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Store Manager Makes Micro Gainz For Macro Profits
Opportunities are everywhere! The world of fitness and wellness is one of the industries ripe with potential for income-generating projects. That's because anyone who's into fitness or wellness tends to invest money in those areas.
Michael Reed works as an assistant manager for Weis Markets, a popular grocery store chain in New England. In his spare time he's an avid gym junkie—weight training in particular is one of his favorite ways to exercise.
He enjoys barbell training. It provides a measurable way to progress: put in the work this week, next week you'd be slightly stronger, then slightly stronger again the week after that. Eventually though, lifters reach what's known as a plateau—the point at which they stop making rapid improvements.
That's because most barbell weights come in five-pound increments. As the overall weight gets higher, improvements—known as gains—get harder to come by. Lifting an additional five pounds on a heavy barbell is much harder than on a light one.
When Michael hit his plateau, he came across micro weight plates: small sets of weights that lifters add to their dumbbells to increase the overall weight in smaller increments—a quarter, half, three quarters or a full pound. He looked at what was available on Amazon: limited options, expensive, and almost all made in China. Being a handy kind of guy, Michael figured he could make some cheaper himself. He called it Micro Gainz—with a z—Micro for the small plates and Gainz for the inevitable gains weightlifters would have using them.
To start, Michael went to a local steel laser cutter and had twenty-five of each size cut, from a quarter pound to one pound. That was enough for him to make eight sets. He hung the plates up in his shed, used a spray gun to paint them black, put a sticker of his logo and the corresponding weight on each plate. Within a couple of days he had his first batch of Micro Gainz plates ready to sell.
Just two days after listing them on eBay, his first customer bought two sets. Michael was thrilled.
He soon moved to Amazon and, before long, was getting a consistent stream of orders. He has since expanded from a shed to a dedicated warehouse, grown to a team including a full-time employee and a few part-timers. In less than three years, it became a six-figure business.
Fun Fact: The fitness industry is an enormous market in the USA. With close to 40,000 different clubs and estimated revenues of 30 billion per year, there's plenty of opportunities to be had.
Words of Wisdom: Research all potential competitors in the market and figure out how much they are selling in order to see if their product is worth producing. Look up their seller rank and find out roughly how many they were selling in a month. Once you have that information you can come up with a basic business model to determine if the business is feasible.
