Opening a Fitness Club: How to Become a Gym Owner

In brief: opening a fitness club needs no specific qualification, but it does need a business plan, a legal structure, a location that works, staff who can hold a member base, and premises that satisfy the health and building rules in force where you operate. This guide walks through each of those, and through the equipment decisions that follow from them.

The number of people who train regularly keeps growing. Doctors keep making the same point about diet and physical condition, and for a large part of the population the gym has become a fixed part of the week. Strength classes, yoga and cardio work on a cross trainer are all in steady demand, and interest in fitness continues to rise.

That makes opening a gym a plausible business. It also makes it hard work with a long list of responsibilities. If you are planning to start a fitness club, here is what to think through before signing anything.

Who can own a fitness club?

You do not need a qualification or a diploma to set up and run a fitness club. Anyone able to register a business can own one. The instructors and trainers you employ, on the other hand, must hold the appropriate professional preparation for their role and be able to document it, and in several countries that requirement is a legal one rather than a matter of good practice.

That does not mean everyone is suited to running a club. It is demanding work, and an owner who does not know the sector and its particularities will find that the business does not produce the profit expected. Market knowledge is the difference between a club that fills and a club that empties in its second year.

Choosing a legal structure

A fitness club can be operated under almost any commercial structure. Which ones are available, and what each one implies, depends entirely on the country of establishment, so the summary below is a map of the trade offs rather than a list of names.

• Sole trader. You are the only owner and you make every decision. The freedom is real, and so is the exposure: under this form the owner answers for the obligations of the business with personal assets. It remains a very common form in this sector, particularly for a first, single site club.
• Limited liability company. The partners answer for the liabilities of the company with the capital contributed rather than with personal assets. The drawbacks usually cited are the obligation to keep full accounts and, in several tax systems, taxation at company level followed by taxation of distributions.
• Partnership arrangements. These need at least two partners and a written agreement covering the date and place of conclusion, the identity of the partners, the contributions made, the economic purpose of the business and the means of achieving it. In some jurisdictions such an arrangement has no separate legal personality, so it cannot itself borrow or contract, and the partners are jointly and severally liable with their personal assets. Low set up costs and a single level of taxation are the usual advantages.
• Other structures. Everything depends on your capital, your business plan and your projected revenue. The choice deserves proper examination with an accountant in your own country, because it shapes the whole operation and its chances of success.

Whatever the form, registering the business means declaring the activity codes that classify what the company does. Every country has its own classification system, and the fitness club activity has to be declared correctly from the start.

Starting up: where to begin

A solid business plan is the base of any commercial activity. Once the legal form is chosen, the tax regime follows, and the options open to a sports club operator are narrower than for many other activities in several tax systems. This is the point at which local professional advice pays for itself.

The business model

The model deserves close study. It means building a plan that holds up over years rather than months. Pay particular attention to the location of the site, which is the single strongest predictor of success. Recruiting staff is one of the hardest tasks at the start.

Instructors have to work as a coordinated team. Their knowledge and their approach to members decide the quality of what you sell. If the class timetable is varied and the atmosphere on the floor is good, members come back. Offering staff a broad training programme improves the reputation of the business and attracts people who want to develop.

Health and building requirements

As the owner you are responsible for health and building compliance. Requirements are set nationally and often locally, and they cover the same ground everywhere: the club should occupy a separate building or a clearly separate part of the premises, ceiling height and floor area must allow all the equipment to be laid out and used freely, and ventilation must be sized for the occupancy.

The premises will also normally need to include sanitary facilities, a store for cleaning equipment, a changing area, a reception or waiting area, separate storage for clean and used linen, and a designated area for waste containers. The exact figures, from minimum ceiling height to the ratio of showers and washbasins per user, are set by the regulations applicable at your location and must be taken from those regulations rather than from any general article.

Social and welfare provisions

A club also has to meet a set of welfare conditions. Separate changing rooms for women and men, an adequate number of showers, washbasins and toilets for the number of users, and mechanical ventilation or air conditioning where natural ventilation cannot cope are the recurring items. If the club includes a solarium or any similar cabin, additional requirements on room height and on supply and extract ventilation usually apply. Check the applicable national and local rules before the layout is fixed, because retrofitting ventilation is far more expensive than designing it in.

Independent club or franchise?

A franchise can be an excellent way into the sector, and it often gives a first time owner more room to manoeuvre. A well known brand brings a substantial group of members from the day the doors open, which removes the problem of building a reputation from nothing.

The franchisor supplies tested, ready made solutions, and the operator can usually buy equipment and consumables at competitive prices while benefiting from the support of the franchise management. The drawbacks are real too: a franchise does not give complete freedom, and it does not let you build your own brand. If you want to open your own club, think hard about which of those matters more to you.

Equipping the floor

Equipment is usually the largest single line in the opening budget, and the one most often decided last, which is the wrong order. The layout should be drawn before the lease is signed, because the number of stations a room can hold determines the number of members it can serve, and that determines the revenue the business plan can honestly assume.

Three decisions carry most of the cost. The cardio zone has to be sized for the evening peak, not the daily average. The strength machine park has to cover every major movement pattern before it starts duplicating stations. And the flooring has to match the loads it will take, with heavier tiles under the free weight area and acoustic treatment wherever there is occupied space below.

For indoor equipment in a club open to members, EN ISO 20957-1 class S is the specification to require on every quotation. It is the class intended for collective, largely unsupervised use, which is exactly the situation in a commercial gym.

Getting a costed equipment plan