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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, July 28, 2003

LEADERSHIP CORNER
24 Hour Fitness manager looks to expand membership

Interviewed by David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer

Andrew Dewey

Age: 35

Title: District manager of Hawai'i

Organization: 24 Hour Fitness

High school: Torrey Pines, Del Mar, Calif.

College: MiraCosta Community College and San Diego State University

Breakthrough job: In 1990, a friend's father hired Dewey to sell memberships at Family Fitness Centers, which later merged with another company to become 24 Hour Fitness.

• • •

Q. How has your growth been in Hawai'i?

A. Good. We are always looking to grow the business from the prior year. People always say, "Don't you think you've saturated the market? How many more people are there to enroll?"

One of the things about Hawai'i is it thrives on tourism, so we always have that kind of repeat business.

Military plays a big part of our success. When new military comes in, even though they have gyms on base, a lot of the wives prefer to work away from the base. That is a big source of our revenue. They like to get away from the base.

Even though we do have eight clubs and over 55,000 active members here in Hawai'i, the penetration still is not there. We are probably tapping into maybe only 10 to 20 percent of the Hawai'i population. So there is a lot of the Hawai'i population that is deemed inactive that we can try to get them to be members.

Q. You have 400-plus employees and you are involved in the hiring; who makes a good salesperson for 24 Hour Fitness?

A. Someone that's not afraid to talk. I always try to let them do most the talking in the interview process. Someone that seems to have a very outgoing personality. Someone that is a team player. I guess the way you can try to find that out is if they were involved in a lot of team sports when they were growing up or more into individual sports, perhaps a tennis player versus a football player.

Q. How important are looks? Isn't it helpful to have a lot of good-looking people around?

A. Not at all. It's a double-edged knife. If they are too good-looking or too in shape, sometimes it's intimidating to the average consumer. The reverse is true. Maybe if they are really overweight and they are trying to sell memberships, their credibility might go down the tubes. I think there is a happy medium. Sometimes our greatest salesperson is just your average person who is really not the bodybuilder, but he is not 200 pounds overweight about to keel over either, but he's the person that really makes the consumer feel comfortable in this type of environment because the average consumer hasn't been a member of a health club.

The average consumer is the person that's maybe working two or three jobs, has got a couple kids, trying to support his or her family, and really hasn't exercised since the high school/college days. His priorities shifted. When we were younger — teens and early 20s — the stereotype is we were really into appearances and then we slowly became more career-oriented and family-oriented.

We get a lot of moms and dads that come in here and say to us, "My priority is my family" or "My priority is work. I can't find the time to exercise." What they need to understand is that they are the most important thing. If you don't take care of yourself, how can you take care of your family? How can you have the energy and stamina to go work those one, two, three different jobs?

Q. What do you pay your salespeople?

A. We pay them a basic hourly wage and commissions. As long as they are getting people involved in a membership, they'll make some good money.

Q. Does that mean $30,000 or $40,000

A. It's a pretty big range. I would say anything from $24,000 a year to, say, $60,000 a year.

Q. Some people say you do a hard sales pitch.

A. That's unfortunate. When you hire sales counselors — we call them fitness counselors — that work off commission, the tendency, of course, is going to be a little harder sale because the more people they sell memberships to the more money they make.

We always try to soften it with that aloha spirit. At the same time, our job is to try to convince people to do something that is good for them.

What's always happened in the past is that people love to procrastinate about fitness. "I'll come back Monday. I'll join Monday." And they never do. "New Year's. I'll start New Year's, I swear. I'll do it." And they never do it. So we feel when they come in the door, this is probably the biggest step they have ever made for most people. We are going to take full advantage of it by trying to educate them, inspire them to make that decision that really is a truly good decision for them. It's not like we're selling them a used car that is going to break down. It's a great product, especially if they use it on a regular basis, and we want them to.

We really try to use friendly persuasion, not the hard sale. We try to use friendly persuasion to try to help that consumer make a decision that's truly good for them.

Q. How much of the appeal to consumers is the social aspect?

A. People join for a variety of reasons and the social element is definitely there. I would say a big portion of our population join for that social environment. We have a lot of kids — 16 to 22 — joining probably to find a date for a weekend, but I don't think it is that often. It's difficult to say.

Q. What is the future of fitness centers?

A. Personal training is just skyrocketing. The potential that personal training and weight loss has is incredible.

The big thing that has really changed from 1990 to now is the perception from the consumer was "They just want to sign you up, take your money and hope you never use it." Now we want people to use our club to get the results they came in to accomplish because we feel that if we can take that average consumer and help them lose their 10 or 15 pounds, how many friends are going to notice?

Until they invent that magic pill that you can take to lose weight and feel better, fitness is just going to continue to boom and grow.

Q. How much autonomy do you in Hawai'i have within the 24 Hour Fitness network?

A. The company has a philosophy of one company, one way. So the average consumer, who comes out here for vacation ... he or she is going to see similarities. But what we are allowed to do is create our club signature.

My club signature out here is definitely the aloha spirit. We really try to incorporate that aloha spirit ... for members and employees.

Q. If this Hawai'i group wasn't covering all its costs for a year, would the rest of the corporation help you out?

A. We have revenue sheets which just show Hawai'i. Whatever we're selling, whatever we're making will be minus all our expenses and we're left with the bottom line which is the profit. If we're short, it gets all rolled up.

Q. Are you planning any more locations?

A. Nothing in the immediate future. We have talked about Kapolei, Kona — I was just over there last week — Kihei and Lahaina would be probably four possible locations in the near future.

Q. How long are you planning to stay in Hawai'i?

A. As long as they need me to. The business is great because we have a monopoly out here. There is really no competition. I have a lot of autonomy that I probably wouldn't have on the Mainland.