Fitness Market Looks Past Tae-bo

NEW YORK-Facing a 40% sales decline, the fitness category was all but abandoned in the mid-'90s. But that was before Billy Blanks made Tae-Bo the hottest fitness trend since Jane Fonda donned a leotard and made aerobic exercise a multimillion-dollar video business.
In 1998, infomercials explaining Blanks' clever combo of kick-boxing, tai chi, and aerobics began heavy rotation on cable TV, and million-unit sales of the video quickly followed.
When Los Angeles-based video company Ventura Distribution began selling the tapes to retail, Tae-Bo had almost single-handedly revived a video category that only 18 months before was heading for life support.
"The popularity of kick-boxing gave the entire category a boost, although selectively," says Michelle Rygiel, senior product manager for Anchor Bay Entertainment. "We didn't suddenly have 30 titles all selling well, but we did have five or six titles that were on fire."
Hot on a trend, Anchor Bay discovered that Blanks was a featured instructor on one of its existing lines of Crunch workout tapes and began promoting the titles as its own version of Tae-Bo.
Other fitness suppliers have followed suit, with many rushing out kick-boxing workouts led by familiar fitness personalities, including Kathy Smith, Donna Richardson, and Denise Austin, into stores.
Sony Music Video senior director of marketing Annmarie Gatti warns that such established stars as Smith must walk the line between jumping on a trend and preserving their long-term brand loyalty and name recognition.
"Kathy Smith is a great fitness expert, and she takes a lot of the trends and brings them to her consumers in a way that makes them comfortable," she says.
The Tae-Bo craze has also opened the door for new distributors to grab market share from veteran fitness suppliers, such as Parade Video, which markets Austin's best-selling line.
According to Parade VP of sales Sheldon Rudin, the emergence of new Tae-Bo players has cut their market share in half.
"Before Tae-Bo hit [we had] over 26% [of the fitness market]," he says. "Now we're around 13%."
Austin's "Power Kickboxing," though, has been a bright spot for Parade, with sales of nearly 100,000 units, according to VideoScan.
Even though Blanks' Tae-Bo workout tapes have topped VideoScan's fitness charts for almost a year, there are signs that the two-year kick-boxing trend is beginning to wane, and suppliers are now searching for the next big trend. Some candidates include yoga and military-style boot camp workouts.
Warner, the only major studio still actively involved in the fitness category, is currently promoting a line of yoga videos led by Bryan Kest.
According to Warner VP of marketing Mike Saksa, Kest has the same cachet that helped make Billy Blanks fitness royalty.
Like Blanks, Kest runs his own studio in Southern California that has a celebrity clientele.
Taking another page from Blanks' success story, Saksa says, Warner is investigating the possibility of producing an infomercial to promote Kest.
"We've been very successful as a division with informercials," he says.
This quarter Warner is promoting Kest's "Power Yoga: Energize," "Power Yoga: Tone," and "Power Yoga: Sweat," which are also available as a three-pack, just like Blanks' introductory tape offer.
Unapix is promoting the "Kundalini Yoga" program, which, according to VideoScan, has sold more than 40,000 units.
The supplier is also releasing a line of yoga programs made in conjunction with the Kripalu Yoga Center, which it will actively sell online and in new-age bookstores, according to Unapix sales manager for special markets Dave Kurtiak.
Best-selling fitness personality Austin has hopped on virtually every fitness bandwagon, and this quarter Parade will release her "Beginners Yoga."
A number of program suppliers will also be releasing military-style workout videos, such as Anchor Bay's "Boot Camp Training."
Rygiel says that the decision to produce a boot camp workout stemmed from noticing that similar classes offered in gyms were hugely popular. "There were no tapes on the market for people to bring this kind of workout to their home," she says.
Even with a renewed consumer interest in fitness videos, most distributors are not optimistic about the category receiving a year-round push from retailers.
"Promotionally, retailers want to talk about fitness in January, much in the same way they want to talk about horror in October," says Rygiel. "If you have a strong seller, the titles can stay on the shelf, but for the most part, fitness promotions happen in January."
But at least one distributor believes that E-commerce Web sites could make fitness a year-round fixture.
"It is a 12-month business online," says Saksa, adding that E-tailers are able to target those consumers who have a particular interest in fitness video with E-mails whenever a new release is available. "The person who has ordered one fitness tape needs something new on a regular basis," he says.
Fitness video suppliers are also beginning to experiment with DVD. In December, Anchor Bay released Donna Richardson's "Three-Day Rotation Workout 2000" on DVD, which previously had been available as three individual tapes.
The DVD edition includes advanced versions of all three workouts, as well as a feature Anchor Bay calls an "instructor cam" that provides close-ups of the choreography. There are also a number of audio options.
Sony Music Video has produced DVD versions of its popular "Grind" line of workouts, which features profiles of each of the grind dancers and a performance by rap artist C-Note. Parade will also begin distributing an Austin DVD during the first quarter.
In addition to providing a better workout experience on DVD, the format allows suppliers to fetch a higher retail price. While VHS is priced no higher than $14.98, DVD workout programs can bear a $24.98 suggested list price.