Sunday, 17 January 2016

Hearts Are Pumping..And So Are Opportunities

There is a smart watch app that measures your hearts oxygenation capacity. Do you have any idea what that means? Me neither, but that hasn't stopped a retail boom in fitness related products and potential new business opportunities for 2016.

The push into fitness categories has been with us for some time with businesses like Lorna Jane expanding rapidly with their activewear range. Lorna Jane have taken up high profile locations in shopping centres with their combination of fashion and fitness clothing. Many major shopping centres now house fitness and gymnasium centres as part of their tenant mix, and wearing your fitness clothing in public is now a fashion statement.

At this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas the number of fitness related technology items, particularly smart watches and wrist bands, was quite staggering. The biggest competitor to last year's Apple Watch is seen as the new Fitbit wrist watch which puts fitness monitoring above all other smart watch features.

And if you need another reason to consider fitness products in your market offering, the Australian Retail Index has declared that the sporting goods category enjoyed a 14% sales increase in December over the previous year which made it the leading category for sales improvement in the lead up to Christmas. There would be a number of traders at QVM who could take advantage of this trend.