On Finding Your Wedge
On Finding Your Wedge
Value wedges drive successful businesses. What's yours?
OK - point taken. It seems bacon is far too popular of a meat to cast as “commodity” amongst the gym community (the world?)
What yesterdays’ post about Being iberico really is asking for is for you to find your wedge.
WTF is a wedge? Hint: it’s not a salad with bacon on it.
This is a term used in larger industries - but equally applicable to gyms:
A wedge is simply a strategy to win a large market by initially capturing (1) a tiny part of a larger market or (2) a large part of a small adjacent market. (read more here)
Wedges are usually narrow and focused. They solve very specific problems for a very specific group, extremely well.
Why Do I Need A Wedge?
Without a wedge, your business is a commodity. The larger the wedge your build, the larger your business can stand out from the crowd.
This is simply because you can deliver more unique value ot your customers than your competition can if you develop a strong wedge.
Without a wedge, you are building a business at value parity to your competition. And at value parity, you can only compete on price.
This is why some gyms in the area have ACV’s of $400/month on their members and most gyms have ACV’s of $180/month.
Go Big or Niche Down?
As the definition states, you can either try to win a tiny part of a larger market or a larger part of a niched market.
Unless your aspirations are to go global, leveraging the Internet to distribute to a market outside of your local area you have no choice but to niche down.
Niching down will allow you to bring a service to your local market that is unique and stands along and gives you first mover advantages. It will also separate you from the rest of the competition, giving you the ability to market your services in a vacuum.
So generally speaking - niche down.
Previous Wedges In Fitness
We’ve seen wedges play out many times over the years in the gym space. Some of them have legs, some have proven to not.
Jane Fonda, P90X, and Beach Body all found tremendous wedges in bringing fitness into the living room over the decades.
Street Parking went big and structured community based high intensity fitness for people who were either gym-less or wanted to work out from home.
24 Hour Fitness created a massive (and lasting) wedge by positioning as one of the first 24 hour access facilities.
CrossFit created another massive (and lasting) wedge by combining many known fitness concepts into what’s become community based, group lead, constantly varied high intensity fitness.
Rock Climbing gyms found a wedge, creating a new market for the sport of indoor climbing and giving recreational outdoor climbers easy access to train.
Stroller Fitness groups like Fit4Mom and Strong Like a Mother have found brilliant wedges in the postpartum fitness space.
High pressure sales driven “90 day challenges” formed a short, intense wedge a few years back - and have since fizzled out.
What’s a Wedge For My Market?
Ah, that’s the beauty for you to figure out! Literally it can be anything you can determine your market will love thats’ different from what’s being done today.
Remember. Wedges need to be narrow and focused. They need to solve a very specific problem for a very specific group. And they need to solve that problem extremely well.
Some ideas:
Building high ticket personal training or nutrition coaching into your boutique studio can be a wedge in your local market if most of your competition is simply selling group fitness.
Executive fitness catering to the business professional short on time and aware of the health risks of extreme stress.
After school programs designed to help busy parents get their kids additional movement and away-from-screen time.
Wedding fitness programs, helping busy wedding parties hit desired outcomes with short deadlines during a high stress time of their lives.
Find your wedge!