“Retailers understand that it is critical to enhance the convenience of the overall shopping experience, given that convenience is linked to customer satisfaction and intentions to shop the store in the future, as well as the overall attitude toward the shopping experience…” ¹
Think about it, the best products always make life easier in some way, shape or form.
So, I’m here in Oxford, MS this week, my second home. This is the town where I attended Ole Miss for my undergraduate degree and where I opened my very first business when I was 23, a basic gym with a weight room and an aerobics studio back in 1987. There were no 24 hour gyms to speak of back in the 80’s.
Now fast-forward to 2017.
Once again in Oxford, I decided to open a gym. This time I had the opportunity to open with three great business partners. My intention was to create a completely new type of fitness facility, one with newly developed, patent pending, workout conveniences based on heat, infrared energy and isometrics.
With that goal in mind, the 24 hour infrared fitness studio concept was born.
HOTWORX became the first ever fitness studio that enabled clients to experience hot yoga (and over 10 other hot exercise options as well) 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!
When I’m in Oxford (the greatest small town in America, I might add) I spend a lot of time at Uptown Coffee which is located downtown on The Square. Many of my blog articles including this one have been written from this coffee shop. When I first got here today I sat my computer backpack down in one of my favorite spots and then proceeded to the counter to get some java.
When I was checking out, the gentleman behind the counter asked me how long I had been with HOTWORX (my company affiliation given away no doubt by the hat I was wearing flipped backwards for fitness readiness, lol).
I responded with the story of how we opened the original location here in Oxford on February 13 of last year. It’s hard to believe that it has only been one and a half years since that event, but during that time a lot of life has been lived and many great workouts have been experienced.
Getting to the point…the young barista then went on to ask me about hot yoga and I told him why he would love our version of hot yoga at 125 degrees. He also was extremely excited about the HOTWORX Burn Off App when I told him that it would allow him to book any workout he wants at any time of day.
Time is money, as the old saying goes, and more convenience creates greater value in the minds of customers!
People want convenience so that they can obtain desired results without wasting time. As a business person I am not really big on long philosophical mission statements. Rather, I prefer to let the business do the talking by providing a great product and a great service. That being said, after a few short weeks of being open with the original location in Oxford, we realized that our “de facto” mission was simply to provide great workouts fast so that people can have more time to live…
More Workout, Less Time!
The end result of that brief conversation resulted in me handing the gentleman 4 workout passes. He seemed very happy and looked forward to coming in to the studio with his friends.
The convenience factor is one of the most powerful customer motivators of all.
Steve
