| News & Know How | First Person CBI Spends 10 Minutes on the Line with
Guy Cammilleri W
In December of 2008, the Joyce J. Cammilleri family, the founders and owners of JOICO, a major multinational provider of salon haircare products, purchased World Gym International from Planet Fitness. Guy Cammilleri now serves as World Gym’s managing director.
“ .com
To learn more about JOICO, the Cammilleri family business that facilitated the purchase of World Gym, log on to
www.joico.com.
hy did the owners of a large global haircare company consider purchasing World Gym? What’s the connection? How have they changed
World Gym, and what have they learned in the process? Where will they focus their future efforts? Are any new products in the offing?
When we weren’t making our line of salon haircare products—which is the best in the world—we were in the gym working out. My dad was a competitive bodybuilder, as were my younger brothers. I’m the black sheep in the family because I only work out five days per week! My mom has always been interested in improving the health and fitness of people throughout the world, so buying World Gym was as much a philanthropic opportunity as it was a profitable business venture.
The bottom line is my family eats, breathes, and dreams working out. As a result, we can think of no better industry to participate in. In fact, from my perspective, our success in a different industry was merely the preparatory act for our success in what, for our family, is the most natural of industries: fitness.
World Gym is the most iconic brand in the global industry. Founded by Joe Gold and popularized by celebrity bodybuilders—Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Dave Draper, Franco Columbo, Frank Zane, Eddie Giuliani, Ric Drasin, and Zabo, to name a few—World Gym has always been the world-renowned brand of serious fun fitness, the place where Muscle Beach meets Hollywood. From our perspective, deciding whether to become part of the World Gym family wasn’t even a question. We’ve been fans of the World Gym brand all of our lives.
As we got started with World Gym and began to familiarize ourselves with the industry’s statistics, I was shocked to learn how low the club penetration rate was in all the developed coun- tries. That figure tells me that the industry hasn’t yet figured out how to turn a mere ‘gym’ into a ‘fitness community.’ Surely, the rush to commod-
itize fitness that we’ve seen over the past decade won’t solve that problem. Consequently, our goal at World Gym is to transform people’s current ideas about what a gym really is.
We’re lucky in that respect, as most innovation in the industry occurs at the grassroots level, provided by independent franchisees that have been given the freedom to experiment with their fitness model. I can’t begin to describe how much I’ve learned from the many existing World Gym franchisees that I’ve met during my travels.
Thus far, we’ve made a number of changes to help support the brand, global growth, and our franchisees. We’ve just completed our rebranding project, which involved spending time exploring the very DNA of the brand. The brand essence that we’ve embraced—World Gym as the global intersection of Muscle Beach and Hollywood—is a true reflection and extension of our historic roots. By making our branding consistent, franchisees, increasingly, will produce and operate facilities that look and feel like World Gyms everywhere.
We’ve also developed a number of exclusive relationships with best-in-class vendors to increase the level of service our franchisees receive, while reducing their costs.
Going forward, we intend to focus more on our international business. Over the next couple of years, more than 50% of our growth will be taking place outside of the U.S. We’re also actively searching for the ideal location to build a new headquarters gym in Southern California, and we’re developing a high-performance line of workout apparel for 2011.
” —| www.
ihrsa.org | SEPTEMBER 2010 | Club Business Internat ional 25
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