Start up gym on Sal, Cape Verde

Absolutely...  brilliant idea ;-)   Im sure it will work great if you know your business..  GOOD LUCK

    Hello good day everybody! I'm new on this forum, so I'll make a short introduction about myself.I'm 32 years old and living in the Netherlands. Me and my girlfriend are thinking about moving to Sal, Cabo Verde. At least for 6 months a year. We are both working as police-officers now and are both working as personal trainers in sports (crossfit) as well. We are now looking for possibilities for starting a outdoor gym on the island Sal. There are hardly no gyms, except the ones on the resorts. Our idea is to buy an apartment in Santa Maria and buy a piece of land there as well. On the piece of land we would like to start the outdoor gym. We have to import all sorts of materials to use during the sportlessons. Our idea is to create a huge open tent in combination with a sea container. We are now gathering all the information we can get about the local people living there, how to reach out and find a way to get them involved in this as well. We would like to do something for them. Most probably we have to focus on tourists or on people working on Sal for longer periods a year, as our clients. On the long term we would like to grow, of course. Become the first CrossFit box on Cabo Verde, maybe. It is hard to find good information about this, since there is no one doing this on the island(s) yet. Is this for a reason? Do you think this is an idea that could work? Do you think tourism will be enough to get clients to go to the gym?Thanks a lot for your time in advance!!        -@Angdiver37

Hi Angdiver37,

It's an interesting idea...but wrong island. When it comes to gyms, there are probably many reasons why no-one has done this before in Sal. Here are the demographic and social factors that you should be aware of:

1. Typical gyms here charge a monthly fee of 3-4.000 escudos (and on Sal it is likely to be more);
2. The average monthly salary is around 20.000 escudos. So paying for a gym is a huge bite of such a salary. Therefore, only people with excellent jobs, professionals, are able to pay for a gym membership;
3. The island with the most professionals and workers earning enough to pay a monthly gym membership is Santiago as that is where half the population lives (250,000) and where you will find most of the residents with good paying jobs;
4. The island of Sal has a population of 25,000 and the majority of these are the workers who have come from the other islands to work at the hotels. The hotels pay well, however, the cost of housing in Sal consumes a substantial portion of their income, so most have nothing left over after living expenses to pay for a gym membership (even if you set a lower price than the typical fee) - so there is simply not enough of a population with discretionary income there to sustain more than a couple gyms (have you checked out what's available in Espargos which is where most of the local popoulation lives?);
5. The entire population of Cape Verde is very much into fitness - which is FREE! You will see them walking and running everyday starting at 5am. Plus most of the municipalities have built outdoor "gyms" in many neighboorhoods but with very basic equipment. The point is, why pay a gym membership unless you are earning a good salary and into serious body building?
6. As you said, the hotels in Sal all have their gyms for the tourists. I'm sure those gyms probably are NOT designed for fitness buffs. So there may be a type of offering you can provide to cater to those few among the tourists who need something at a higher level. It would have to be very special, as the hotels there appear to discourage guests from leaving their all-inclusive cocoons.
7. There are almost half a million tourists visits to Sal annually, so even if only a fractional percentage of those would be amenable to an offsite gym, then you may still be able to generate a decent revenue.

One other thing that you need to think about is that if you are going to import a lot of equipment for a modern gym, there are substantial costs for transportation and customs duties. You'll need to nclude those in your calculations.

Finally, there are a lot of foreigners who come to Cape Verde and want to "help" the locals. I'd strongly discourage that type of motive for doing business here. There's little that can be done to help...unless you want to hand out money which is never a viable approach. The locals ALL have familiy members in the diaspora (USA, Europe) who send money back to those left behind every month. In fact, 10-20% of the economy is driven by these remittances! Yet, locals will always paint you a picture of absolute suffering so that foreigners open their wallets. Don't listen to the sob stories. No one starves here.

So if you want to start a business, focus on building a business that is sustainable and that works for YOU. That's the best thing you could do to help as this way you might create more jobs.

Regards,

Angelo