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In this case, the carpenter is lacking in intuition, tools, experience, and maturity. To name a few.

Meanwhile, we like to pretend we can design a business that will work for him.

primarily i was asking to get your opinions about crossfit in general and maybe you know people who are running crossfit gyms or you already trained in a crossfit gym.

matt z understood it right: gym or office job are the alternatives, i don't want to run a gym with no profit and then have another job beside the gym.

at oscar: a lack of tools and experience okay. why intuition? cause i use a well-known concept that works? and maturity hmm, how can you decide that? cause i am asking so much around here? i just want opinions on some topics and i think that here are a bunch of very competent people around here.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

I say go for it. Why not eh? Crossfit gyms can charge a fortune. The one in Glasgow is like £60 a month!

you lack the intuition to even know what to ask or where to go.
We are not busness owner, for starters.
To which you might be saying "but I'm asking about Crossfit" - to which I go back to my refrain that you are the main element of success in the business, not the concept.

The vast majority of businesses fail within a year or two.
What is special about you?

The fact you think we are competant regarding gym ownership is sort of laughable. While others want to tell you its raining, I'm willing to piss on your feet.

Nothing personal.

not in a single sentence i asked about something which is about the business thing behind my project.

and who else should i ask about the sports side of my project than other athletes?

i know that many businesses fail, but if everybody would be so pessimistic, there wouldn't be a single gym, ice cream shop or bar around.

you are right with "to which I go back to my refrain that you are the main element of success in the business, not the concept.", BUT in germany there are recently about 10 crossfit gyms, in america are 4000 crossfit gyms. do you see the difference? do you see the opportunity?

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

ORLY?



Guess I thought by "idea" you meant opening a cross fit gym, since, that's what the post was about.

ok, unfortunately i mentioned the financial things behind the crossfit affiliate program, so i unfortunately talked about finance in this thread. i just wanted to know some opinions on crossfit and opening up a gym in general. i don't see how people with experience in starting a business in a totally different segment could give me better opinions about the sports side of crossfit than some athletes.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

I think most Crossfit gyms do stuff other than Crossfit as well. Many are warehouse-style hard-core gyms. There's no reason that they can't do powerlifting and oly lifting as well as CF. In order to have a DF franchise, the coaches at the gym have to go through CF barbell training, so you can be pretty sure of decent qualifications to teach the big lifts. I'd go to a CF gym just for that, though I wouldn't sign up for the CF classes.

I do know that small business is incredibly difficult, complex and risky. If you have business background and training, and have a good understanding of what it takes to make a business succeed, have a good understanding of the costs involved, there's no reason not to seriously consider it. You may have a bunch more to learn first. But I think a gym of some kind, possibly involving CrossFit would potentially be feasible. But like Oscar said, I'm not a small business expert.

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

I like the idea of running your own gym. I have the same dream.

Don't like crossfit though.

I do like circuit training, and that's all crossfit is, just a lot more random with more dangerous choices of exercises. Yes, the team spirit and all that jazz is amazing. Bla bla (i see the same in "body pump" and "spin", too). The attitude by the majority of them just makes me role my eyes. I tried to like crossfit, especially when the likes of Rip (who I think parted ways with them) and Westside were getting involved, but then I came across Dave Castro and I just can't do it.

If circuit training was juggling with balls, crossfit would be juggling with knives. Looks cool and some people like stuff that looks and sounds cool for the sake of looking and sounding cool.

Anyway, crossfitters are fit, can't knock the hard work. Just don't like the whole "throw a bunch of sh*t on a wall and hope some of it sticks" approach.

The genuis of cross fit is that in response to criticism of the "throwing sh*t on the wall" approach, they made throwing sh*t on the wall a sport. Enter CF games.

Brilliant.

I think CF and tough mudder will join forces and create "tough sh*t" as a new brand.

Just my humble opinion.

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Thanks TimD

crossfit is definately some kind of hype, but that brings the opportunity to get many people to like it and open a gym.

i recite a good friend of mine: "if you go to a standard gym, it's important how much weight you can lift. but i like the miltary style of crossfit, you just have your goal and you have to achieve it, no matter how long it takes, 5 min, 20 min, 30 min."

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

There's nothing unique about that. Don't let the hype fool you. You can have your own gym and create a random amount of work for members to hit on a certain day and just tell them to do it in their own time.

Crossfit did not invent this.

At the same time, Burger King didn't invent burgers but because of the genuis marketing, many people probably think they do. And if there's no burger king in your area, you're guaranteed to make money by opening one rather than your own Burger Brand which will need to develop it's own reputation before becoming successful.

If you label it crossfit you'll get a little influx of members who like crossfit and they'll pay whatever you want to charge without question and be loyal to you. You'll also get a whole bunch of people who will say, "i would love to go to that warehouse gym, it has everything i want - bars, free weights, bumper plates, ropes, plyo boxes, etc etc etc, but it's a crossfit gym and I don't like crossfit". I.e me. One has opened right around the corner from my gym. If it wasn't crossfit I would train there.

If it's just picking up speed in your area then you may even get little influxes of MMA types who think it's perfect for their sport, for a while, until they realise they're probably safer doing the bodyweight style circuit training they were doing before because they get hurt less - and an athlete should NOT get hurt in the gym.

Anyway, i'm probably a bad person to ask. I'm sure you could make it work. I hear some CF affiliates put their own stamp on it, work outs are less random, exercise choice is safer, members are sceened before they start, etc. Then it's not really crossfit but if you still have that logo then no one will know the difference, could be best of both worlds.

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Thanks TimD

you are absolutely right with your post.

my plan is just to use the name to attract people and then offer some other courses in the gym like olympic weightlifting or special training for soccer. this could also pull more people.

my problem is that atm it would be very hard for me to open a standard gym without a big name, cause i don't won titles or so at sports and i'm not really big, so that others would say that i'm definately a good trainer. in germany the people are also not so interested in weightlifting, the standard german is untrained and does maybe some machine work, they like this concepts for 20 euro with no advised training and just some machines, so they can feel they did something in the gym.

but there is a little opportunity: as soon as a crossfit style gym opened near my hometown, which was called crosshall (so no real affiliate) all the big guys from the standard 20 euro gym went to this gym, maybe i could use this effect, too. but it has also cross in the gym name, maybe that is pulling the people.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

I'd like to clarify a bit why I said, "...you would not be asking us."

First reason has been gone over, so I won't belabor the point, but we are not crossfitters. So asking us is like asking a Catholic whether you should open a Lutheran church. No matter how thoughtful he is and how open minded he tries to be, he's going to end up saying no.

But much more importantly, we are not German (at least not majority). And your market is Germans. Specifically Germans within a small radius of your proposed location.

Important questions you would need to answer:

1) Do you have euro equivalent of USD 100,000 to equip and furnish a gym. There is a critical mass of machines and weights you must have, every piece you don't have below that cuts your membership in half.

2) Based on your expenses, how much cash will keep you eating beans and keep your lady friend in diamonds and furs for 6 months? 12 months? 18 months?

3) What percentage of Germans are members of a gym, what is their median age and monthly gym bill?

4) What is the median distance a German is willing to travel to get to their gym?

5) Using your answers to 3 and 4, what is your maximum possible membership count if you opened it near your own home and every single likely gym member joined your gym?

6) Take your answer from #5 and take 10% of that. That is how many members you can expect as a best case in 6 months. (I completely made up the 10% factor, it is probably very optimistic, you might get 1%)

6) Take your answer from 6 and 3, go back to 2, is it enough?

Notice that "crossfit" never came into the discussion. If Crossfit is gaining in popularity then you will get a nice easy boost in membership numbers for 6 months to 2 years after which the fad will pass and you'll see your income drop fast as everybody gives up on crossfit because they are sick of vomiting.

Hope this helps.

good overview, ken!

after the idea came to my mind, i researched about crossfits in germany, members of the gym, where i train, the population in the region etc. and i made a financial plan how much money i should have in the beginning and how much members i need to pay the rent for the facility, to pay the credit and to get enough for myself per month. this calculation was very positive, so i openend this thread here to get some infos on gym openings and your opinion on crossfit.

btw: i think for 100.000 usd i could open minimum two crossfit gyms, cause i don't need machines and the rest is way cheaper (barbells etc.). i don't want to buy a facility and the rent is very low, cause many companies went busto.

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"his hands can't hit what his eyes can't see" - muhammad ali

You can get a good Crossfit setup pretty cheap but you do have to be prepared to live out of your own pocket for a while. There are a couple gym owner here, Jason Nunn and Halfbreed both have gyms although neither has posted here in a while. Here's Jason's web site: http://www.nunnsperformancetraining.com/

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD