twelve years for Fitness First to grow from a single club in the UK to a sixteen-country, 500-plus gym and 1.2 million–member organisation. Sydney was home to the 500th Fitness First gym in 2006. In 2005, Fitness First was acquired by a private equity firm (BC Partners) for over US$2 billion. It is the fastest growing health club company in the world; in 2007 Fitness First registered an 18 per cent growth in earnings and was on track to match its 2006 record of forty-nine new clubs worldwide. In the UK, the company has enjoyed sixteen consecutive months of impressive like-for-like sales growth (even excluding the impact of new clubs).
Organic food only accounts for 1 to 2 per cent of food sales worldwide, but the organic food market is growing rapidly. The organic food market in the United States has enjoyed 17 to 20 per cent growth over the past few years. Meanwhile conventional food sales grew only at 2 to 3 per cent a year, or in other words about the same rate as the growth in population. Multinationals are beginning to see the value of these products and to invest in organic produce, leading to increased competition, increasing economies of scale, and a subsequent decrease in price and increase in accessibility to fuel the market and force heavily polluting and industrialised agribusiness to clean up its act. Earlier in the chapter I talked about Wal-Mart's green push into practices and products that further environmental sustainability. That has included a substantial increase in organic food offerings in the grocery sections of Wal-Mart stores.
In the UK, the market has gone from just over £100 million in 1994 to £1.2 billion in 2006, and will break the £2 billion mark in 2010. Tesco – the nation's largest supermarket chain – reported a 30 per cent rise in organic sales in 2005–06. Here in Australia the organic food market is valued at A$400 million a year and has enjoyed 25 to 30 per cent growth per year over the last few years.
Vitamins and food supplements (the epitome of selfhelp and self-medication) are a booming market. For example, the European Molecular Biology Association puts the global food supplements industry consumption at roughly 125 billion euros a year. In the European Union in 2001, sales of food supplements reached almost two billion euros, which was growth of almost 7.7 per cent from the previous year.
In the UK in 2005, vitamin sales alone were valued at over £320 million, which constituted over 15 per cent of total overthe- counter drug sales. This was up from £280 million in 2001 and included a massive 8 per cent jump in 2004. The UK Food Standards Agency places the consumption of high-dosage vitamins alone at between £30–40 million a year, and says nearly 50 per cent of the population takes vitamins.
Obviously there are more X-factors, and the list could probably go on forever. This is enough to get your mind clicking over. What X-factor can you offer to set you apart from your competitors?
When you come up with some possible X-factors (the only limit on them is your imagination), you need a model to work from as you set about redesigning and repositioning your products and services. And you need to do it from the perspective of the customer. The model I suggest you work from is what I call the total ownership experience.
THE TOTAL OWNERSHIP EXPERIENCE
A few years ago Joseph Pine and James Gilmore published a wonderful book called The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage . The book has been very successful – deservedly so – but I sometimes become almost angry at how little people seem to have learned from it. I meet real estate agents, retailers and even bankers who say they've read the book and who talk urgently about the customer experience. When I ask them what they are doing about it, they say things like, 'We brew coffee before we show a new house to stimulate the senses'; 'We make sure there is lots of colour in the stores' or 'We have all
Organic food only accounts for 1 to 2 per cent of food sales worldwide, but the organic food market is growing rapidly. The organic food market in the United States has enjoyed 17 to 20 per cent growth over the past few years. Meanwhile conventional food sales grew only at 2 to 3 per cent a year, or in other words about the same rate as the growth in population. Multinationals are beginning to see the value of these products and to invest in organic produce, leading to increased competition, increasing economies of scale, and a subsequent decrease in price and increase in accessibility to fuel the market and force heavily polluting and industrialised agribusiness to clean up its act. Earlier in the chapter I talked about Wal-Mart's green push into practices and products that further environmental sustainability. That has included a substantial increase in organic food offerings in the grocery sections of Wal-Mart stores.
In the UK, the market has gone from just over £100 million in 1994 to £1.2 billion in 2006, and will break the £2 billion mark in 2010. Tesco – the nation's largest supermarket chain – reported a 30 per cent rise in organic sales in 2005–06. Here in Australia the organic food market is valued at A$400 million a year and has enjoyed 25 to 30 per cent growth per year over the last few years.
Vitamins and food supplements (the epitome of selfhelp and self-medication) are a booming market. For example, the European Molecular Biology Association puts the global food supplements industry consumption at roughly 125 billion euros a year. In the European Union in 2001, sales of food supplements reached almost two billion euros, which was growth of almost 7.7 per cent from the previous year.
In the UK in 2005, vitamin sales alone were valued at over £320 million, which constituted over 15 per cent of total overthe- counter drug sales. This was up from £280 million in 2001 and included a massive 8 per cent jump in 2004. The UK Food Standards Agency places the consumption of high-dosage vitamins alone at between £30–40 million a year, and says nearly 50 per cent of the population takes vitamins.
Obviously there are more X-factors, and the list could probably go on forever. This is enough to get your mind clicking over. What X-factor can you offer to set you apart from your competitors?
When you come up with some possible X-factors (the only limit on them is your imagination), you need a model to work from as you set about redesigning and repositioning your products and services. And you need to do it from the perspective of the customer. The model I suggest you work from is what I call the total ownership experience.
THE TOTAL OWNERSHIP EXPERIENCE
A few years ago Joseph Pine and James Gilmore published a wonderful book called The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage . The book has been very successful – deservedly so – but I sometimes become almost angry at how little people seem to have learned from it. I meet real estate agents, retailers and even bankers who say they've read the book and who talk urgently about the customer experience. When I ask them what they are doing about it, they say things like, 'We brew coffee before we show a new house to stimulate the senses'; 'We make sure there is lots of colour in the stores' or 'We have all
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