Why We Rebranded Our Gym

You've probably heard of "niching down".

The idea is to serve the smallest, most specific audience you can define. Because the smaller the audience, the easier it is to create something they'll love and the easier it is to market to them.

Most unicorns and successful brands start this way—niche—but inversely, not many small businesses do.

We've done a good and bad job of niching down in businesses we've run. Sometimes, it's scary. We worry we'll lose "the other" customers.

It took us seven years to make the leap at Compound (our gym).

We shifted from being an everyone's gym to an athletes' gym. Yeah, it's not exactly pioneering. Most athletes go to the gym. But the outcomes backed up all our previous experiences that niching down, works.

We didn't just become an athlete's gym overnight. It took us years of investing in our equipment, layout, and other aspects to reach a point where we could confidently say, "We're here to serve athletes".

Perhaps that's the most interesting thing about this experience. Until we said it out loud, none of our investments to that point mattered. It's backwards, but your product (in our case, our gym) doesn't tell people who you're here to serve; you do.

Literally, the day we rebranded, people started cancelling their memberships because they weren't athletes, and we no longer served them. This continued unabated for months.

The odd thing is that we changed precisely nothing at the gym during those first few months after the rebrand. Those who left were getting the same exact product and experience pre- and post-rebrand.

But guess what else happened? This is why our rebrand has been worth it.

With consistent messaging, we've become top of mind for athletes looking for a gym. The more we've called them out, the more they've come.

Since our rebrand, we've attracted professional sports teams, ex-All Blacks, world representative athletes, and even dancing with the star's competitors. The shift in clientele that we're attracting has been seismic. We even get people coming to us because "XYZ trains here."

Other factors have contributed to our turnaround, but niching-down has been the most influential.?

What are your thoughts on niching down? Have you tried it in your business? Share your experiences in the comments below!

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Authors: Kale Panoho and Rhys Jeffery