Body Firm offers fitness, reliability

Scott Felsted could see that his wife, teacher of a high-energy, dance-fused aerobics class, did a great job getting her students in shape.

He liked his wife's rapport with the students and other instructors and thought he'd seen a product that would appeal to a lot of people.

He was right. Body Firm Aerobics, which operates Gold's Gym franchises in Utah, today claims one in every 10 Utahns as customers, with ambitious plans for expansion.

When Felsted began growing the aerobics business, he was getting into an industry known for producing a string of unreliable, failed companies, and many potential customers had negative views of health clubs.

But Felsted persevered, building clubs at a steady rate, improving existing gyms and even offering members of failed gyms a place to work out. In partnering with Gold's Gym, Felsted worried about the company's muscle-bound, gym-rat image and employed a marketing firm to rebrand the gym's image in Utah.

He built new gyms in buildings that formerly housed retail and grocery stores, ensuring not only central commercial locations but also high-ceilinged, open layouts for the gyms, which helped attract new customers.

Felsted provided everything from weights to basketball and racquetball courts and even full-size lap pools, further driving growth. He plans to keep expanding into northern and southern Utah, with a goal of opening 20 clubs by 2010.