When someone asks me for a price to equip a gym, they almost always already have several quotes on the table. One for cardio, another for strength, the flooring one and, sometimes, one for Pilates or indoor cycling. The usual thing is to lay them side by side and look at the bottom line.
I understand. It is the quickest way to compare. But that comparison leaves out a good part of what the equipment ends up costing, and it almost never comes up in the first conversation.
When people ask how much it costs to equip a gym, the question usually goes straight to the price of each machine. It is an important figure, of course. But to that number you have to add transport, assembly, commissioning, the flooring that goes underneath, the warranty, the servicing and the spare parts for all the years that machine will be working.
Some quotes include almost all of that and others leave it out. If they are not read with the same criteria, the one that looks cheaper sometimes is not.
I try to get the client to compare what it will cost to have the room up and running, and not just what it costs to buy it.
When you buy in pieces, each supplier works to its own calendar. The flooring arrives one week, the strength equipment another, the cardio depends on when the container arrives, and the recovery equipment has its own manufacturing lead time.
On paper everything fits. In practice, all it takes is one delivery being delayed for the next to have to wait. The flooring is the clearest case: if it is not laid, the equipment cannot be installed, and if the equipment has already arrived, it has to be stored somewhere in the meantime.
If the delay pushes back the opening, it can also delay the first revenue.
It is one of the mistakes I see most. The machine is chosen on one side and the floor on the other, and nobody sits down to check that they fit together.
A free-weight area, a strength platform, a cycling studio or a functional training space need different things underneath. The thickness, the shock absorption, the anchoring and how the weight is distributed all change. When that conversation comes late, you have to redo an area or settle for a floor that is not the one the room needed.
That is why at DYNARK we work on the flooring and the strength equipment together, with the room plan in front of us.
On opening day the photo gets taken and there is a celebration. But the relationship with the equipment starts that day and lasts for years.
When each area depends on a different supplier, every breakdown has its own phone number, its own contract and its own response time. A treadmill out of order at peak time is very noticeable on the floor, and the member usually cares little about whose warranty it is. What they see is a machine with a sign taped to it for three days in a row.
Before signing I always ask the same thing: who is going to come when something fails, how long will it take, and are spare parts available here or do they have to be ordered from abroad.
Second-hand has its place. There are operators who start that way and it works for them, especially with simple pieces. What you need to look at is what comes with that machine: whether it has a maintenance history, whether spare parts can be found, who is going to service it, and how much life it has left in a room with heavy use.
Something similar happens with equipment designed for the home or for light use. It can work well with limited use, but it is not necessarily built for the frequency of use in a gym. When it is not, it shows up quickly in breakdowns.
There is a cost that does not appear in any quote, and that is the buyer's time. Meetings with each supplier, technical data sheets that look nothing alike, deliveries to coordinate and invoices to check. Often it is the club owner who does it, in precisely the months when they should be training the team and starting presales.
If someone asked me today for help equipping their gym, I would not start with the price list. I would ask for the floor plan and ask how many people they expect at peak time, what kind of member they want to have, and which areas they are going to set up.
With that, you decide how much to put in each room, what flooring goes underneath, what goes in now and what can wait for a second phase. And then you compare the price, but comparing like for like: machine, delivery, assembly, flooring, warranty and technical service.
That is what we created DYNARK for. We work with leading partners in strength, cardio, indoor cycling, flooring, Pilates and recovery, and we coordinate it all with a single point of contact. The client receives one joint proposal and has one person to deal with.
If you are preparing to buy the equipment for your club, tell us about your project.
Pablo Martínez · Founding partner and Sales Director of DYNARK. Channel development and brand relations.
