Taipei Times: Can you talk about the changes in the fitness market over the past 20 years?
Pure Tsai (蔡純真): When I opened my first center in Taipei, people in Taiwan generally had no concept of exercising or maintaining their figure in fitness facilities. Therefore, I advocated exercise and fitness with my home videos at that time.
It was really tough at the beginning. It was not until the past five or six years that the industry has started to take off. People living in the cities started to seek exercise to release pressure but found no space to work out in. Aside from the health issues, people want to maintain their figures to make themselves look good, which also helps boost the industry.
Based on my observations, the customers also extended from women to men, from middle age working class to the younger generation. Now that the business pie is becoming bigger, fitness center operators tend to target different consumers.
For example, we focus on high-incomes consumers between 25 and 65 years old with our roomy and exquisite centers, while others target younger generation with entertainment facilities.
TT: As the number of gym-goers has increased in Taiwan, many companies have been plunging into this market. From your viewpoint, has this market saturated already? If not, how much further can it grow?
Tsai: As I see it, the market is far from saturated even with many players in the market. I expect one out of four adults to join a fitness club, while currently we are only at 1 percent in the Taipei region. This shows that the market has great potential. I'm pretty optimistic about it.
According to one of our surveys, consumers in Taiwan with monthly salaries of NT$35,000 or above are willing to pay NT$2,000 to NT$8,000 a month to lose weight or improve their figures. But before we can garner all our target customers, we still focus on improving our service quality to satisfy our current members.
TT: As a forerunner in this industry, how are you going to compete with entries that are rapidly expending to erode your market share?
Tsai: We never tried to compete with them. As I said earlier, the fitness clubs in Taiwan tend to target different groups, so our membership numbers did not drop due to the new competitors. In fact, their joining the sector has instead helped spur a sporting trend here, which drives the industry by attracting more people to come to the gyms.
I still remember when I first started my business, I needed to spend a lot of time introducing my products and service, as well as explaining to potential customers why they needed us.
But we don't need to put in that much effort now, as people already have a general awareness of who we are and what we would offer. As a result, we now focus on advancing our service to maintain our long-standing reputation.
TT: Your Youth Camp Health Group recently got a lot of media attention with the luxurious 1,700-ping Oxy Gym (氧身運動館) to be opened in March in the Taipei 101 Mall, which aims to collect 101 VIP members with a stunning annual fee of NT$1.01 million aside from ordinary members. How did you come up with such an idea in the first place and has the goal been reached yet?
Tsai: As a veteran in this area for over 20 years, I figured out that many entrepreneurs and industrialists barely have time to exercise, let alone conduct health management themselves. With this program, we provide physical training, health management classes, massage, therapy, nutritionists' homemade health food and other services. We require them to come to our class at least twice a month. The initial response to our program has been very positive as we've collected 70 members so far. We will open the registration for the rest of the quota when we launch the store. I am confident that the quota will be filled soon as many have approached me regarding obtaining the VIP membership.
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