Gym Business Plan

Gym Business Plan

Gym Business Plan Overview

This Gym Business Plan focuses on the Gym business. Though we touch on many aspects of the Gym business . we will be biased towards a standard modern gym as to be found in urban estates.

The traditional gym in Kenya had been a place to pump, build muscles, get the six pack and well become a bouncer. This was the biggest motivation for the rise of gyms in the late 90s and 2000s. Mainly these were hardcore gyms focused on building muscles.

Muscles were the end and the means didn’t matter. So we had gyms which had nothing else but some weights, mark you these were not always professionally made weights. In many of these you would find two building stones with holes drilled at the center and a stick stuck between them. Another version of the weights had five liter paint cans filled with cement and joined with a stick or metal bar. The more advanced of these had professionally made weights and dumbbells and a flat bench, that was it. Going to the gym meant lying on the bench lifting weights as your colleagues cheered you on. It was a male affair.

Starting the mid 20s many professional gyms emerged; though still biased towards muscles they had a variety of equipment. 

Fast forward to the present. The hardcore gym is fast going out of fashion. Building muscles is not the only reason to go the gym. And there are more women using gyms than ever before. There are several reasons for this.

To start with consumers have become more health conscious; wholesome exercise is seen as part of “taking care” of yourself. And though for men building muscle is still a thing there are many who are not obsessed with it; the muscles are a ( by) product of exercises, and not necessarily the other way round.

Men and women appreciate exercise for health’s sake and not always for the sake of looks. Thus the modern gym will have equipment which is not just for building muscles but which “strengthen” the heart, “work out” the back for good posture and such other goals.

Secondly with a more connected world, competitive urban spaces, exposure of all kind, consumers are under social pressure to look good; “cool”. This could mean many things. For instance having the famed six pack, less tummy fat for both men and women, less weight, thigh gap for women, strong shoulders for women and other such trends. Although there are many consumers who don’t succumb to the pressure and are comfortable in how they look, there is a significant number who seek to improve themselves, and the major way to do it is by visiting the gym.

The above reasons have contributed to the fast growth of modern gyms since 2008 with an extremely quick growth since 2013. Despite this the percentage of consumers in Kenya using gyms is still small; we estimate it, from our research, to be about 4 % .

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