Former Nautilus executive seizes opportunity
Posted: April 3, 2010 by Ross
Portland Business Journal - Erik Siemers - April 2, 2010
Nautilus Inc.'s decision last year to exit the commercial sales business has created opportunities elsewhere for its former employees.
Jim Liggett was the general manager and vice president at Nautilus responsible for the commercial division's largest territories: North America and Latin America.
Now he's the owner of Foundation Fitness, a Portland-based fitness equipment distribution company he formed with his brother last fall that began selling its first products in February.
Working out of the Marine Building in the Pearl District, Foundation Fitness has taken on about a half-dozen former Nautilus employees locally and three in Colorado, with a focus on selling fitness equipment to commercial markets in the West Coast and Latin America.
The company has struck licensing deals with a handful of major fitness brands, including FreeMotion Fitness, the commercial brand owned by of Utah-based Icon Health & Fitness, Schwinn Fitness, StairMaster and Express Fitness cardiovascular equipment.
Vancouver, Wash.-based Nautilus, which at one time owned both the Schwinn Fitness and StairMaster brands among several others, announced in August that it planned to divest its commercial division, where it sold primarily to health clubs, hotels and corporate fitness centers.
The decision is part of the company's strategy to focus solely on its higher-margin direct-to-retail markets, where it sells Nautilus and Bowflex products, among others.
Thanks to Nautilus' strategy, Liggett was able to latch onto a skilled work force with experience in the fitness industry.
He's projecting first year sales of between $2 million to $4 million with an eye on reaching $20 million in revenue by 2020.
Liggett sees perhaps the biggest opportunity in Latin America, a territory in which he said Nautilus' efforts fell short.
The roughly $1 billion market for fitness products in Brazil alone nearly rivals that of the U.S., which is an estimated $1.5 billion market, he said.
Foundation Fitness has an eye on eventually being a manufacturer of products for niche areas, such as the so-called active aging market.
The company has an office in Boulder, Colo., where it employees three engineers that designed products for Nautilus' Schwinn Fitness division.
Aside from making their own products, Liggett envisions the Boulder division as a research-and-development department for hire, offering its services to the equipment manufacturers Foundation Fitness represents in the field.
For this to be truly viable long-term, we feel the need to be an asset and focus on the product side, he said.
While selling products to fitness clubs in the current economy is a challenge, Liggett sees opportunity in the growth of corporate fitness centers and with schools.
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