for a single facility or specific company. The goal was to develop a plan broad enough in scale and rich enough in applica- tion to allow each individual club, or group of clubs, to discover in the plan's menu of recommendations precisely those that would best fit its own specific circumstances.

Third, this plan was developed by a bottom-up, rather than a top-down, methodology. After a series of focus groups and informal conferences and presentations, Fitness Products Council and IHRSA members were surveyed twice: first, in order to understand how they prioritized the industry's major growth opportunities and, second, in order to clarify what tools and resources might be of most assis- tance in capturing these opportunities. As such, the plan represents the collective wisdom of a broad spectrum of industry leaders.

Fourth, the plan was designed to be sustained over a decade-long planning period. The specific priorities, recommendations and initiatives detailed in this report are conceived only as the starting point. It has been assumed that subsequent plans, recommendations and analyses will follow. These, in turn, may amend, amplify and critique those set forth in this report.

Finally, this planning initiative was designed, from first to last, to develop actionable initiatives that will be of immediate value to individual clubs at the grass roots level. The objective has never strayed from serving as a focal point for immediate strategic and tactical action. Success will be measured by that objective alone.