Design matters — jump-the-curve —
10X the competition
differentiates your brand
“exponentially” beyond competitors
in your marketplace (exponentially
simply meaning 10X better).
In the late 1990’s global electronics
manufacturers jostled for consumer
market share over the MP3 player, a
digital hand-held device that stored
music files in digitized form. In early
2001 Apple released their brightly
colored iPod devices and by the
year 2009 generated $22 billion in
iPod sales. The outcome resulted in a
glut of obsolete MP3 players finding
new homes on EBay and in the
bottom of consumer’s desk drawers.
Guy Kawasaki illustrates Apple’s
approach to design, its philosophy if
you will, as follows. “Apple believes
that design matters” says Kawasaki,
“Apple strives to jump-the-curve, to
be 10X better than the competition”
anything less he says “is better-
sameness by Apple standards”.
If gym developers would liberate
their minds of the wired-gym-
blueprints they falsely believe
as self-evidently true (and stop
building gyms that look like gyms
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and boutique hotels) they would
encounter immense blue-ocean
opportunities which could catapult
them to the forefronts of their
marketplaces.
expense.
Yet they remain “gym-ified” as they
are, two decades immersed, locked
in better-sameness, in exhausting
antiquated competition lanes,
grinding on price, clawing back ROI,
scanning retention figures, sparring
at social media and ever-searching
for the illusive lifetime-value
proposition beyond their vision and
reach.
New Gutenburg Revolution
Historically gym design was a low
tier line-item requisite of low priority
in the building a new gym brand.
And historically the same blind spot,
disregard for innovative “design-
think” opened the flood-gates to
the big-box gyms, the franchises,
and now, the bespoke studios;
all of the preceding embracing
thoughtful design that resulted
in the decimation of countless
independent gyms which dismissed
design as an ineffective low priority
The Internet
has democratised
information, and
in our case,
democratised
gym design is all
the rage.
That was then, and this is now, and
low-and-behold, a new Gutenberg
Revolution has joined the scrum.
Design savvy fitness consumers
voraciously consume social media
platforms scrutinizing the latest and
greatest in good design. Instagram,
Pinterest and Tumblr, accompanied
by broadcast media in the likes of
HGTV, YouTube and Facebook.
Aligned with printed lifestyle
editorial all of these platforms
coalesce in a design hierarchy of
WHAT’S NEW IN FITNESS - WINTER 2019
which fitness consumers are
now judge, jury and arbiters of
acceptance.
In order to arrest fitness consumer
attention and move fitness
consumers away from your
competitor’s gyms (to yours) you
must abandon the design-think
of building a gym that looks like
another gym or boutique hotel.
10X Gym Design Philosophy
10X gym design is done by
embracing a conceptual design-
think. You embark on a process
of designing in exploratory terms.
I argue the closer you get to an
innovative, theatrical, Hollywood-
esque gym environments, the
greater the wedge you drive
between the predictable gyms of
your competitors and your own. I
further believe that you should invest
80% of your construction budget
in the design and build-out of your
reception and locker rooms spaces
— those spaces that will seduce
prospects to buy into your brand
during the presale tour.
Finally, be fearless. There is no
gym-glory to be won in building a
facility that looks like other gyms in
a fitness marketplace. If you want
to dominate a fitness marketplace
you do it by giving consumers
unexpected, dramatic, entertaining
fitness environments that motivate
them to train and exercise. Not
another gym or boutique hotel.
Cuoco Black is a trusted and
respected master fitness facility
designer, gym brand architect and
design academic. A former faculty
member of the New York School of
Interior Design, Black advocates for
the development of conceptual
and theatrical gym models that
dominate consumer attention in
any fitness marketplace. Promoting
an ideal that fitness facilities must
embrace design attributes which
embrace luxury, telegraph fitness,
motivate fitness consumers to
exercise; and most importantly,
amplify the brand. His work includes
independent gyms, PT studios,
women’s only facilities, residential
fitness centres and franchise models.
More at Instagram/GymDesigner.
WHAT’S NEW IN FITNESS - WINTER 2019
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