There’s Money to Be Had in Little-Used Fitness Gear

Paul Glancy is interested in buying your Nordic Track. But you can keep the rowing machine.

At his store in the Washington suburb of Herndon, Va., Glancy watches people lug in their used sporting goods and exercise equipment, and carry out cash for the holidays.

Glancy is a franchisee of Play It Again Sports. The chain makes money from America’s notorious exercise fickleness--the habit of buying workout gear with the best of intentions but leaving it to gather dust because using it requires effort.

Play It Again Sports gives these people a place to cash in their lost dreams. Although the stores carry new equipment, their specialty is buying, reselling and consigning used goods. They accept anything from ice skates to home gyms.

The equipment is sold to people willing to accept serviceable used equipment and attracted by prices below the cost of buying new.

“In general, good-condition used is sold at about half the original retail price,” Glancy said. Prices for used equipment depend on the quality of the equipment and whether it’s seasonal, he said.

“This is a perfect time for people to do the housecleaning--and determine what gifts they would like to buy with those dollars,’ said Bob Lennie, the chain’s vice president for corporate development.

The equipment he’s most likely to buy is in the mid- to upper-price range, Lennie said at the 375-store chain’s headquarters in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley.

Nordic Track cross-country-style aerobic exercise equipment holds its value well, but don’t bother to bring in poorly made imitations, Glancy said.

“I think the public recognizes what’s quality and what’s junk and what won’t work, and they won’t reinvest in it,” Glancy said. “People know lemons.”

Home gyms also sell well, provided they’re well made. A well-made home gym has heavy-gauge steel and is put together so strongly that it’s stable while a person exercises, Glancy said. It also has a simple design that does not require a person to move a lot of parts as he sets up for his next exercise, he added.

Fashion also counts. Stair-climbing machines are popular, so franchisees want to buy them, Lennie said.

Treadmills are somewhat less popular, but Glancy buys and sells them. Rowing machines are way down on the desirability list.

Half the owners of rowing machines report they didn’t use them in the previous month, said Harvey Lauer, president of American Sports Data, a sports demographics company in Hartsdale, N.Y.

“Three out of 10 owners of exercise equipment had not used it at all in the last month,” Lauer said.

That doesn’t mean those people have abandoned workouts, though. Some choose to join a health club, and may feel they no longer need what they have at home, Lennie said.

But the company is not in the business of helping people clean out their basements. It expects people who enter with something to sell will return for something to buy. And it expects them soon.

“There is a surge in January, due to the New Year’s resolution to lose 10 pounds,” Lennie said.