Oxygen Insight

Below you will find a selection of recent articles from Oxygen Consulting.

	Ray's Rimini Wellness Conference presentation (2007) that you can watch on the web site (no need to download the file). Click on the arrows to advance the slides.
	State of the UK Health/Fitness Industry Merger and acquisition activity is this year's major theme with Virgin Active now Britain's second largest health club chain, after Fitness First. This follows Virgin's acquisition of the 47 Holmes Place clubs, bringing the group total to 73. Simon Halabi, the property magnate recently acquired the 54 Esporta clubs for a sum in the region of £475 million and Whitbread received £925 million for its 69 David Lloyd clubs (£13.4 million per club). Membership growth slows Total membership of UK private sector clubs grew by just 1% in 2006 and remains static at 4.2 million, representing 7% of the adult population. Geographic accessibility is no longer a barrier as the recent National Audit of Fitness Consumers research reveals that 99% of the population is within a 20-minute drive of a health club or leisure centre. So, what will drive further growth in this £2.5 billion market? Read more State of the UK Health/Fitness Industry, BritSport 2007/08. To download file, click here.
	Price war on the gym floor So, are you a Waitrose or a Lidl shopper? A few years ago, you would have been one, neither, but certainly not both. How things change. Now, British consumers are running rings round marketers by being a Waitrose shopper on Monday and a Lidl customer on Wednesday. Marketing textbooks tell you this should not be happening. Prospering consumers used to shop at premium quality outlets, while the financially-challenged ('hard-pressed' and 'of moderate means' to use the geo-demographics parlance) were reluctant guests at their local budget or value store. But not any more. And it is not just groceries where we now display extraordinary promiscuous buying behaviour. Chief Executives now fly easyJet; people mix and match a £500 Hugo Boss suit with a Debenhams shirt and Sales Directors drive to a £26 per night Travelodge in their luxurious Mercedes. The following figure illustrates the pervasiveness of this trend. How can this be? What we bought and from where used to represent an accurate indicator of who we were, and where we were going, but this is no longer so. Precision-guided purchasing is the new game in town and if the best price for illy espresso coffee is the local Netto store, then off to Netto we go. If we then pack those Netto items into a recycled Marks & Spencer carrier bag, this sends a message that we are smart and 'savvy' buyers, enjoying the power we now wield, as the internet peels away the layers of the once complex and mysterious world of consumer goods pricing. Read more Price war on the gym floor, Leisure Report August 2007 To download file, click here.
	Welcome to Copenhagen, welcome to the future 'My flight to Copenhagen has just been cancelled; the SAS cabin crew are striking'. The well-dressed business traveller placed his phone back in his top pocket, shrugged his shoulders and drifted away. Attending the Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies annual conference: Dontstop02, was looking shakey. Fortunately, the strike was in its first few hours and some flights, mine included, were still departing from Gatwick. The trip back however, was a whole new adventure. Of course, the really-good futurists would have anticipated the strike and travelled by sea. The term 'futurist' is really a misnomer. They don't look into glass balls and make predictions; instead they study life and create plausible perspectives about how life may change. If I were a Futurist, I would cross this term out and put 'Opportunity Finder' on my business card. During the flight, I was thinking about the conference theme: 'Don't stop thinking about tomorrow' , and the background of delegates. Was the conference gong to be filled with several hundred practising 'futurists', or senior executives seeking a better understanding of applying the principles of 'foresight' to their organisations? Refreshingly, it was the latter. Breakfast was spent with a Danish animal fur broker. 'How's business?', I asked, expecting her to lament its terminal decline. 'Never been better', came the upbeat reply as it transpired that they were the world's largest fur skin house and could not keep up with demand from China. She went on to explain that the vociferous UK animal rights movement was far-removed from Danish sentiment, where fur skins represented a major part of Denmark's GDP. Sensing that conversation was now pretty well exhausted, I found a seat among the 240 delegates and awaited the opening remarks from Johan Peter Paludan, Director of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. Read more Welcome to Copenhagen, welcome to the future, Leisure Report, June 2007. To download file, click here.