Clubindustry

We hope you’ve been following us on Twitter and Facebook. In addition to our own stories from our website, we’ve posted several good stories from other news sources over the last few days. more

We’ve got confirmation that Paul Ireland, late of Star Trac, has landed at Power Plate.

Ireland was vice president of sales with Star Trac and had been with that company for more than 15 years before he was part of Star Trac’s layoffs earlier this summer. more

Gold’s Gym has taken a page out of the Town Sports International playbook by offering JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater a free membership. more

In writing about Lifetime Achievement Award winner Curt Beusman for our September issue, several people have offered up great stories and perspectives about the man. One such view came courtesy of former IHRSA Executive Director John McCarthy. more

Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the horrific shooting rampage at an LA Fitness in Pittsburgh, which attracted instant national attention. more

The case of the missing boy in Oregon has a tie to a fitness club, and by the looks of things, the club owner made a very wise decision. more

The CEO of Power Plate International, who used to be the CEO of Nautilus, had an interesting side gig last fall. more

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have been busy creating awareness for better fitness and better fitness club benefits for all. more

Our June cover story focuses on clubs outside the United States. In the article, we profile two Americans who are enjoying success with their World Gym Taiwan clubs.

This photo wasn’t quite the right fit in the magazine, so this post gives us a chance to show you John Caraccio (left in this photo), the World Gym Taiwan president, and Michael Sanciprian (right in this photo), the CEO of World Gym Taiwan, in a promotional shot. This post also gives us a chance to use one of the headlines we kicked around in our headline meeting. (Gym World…World Gym…get it?)

Together, Caraccio and Sanciprian have built a combined 15 World Gyms in Taiwan and hope for many more in the near future. We first heard about them nearly two years ago. It’s nice we finally got around to reporting about their success. more

By the time Bill Rancic speaks at the Club Industry show on Oct. 8 in Chicago, he will have a new book out, and his TV show will be in its third season. Those are the scoops I got from Rancic in our interview yesterday.

Rancic, the first winner of Donald Trump’s TV show “The Apprentice,” told me that his own reality TV show, “Guiliana and Bill,” was just picked up for its third season and begins shooting in a couple of weeks. The show stars, of course, Bill and his wife, Guiliana Rancic, a host on The E! Network. The couple also has a book in the works titled “I Do…Now What? Stories and Advice from America’s Favorite Couple” that is due out in September.

The “Guiliana and Bill” show, which can be seen on the Style Network or E!, was one of many topics of our conversation. We also talked about The Donald (of course), the recent “Celebrity Apprentice” finale, Rancic’s fitness routine (he ran five miles the morning of our interview) and what club operators can do to improve their business. more