SPORTS Trader (AUTUMN 2018)

AUTUMN 2018 Peter Chu From the Publisher Increased health awareness, an expansion of sports industry For the perspective of current trend towards rising public awareness of health and the strong promotion of sports habits by government, the fitness trend has become more prevalent in recent years. It is common to see people who wear sports equipment on the road. More and more people focus on body health and willing to spend much more time on the fitness activities. In addition to joining a gym, people also purchase fitness equipment to work out at home that reflects the excellent prospects of sports industry. According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance in Taiwan, the total revenue of the Taiwan sports industry has increased from 19.66 billion NTD in 2014 to 20.97 billion NTD in 2018. Overall, the sports related industry has grown in the past five years. Besides, a research from Allied Market Research point out that the global fitness equipment market is expected to have a scale of US$ 12.8 billion in 2022; however, the largest consumer market for global fitness equipment is still dominated by the United States, its market share is about 60% of the global market, and it is also the largest export country for Taiwan. The appearance of fitness equipment represents the concept of exercise expanding from outdoors to indoors. No longer restricted by the narrow urban space or the windy and rainy weather, people can also achieve body health indoors. Therefore, many fitness clubs, city sports centers and private sports studios have been developed to provide different fitness equipment and diverse sports courses to attract clients from different groups. There are cases of club management in foreign countries through innovative management methods to meet different customer groups; for example, the United States Planet Fitness, their main idea is "easy, won’t sweat too much, continuous uninterrupted". They encourage customers to cultivate the long-term fitness habits. This creative business model also won an overwhelming response, it brings a higher output value to the sports industry. 10