Not Just for Kicks : Exercise Is Serious Business for Fitness Authority Karen Voight
The fitness authority whose trend-setting workouts have inspired Los Angeles exercise enthusiasts since the 1980s had just sat down in the trendy Beverly Hills restaurant when the waiter recognized her.
“Hey, are you Karen Voight?” he asked excitedly.
Recognition for the exercise guru hasn’t always been so forthcoming.
For years, Voight juggled businesses from her West Hollywood gym, including a juice bar, a dance wear store and an exercise-video production company, before she began to receive recognition outside the fitness industry for her unique exercise philosophy.
“For a time period, my business was all consuming. It took 15 years, seven days a week. I sacrificed a lot,” Voight said.
She’s reaping the rewards these days.
Voight was featured on the cover of U.S. News & World Report last year and was recognized by Glamour magazine as one of the “10 most outstanding working women in America” in 1993.
She signed a deal with Nordstrom department stores in November to make in-store appearances, and the upscale chain will carry her line of fitness gear. Her seven videos, her first fitness book, “Precision Training for Body & Mind,” which was published by Disney’s Hyperion last summer, and her mail-order firm are posting respectable sales in their categories, industry analysts say.
Sponsors have had to turn away fans who travel for miles to participate in her aerobics workshops held around the world. Voight says she turns down more business and endorsement deals than she accepts. And she has kept her studio, now in Santa Monica, prospering amid a rash of shutdowns of smaller gyms squeezed out by national chains.
While she declined to release sales or profit reports, industry watchers say Voight’s innovative company is positioned for growth.
Her mission: to promote her ideas and products beyond the fitness community to the 60% or so of Americans who are overweight and need to exercise.
“What makes sense to me makes sense to a lot of people,” Voight said. “I go out of my way to promote what I think is a good idea. It starts in my head, and I have a knack for going out there and getting it going.”
Voight talked about the transition of her business--from a tiny start-up into a wide-ranging enterprise--over oatmeal with strawberries and skim milk--during a recent interview at Il Fornaio in Beverly Hills.
Finding enough time, she says, is her biggest challenge. She refuses to hire a manager or a public relations representative because she wants to retain total control over her deals. Uncomfortable in handing over the creative process to someone else, for example, she produced, filmed, starred in and edited six of her seven videos.
Fitness industry veterans caution Voight and other entrepreneurs against letting ideas run away with profits.
Jazzercise founder Judi Sheppard Missett, whose 28-year-old Carlsbad company raked in $45 million in systemwide sales in its last fiscal year, is an idea person like Voight. There are similarities between Missett’s company--which has 4,700 franchised Jazzercise instructors leading nearly 500,000 students through workouts in the United States and 38 foreign countries--and Voight’s growing enterprise.
“I come up with great ideas all the time, and if we did every single one of them, we would go broke,” said Missett, who also diversified her product line to stay fresh, moving from Jazzercise franchises to a line of active wear, weight equipment and fitness videos.
“So I have a great team that reviews these ideas and evaluates if they are feasible,” she said.
Competition from growing national fitness chains, such as Bally’s and Gold’s Gym, also will be a challenge for Voight, industry watchers agreed. Efficiencies of scale help those large chains keep fees low and allow them to advertise on a grand scale.
Creative programming and experienced instructors, as well as flexible pricing strategies, are crucial for small studios like Voight’s to remain in business, industry experts said.
Voight’s ability to create and sell fitness trends is one of her strengths.
She was one of the pioneers of the high-energy, high-impact aerobics that spurred the current fitness fever.
With a background in ballet--Voight’s parents enrolled her in dance classes at the age of 3 to correct a club foot--Voight was studying at the Dupree Dance Academy in West Hollywood in 1980 when her instructor asked her to teach a “slim-and-trim” class.
The class became so popular that Voight started to rethink her career goals. After two years of teaching at Dupree--at times she had to persuade students to not wear street shoes to class--Voight decided to strike out on her own.
“Teaching discipline of the body is my forte,” Voight said. “I decided that it was my mission to explain to people how to train their body.”
She accepted an offer from Dupree’s owner to start her business in the company’s studio on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood.
High-impact aerobics’ stepsister, cardiofunk--which marries dance club moves and hip hop music in a low-impact aerobics format--was born at her gym several years later. A version of this class, which is trademarked by Voight, is still taught at her Santa Monica studio.
Its cousin, city jam, another Voight creation that was designed in conjunction with one of her students, soon followed. It features low-impact moves and contemporary music. The concept was taken up by Reebok, which named a shoe after it.
The latest trend to which Voight has given her unique twist is spinning, which pairs stationary-bike riding and the ear-ringing music that accompanies high-impact aerobics.
To promote her take on the concept, Voight developed two videos, “Power Pacing” and “Pace and Shape,” in conjunction with stationary-bicycle maker Keiser Sports Health Equipment of Fresno.
Industry statistics bear out Voight’s ability to stay ahead of the pack: The number of people participating in low-impact aerobic classes increased 16% in 1995 and those who turned to stationary biking for a workout jumped 12% in 1995, according to an annual sports participation survey by Hartsdale, N.Y.-based American Sports Data.
The Covina native is looking past those she’s converted to the fit way of life and toward the average, time-starved person with a mortgage, kids and a demanding job.
“I want to know how you can stay fit when you have kids and your schedule just doesn’t allow it,” Voight said. She sees the fitness industry moving toward more convenient methods of staying in shape.
Her instincts are confirmed by industry statistics that show a fitness boom being driven by exercise equipment sales. The number of people exercising at home skyrocketed 101% in 1995, said Harvey Lauer, president of American Sports Data.
Voight wants to sign more endorsement deals with companies that manufacture healthy lifestyle products, ranging from active wear to vitamins to makeup to hair products.
She sees her recent Nordstrom deal, together with an effort by Hyperion to get her books into Disney stores, as an opportunity to move her products into broader markets.
Students who frequent Voight’s studio, many of whom have remained loyal to her for years, are not so keen on sharing her with the rest of the world.
“As soon as I took one class from her, I lost all interest in other forms of physical activity,” said Steve Ostro, 50, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “I’ve been suffering because she only teaches high-impact classes twice a week now.”
Voight’s die-hard pupils lament the demise of high-impact aerobics and the shift in the industry toward step classes, spinning and other low-impact forms of exercise.
They say it’s obvious that although Voight is constantly reinventing her fitness business, her first love is teaching.
“There’s no one like Karen. There’s no one that moves like that and cares so much about their students,” said Rina Mark, a 51-year-old freelance meeting planner who has been working out with Voight for seven years.
“She’s the real item.”
