When trying to make money for your fitness center, which is the better option: leasing or purchasing gym equipment?
Running any business is not easy, but fitness centers are so much different in quite a few ways. First off, gyms have the potential to do so much more as far as business because you can gain long term members that keep attending your gym and keep your business going.
With enough members, you can end up creating a full community for you and your business, making your fitness center as successful as possible. Fitness centers rely heavily on their setup; customers are, after all, people using your equipment, and you need the best equipment possible to make your business work.
There are many factors to your business, such as advertising and your location, but the equipment you purchase is very important for many reasons, the main one being good equipment means more members for your fitness center. That’s why examining whether you should be leasing or purchasing gym equipment is so important, because you want good hardware but the challenge is always in the finances.
When opening a business, you already need to pay rent, utilities, licensing, and employees, but adding on the heavy cost of equipment can be far too much for a business to handle, especially when they’re fairly new.
Purchasing Gym Equipment
The main advantage to purchases is the benefit of ownership; nothing feels better than knowing the hardware is your property. As a business owner, you already put the work in to own the business, and now you want to be able to own the equipment that runs it as well; once you actually get in that position, however, things get a little different.
First off, when you first try to purchase the equipment, you do get to claim it as an asset and get some funding for the hardware. However, with gym equipment you need as much as possible and the best equipment possible, because that’s what attracts people to a gym.
Nobody wants to go to a gym that doesn’t have enough variety in equipment to whet their appetite, and none of them want to wait to use hardware either. Because of this, purchasing gym equipment normally ends in getting a bank loan, which can be a problem solely because of the downsides of equipment itself.
Over time, hardware will either break down or become outdated, and when that happens, and if you still haven’t paid off that loan with interest, you’ll be forced to get another just to replace your hardware, digging you further into debt. In general, anything with an interest rate that’s too high is something you want to avoid, so if you do end up getting a loan, it’s best to make sure you’re getting a reasonable interest rate or the amount you’re borrowing isn’t too high.
Leasing or Purchasing Gym Equipment
The advantage in leasing is that it contradicts all of the downsides of purchasing gym equipment: instead of paying everything up front, you pay a flat, monthly rate over the period of a contract. You get to hold on to the equipment as long as you keep paying the rate, and at the end of the lease you get to choose whether you want to continue the lease with new, upgraded equipment or not.
You can even purchase the equipment you leased at a borrowed price if you were planning on using leasing to get your gym on its feet first. Fitness centers as new businesses will always be a challenge, but after some time with leasing, you can spend much less on the equipment and focus on getting your business as on track as possible.
Once your business is all set, you can get your own equipment for your gym, but many companies don’t do even that; most companies with expensive hardware will end up leasing at least a percentage of their equipment. After all, there are quite a few advantages to leasing your hardware: you get a tax deductible to put money in your pocket, you get to get your hardware repaired at a lower rate, and you get upgrades.
All of that and more is available for your gym, making life easier for you while you start your company. To learn more about leasing or purchasing gym equipment, click here.