Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is theirself a fraud, quack, charlatan, or the like. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil).

When it comes to preventing my clients and prospects from squandering their investment on boutique, bespoke and or luxury design, I will speak out. I may ruffle some feathers. I may not be politically correct. Many may not listen. I have literally shown prospects that the design aesthetics they were considering were identical to that which McDonald's was embracing, yet they could not see it. Better explained, they saw it, but they've been so brainwashed by lifestyle magazines and HGTV that they will sell out their OWN brand identity to the boutique design trend rather than developing their own. Imagine, opening your fitness-wellness-gym model and your interior design was not to different from the local fast food restaurant....and this does happen.

It's not just the magazines, its the rhetoric being sold to developers. If all this sounds like design double talk, it's meant to be, here's the snake oil. Design firm's espousing terms such as bespoke, intelligent, sophisticated, popular and stylish should cause you to question whether or not the restaurants, lounges, condominiums and McDonald's, down the street from your gym, have also employed bespoke, intelligent, sophisticated, popular and stylish design, because they have.

We've recently had some back and forth (third party removed) with colleagues who are developing a low price point gym. So how does luxury gym design now segue into a low price point gym model? We'll it doesn't, and that's the point, yet the developers of this low price point gym model are hiring a residential luxury design firm to design their facility. Residential/luxury designers daily practice revolves around selecting carpeting, dining tables and artwork for their clients homes. However, if they design anything commercial, it's simply another W Boutique Hotel design wannabe. And now their going to design you're gym. Let me know how that works out for you.

This developer (above) would've been better off compensating their general contractor to develop the design rather than retaining a firm that practices residential luxury design. At least the contractor would have the detached sense of ego to know that he was designing a gym and not a glorified residential exercise room, which by the way, will be the result of the work developed by this type of design firm.

This is not cynicism or sarcasm, this is reality. I continue to see design firms exploitation of their clients... delivering aesthetics which are pedestrian, commonplace and trendy, that in short order will be upstaged by the competition or simply be seen by the public as non-event, another Boutique Hotel wannabe. Boutique Gym Design

The design firm of this facility above placed pretty framed art work on the treadmill wall which illustrates that the principals of this design firm may have never stepped on a treadmill before.

Here you go. You can build an upscale luxury wellness-fitness-health-club-gym without embracing the boutique design clichés. However, your aesthetics must evolve organically and reflect your business model and reinforce you branding platform. Your design can be luxurious, or cool, or stylish, or powerful and it can telegraph fitness or excitement. But the only way to do that is to look inward for your own brand identity and entirely ignore the noise generated by those who want you to buy into their vision, not yours.

About: Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He's a former faculty member and holds a BFA with Distinction, and a Professional Design Diploma, from the New York School of Interior Design, ranked 4th in the World for superior interior design curriculum's by US News and World Report. Cuoco Black is additionally the designer of the Experimental Cocktail Club, Paris France, rated one of the top 20 Bars in the world by foodandwine.com.   

Does you gym's reception area sell memberships? It does for the gym in this header image above!

Yet consider the aesthetics of the reception areas of its competitors below...

This is no condemnation of these two brands nor their aesthetics, they're highly successful business models, and they're in close proximity to the club in the header image......however, there is something significantly important emerging here for the industry

While your entry is a transition space between outdoors and in, your reception area is the front office and nerve center of your business. It’s also the space where members get their first impression of what to expect of your offering. If you’re going to be in the gym business then you need to think like the A+ players, and I don't mean the existing gym players, I mean Apple, and Disney and Tesla.

"If you want to dominate your market you must steal the show...." While the club in the header image, Source Fitness of St Clairsville OH., does not have the eyes of fitness editorial or the ear of the investment groups and franchisors and their deep pockets, this independent gym, and more new brands on the horizon, are making headway against the chains baby's, their franchisee's.

I'm sure you've heard little about it i.e., the de facto invincibility of the chains. Yet new, stealthy, entrepreneurial independent gym developers are waging small battles in a larger war and emerging the victor. Since our content is design-specific and delivered in direct proportion to those who will most benefit, independent developers, we'll focus on aesthetics and leave global-fitness-political-rhetoric aside.

Simply....a fitness prospect researching the marketplace as a means to select a gym would get what impression when visiting the three gym brands illustrated in this post? Really, after looking at the three gyms pictured, what impression does each have on you?

Its been noted that a consumer shops with their eyes and commits emotionally, or not, if the right triggers are pulled. It's our understanding that Source Fitness reached their target membership numbers exceedingly fast, excitedly so, in a marketplace with firmly entrenched chain models. That's a refreshing insight into the power of pedigreed and superior design and its ability to seduce a savvy public into buying into your brand, let's just nicely say they usurped their competition.  

The good news is that any gym brand can employ this strategy by considering the following principals.

1. Know the Six Gym Design Trends that hold the industry in a death spiral of better sameness, and commit to NOT embracing their aesthetic models. Produce and deliver to your market a superior and unique branded design that is exponentially 10X better than your competition. In essence, don't do better sameness. 

2. Know the 80/20 rule, theoretically invest 80% of your construction budget in your facility's reception area and the remaining balance in the remainder of the facility. Remember, I said theoretical. The point being, if you build a dramatic reception area, as did Source Fitness, it will most likely trigger prospects to buy into your brand and dismiss your competitors as an inferior product.

3. Know you marketing platform and brand identity and differentiation factors. In harmony, you can upstage and dominate your market, and you don't have to compete on price.

About: Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He's a former faculty member and holds a BFA with Distinction, and a Professional Design Diploma, from the New York School of Interior Design, ranked 4th in the World for superior interior design curriculum's by US News and World Report. Cuoco Black is additionally the designer of the Experimental Cocktail Club, Paris France, rated one of the top 20 Bars in the world by foodandwine.com.   

Guy Kawasaki, former technology evangelist for Apple says it best....

“I have tried to enchant people with great stuff and I have tried to enchant people with crap…let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to enchant people with great stuff than crap…it’s the skin of it” (Silicon Valley Bank, 2011, YouTube, 12 Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Guy Kawasaki).

Mr. Kawasaki further describes "jumping curves" and avoiding "better sameness" which I take to mean, a brand should deliver a product to the market that is exponentially 10X superior to anything the competition can create. For all the malls and shopping districts I've experienced I have NO recall of any computer manufacturer upstaging or usurping Apple's retail branded outlets. Why?

1. Complete dominance over the marketplace including % of market share.
2. Impede, inhibit and psychological stave off any competitors considering entering the market.

Branding Lesson: I-N-T-I-M-I-D-A-T-E the competition forcing them to bypass your market.

1. But That's Not How It's Done

What gym developer would open a luxury gym brand in the same area as an Equinox? Plenty. What gym developer would open a low price point gym near a Planet Fitness? Plenty. What developer would open a comparable chain gym model in the same area of a Crunch franchise? Plenty. What CrossFit Box developer would open a CrossFit Box in the same city as another CrossFit owner? Plenty.

Why do developers continue to invest in blurred brands? This is standard protocol in the fitness industry, and most other, and frankly, if you're not scratching your head by now after reading this in print, you should be.

Those who benefit in this practice are the consumers. You've given the consumer leverage and control over YOUR market. They can pick and choose, kick tires, and compare features of your facility over your competition. They have leverage and options. Why would you invest in, create a business model, and deliver it to your market if it wasn't 10X better than anything out there? Answer: better sameness. And the outcome will be a slugfest between you and your competition fighting for market share.

Better sameness is the result of the developer/builder who doesn't have expertise in design and/or the limited skill set of the design firm and their inability to deliver branded 10X caliber design to the owner.

2. For New Brands

I put forward this theory. You're either magnifciently superior to your competition, e.g., Apple, or only incrementally so, i.e., better sameness.

It becomes critically important for new brands to be aware of this phenomena as the preexisting competition already has the consumers attention, and their dollars. Better sameness is an insidious detractor of a branding strategy usurping innovative and original design. Better sameness strips a business of unique marketing opportunities by creating design that's commonplace and pedestrian. This creates a window of opportunity enabling the competition to enter into your market. Why on earth would you give your competition any advantage? Will this impact your revenue? You bet it will.

3. Don't Leave Branding Opportunities On The Table

The title of this post "Don't Leave Branding Opportunities On The Table" set the stage for illustrating the advantages of powerbranding. Inversely, leaving branding opportunities on the table is exactly the outcome of design infected by better sameness, meaning, design which undermines exclusivity and misuses the developers cash investment. Design firms that deliver better sameness miss BOTH the big picture, and the small, and set their clients up for mediocre branding. 

1. Better sameness design results in space planning and layout that is unimaginative and banal. In contrast, good space planning carves and sculpts the rooms of your facility into an enriching, exciting and engaging member experience that can celebrate your design and reinforce the uniqueness of your brand.  
2. Better sameness lighting design is lifeless and utilitarian merely illuminating rooms and corridors. In contrast, good lighting design can generate drama and theater and create spectacular environments which effort is to seduce prospects to buy into your brand. Lighting fixtures that reinforce your theme and the caliber of your brand are instrumental in lighting design efforts as well. (I mention lighting design as it's one of the most misunderstood and misused tools in a design firm's palette which can make or break your design effort).
3. Better sameness materials, finishes, furniture and design elements are typically selected by better sameness design firms on the merits of how pretty and nice they look. There's NO relationship to the brand, and if any, only marginally so. The hallmark and benchmark of powerbranding is the ability to back-link and reinforce the theme and brand identity in the selection of every design element in your facility.

....all this means that design firms that create better sameness leave countless branding opportunities on the table which simply is the squandering of their client's investment.

4. Brand Like Apple


In order to stave off its competition and dominate its market, Apple's designers employ PowerBranding. Every material, surface element, mechanical system, graphic, furniture display, and color, back-link and reinforce the brand concept and facilitate the sale. Greater than that, it's a marketing message that resonates with the public. It telegraphs that this is a company that has its act together and its products and services are seamlessly integrated insuring consumer confidence and brand quality.

Mr. Kawasaki says, "it's the skin of it" - so what's the complexion of your brand's skin?