register

Still Ticking

After 25 years, Club Industry's Fitness Business Pro has gone through many changes, but the magazine has kept its focus on one thing: serving fitness facility owners.

Article Tools

Best of 2009

Top Stories of 2009

The most popular stories of 2009. Did your favorites make our list?

View our Top 12 list here

Resource Center

Club Industry Trade Shows

Club Industry trade shows are the most comprehensive events in the fitness industry. Learn more about these exciting conferences and expositions.

View our Trade Shows

Industry Events & Trade Shows

The industry-wide calendar features listings for educational events, trade shows and more.

View our Events Calendar

Buyers Guide

Find industry businesses by product or service categories, view company profiles and more.

View our Buyers Guide

Classifieds

View classified ads for health club equipment and services, plus business opportunities and job postings.

View Classifieds

Current Issue

Read stories from the latest print issue of Club Industry magazine.

View the Current Issue

View the Digital Edition

Latest From Twitter

Todd Logan (left) and Marc Onigman founded Club Industry magazine in 1984 after seeing the need for a national publication for operators of for-profit, nonprofit, corporate and hotel fitness facilities. The franchise now includes a print and digital magazine, a Web site with a blog, two trade shows and an e-newsletter. Photo courtesy of Todd Logan.

Todd Logan (left) and Marc Onigman founded Club Industry magazine in 1984 after seeing the need for a national publication for operators of for-profit, nonprofit, corporate and hotel fitness facilities. The franchise now includes a print and digital magazine, a Web site with a blog, two trade shows and an e-newsletter.
Photo courtesy of Todd Logan

However, the second-year show was considerably bigger than the first. Buoyed by their success with the national trade show, the duo developed two regional shows — Club Industry East in New York in 1989 and Club Industry West in Anaheim, CA, in 1990. The shows alternated for two years, but Club Industry West wasn't profitable enough, so Logan and Onigman ditched it and continued their regional efforts with the more profitable Club Industry East.

“My expertise in running the show and their expertise in knowing the industry — that's what made it successful,” Ravis says about the Club Industry shows.

As part of the trade show, Logan and Onigman honored people in the industry with a Hall of Fame award, starting in 1986. They also profiled the six winners in the magazine. The first winners were Dedman; LaLanne; Sorensen; Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, founder of the Cooper Aerobics Center; Dale Dibble, co-owner of Cedardale Health Club; and Vic Tanny, founder of Tanny Health Center.

Although Logan and Onigman kept their hands in the editorial side of the business, they were increasingly involved in the trade show and advertising side, so in 1986, they hired Craig Waters as editor while retaining their editor-in-chief and executive editor titles. Waters stayed for just more than a year before moving to IHRSA's publication. The two didn't replace Waters right away, waiting until 1989 to promote Dan Tobin from special contributor to editorial director. When he left in 1990, they promoted Margie Markarian, who had been Club Industry-plus editor, to editorial director.

Also in 1990, Logan and Onigman noticed a growing sports medicine market, which was part of the rehabilitation field. Always looking for an opportunity to grow, they created a magazine, Rehabilitation Today, for that market. Unfortunately, the magazine had a strong competitor in that field, and the publication only lasted until 1994.

A New Beginning

The end of Rehabilitation Today came just two years after Onigman left the publication in 1992 and a year after Logan received and accepted an offer from Cardinal Business Media to purchase the magazine and trade shows. Wanting to move from Boston back to his hometown of Chicago for family reasons, Logan said good-bye to the publication he founded.

After the sale, Tom Morgan came on board as publisher, Terry Moffat became editor-in-chief and Zari Stahl became trade show director. By this time, the magazine had grown its circulation from 15,000 to 30,000, encompassing all the areas of fitness, but mostly for-profit.

Morgan and Moffat focused on how to bring in other areas of the market, too. They began publishing fitness supplements, some of which focused on specific topics, such as cross training or the senior market. One focused on the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Exercise, which was released in the mid-1990s.

“We did a special supplement to inform and educate the industry about the report, its contents and possible implications,” says Donna Loyle, managing editor at the time.

As part of that supplement, the magazine published a two-page fold-over pamphlet about the report so club owners could offer them to their members. The pamphlet could be cut out and photocopied. Club owners could also request a bundle of 200 pamphlets.

“We moved about 60,000 of those things. The response was really significant,” Moffat says.

Other supplements focused on specific areas of the fitness business, including hotels, fire departments, corporate fitness centers and apartment complexes. The magazine partnered with trade associations and trade magazines within industries related to the supplement topic and sent overruns of the supplement to the members of that group.

“We realized that a lot of what was happening in the commercial fitness industry was in other industries that Club Industry magazine didn't reach,” Moffat says. “We were able to create nice sections, and we sold the advertising to our advertisers. The benefit was two-fold: the potential market and the customers were being told that building a fitness center and buying equipment was a good thing to do, and the people who did that were getting exposure to these markets.”

The magazine continued to cover industry news, but it carried more feature content on trends and how-to articles, Morgan says. Some of those trends included the rise of senior and medical fitness and the implications of that on the industry, for-profit vs. nonprofit clubs, and the push by some clubs to offer kids' fitness programs.

The how-to articles focused on sales, marketing, retention and operations.

“We were always trying to focus on a how-to approach as best we could,” Moffat says, noting that many of the operators in the business were small operators with one or two clubs. “We certainly wanted to identify trends and opportunities for people, but at the same time provide how-to information on how to take advantage of those trends.”

Consolidations during 1996 made it difficult to continue to grow the magazine's revenue and the supplements, even though the revenue on the event side was able to grow, Morgan says.

“It was a good magazine,” Morgan says. “The problem that I had was that the industry itself wasn't big enough to handle or allow us to execute on all the ideas we had. You had to go to the consumer side to do that.”

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2010 Penton Media Inc.

Step By Step

Club Industry's online how-to section helps readers improve retention, increase sales, energize their group exercise programming and more.

Read more about Step by Step here, including how to contribute columns.

New articles are posted online on the 10th of each month.

Videos

Elevation Series iPod Compatibility

Watch the newest informative video from Life Fitness.

World Instructor Training Schools

The World Instructor Training Schools has implemented a required internship for many of its certifications

More Video

E-Newsletters

Step by Step

The quarterly Step by Step e-newsletter links you to the latest how-to columns on retention, personal training, sales and more.

View Current Issue

Subscribe

Special Report

Each quarter, receive this e-newsletter to read articles related to a hot industry topic, such as going green, licensing/certification, design and supplements.

View Current Issue

Subscribe

Newsbeat

Delivered three times per month, this timely e-newsletter features breaking news, people on the move, mergers and acquisitions, supplier news, industry trends and more.

View Current Issue

Subscribe


A quarterly e-newsletter filled with educational articles about vital topics in the industry. Watch for three more special reports coming later this year

View Special Report: Going Green

View Special Reports

Insights into what high-level club executives think about their business and industry trends.

View Executive Insights

Practical Internet strategies to help you build customer relationships, increase revenues and lower costs.

View Web Savvy

In This Issue: March 2010 View All Past Issues

Cover Story

Just for Kids

When she announced her new Let's Move campaign last month, first lady Michelle Obama focused on encouraging more physical activity for children and better...



View the full issue
| View the digital edition

Subscribe To Club Industry Magazine

In Print and Online

Subscribe today to get the news you need and information you want from our print or digital edition as well as in our e-newsletters.

Subscribe Today!