After he graduated from law school, David Swope worked in the Peace Corps in Bombay, India, where he helped set up a legal aid society. When he returned to the United States, Swope then worked for several years as a corporate lawyer in New York City before he took over his father's business affairs.
An exercise in business flexibility
From desperation to satisfaction
By Gurliacci, David
Westchester County Business Journal
Westchester, N.Y.
March 21, 2005
Caption: Pictured from left to right are Stanley Freimuth, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Fujifilm, Steve Apkon, Founder and Executive Director of the Jacob Burns Film Center, David Swope, Founder of Club Fit, and Westchester County Executive Andy Spano.
When David Swope Jr.'s father became too ill to run his varied business affairs in the late 1970s, the son took them over and found himself two big money losing enter prises - a restaurant and a tennis club.
Swope, with the help of others, made radical changes that turned each problem into a moneymaker. His success in turning the tennis club into a full-service health club won the company the Entrepreneurial Success Award as part of this year's Business Hall of Fame program run by The Business Council of Westchester County.
"Entrepreneurship sometimes comes out of desperation," he said.
The club has grown from a handful or employees to 600 full- and parttime employees today. Last year, revenues for the business grew 10 percent. The club's two locations now have more than 15,000 members.
After struggling with his restaurant, which was in the Tappan Hill mansion in Tarrytown, Swope eventually decided that the best solution was to hand over the site to someone else, so he leased the space to Abigail Kirsch. Her company has run onsite catering there since the late 1980s. Kirsch also won an award as part of this year's Business Hall of Fame. Hers was the "Women in Business Success Award."
Swope's other major problem was the Jefferson Valley Raquet Club.
"Around 1980, we really saw no hope for the business," he said. At one point, "I actually tried to sell the building for a warehouse or anything, but unfortunately could not."
TAKING ON A PARTNER
Swope and Beth Beck, then a tennis player at the club who took a part-time job there, discussed possible changes they could make at the club. Beek's role at the club eventually increased until today she is CEO and co-owner with Swope.
The two attended the first convention of the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, where they learned of other fitness clubs that had recently started. Multi-sport clubs were a new land of business then that didn't have a long track record of success, but Swope and Beck decided to try the idea. They also visited other clubs around the country to see how they were run.
In a major renovation, the club added a swimming pool, aerobic classes and a cafe. Another addition shortly afterward was basketball, "which we'd seen on a trip to San Francisco," Swope said. "We had never (before) considered adults and basketball we thought it was for schools and kids."
The fitness center had been introduced, even before the trip to the convention, and it was initially a separate business operating in space that the club leased out.
"We realized leasing the fitness center was a mistake - it was going to become the center of our business," Swope said. He said Sal Pellegrino, who was operating the fitness center, "graciously understood that, so we took over."
By 1982, the pay-as-you-go tennis club had been renovated and reopened as a multi-sport club that charged monthly rates for use of an array of different services.
A basketball court, physical therapy center and pool were added to the site, along with a cafe and aerobic classes. The club continued to offer indoor and outdoor tennis courts.
"We suffered a few months with people who objected to paying even if maybe they weren't going to come that month," Swope said. "But very quickly we found that people accepted and liked it."
Gloria Gurreri, 61, of Yorktown is one of the customers who stayed. Originally, she took lessons at the tennis club in her early 30s, but she found she enjoyed the exercise classes.
"It's part of my life," she said. She also likes the variety of exercise classes now, she said. "I don't like to exercise where the guys are, and they just opened up a new women's exercise program, which is great."
The company has grown steadily over the years, Swope said. "The challenge has been to keep up with trends, change with fashions and styles. ... Every year we spend around $300,000 just on new fitness equipment."
Swope, whose family donated the land that in 1963 became the Teatown Nature Preserve. in Ossining and Yorktown, grew up in Ossining. Swope's grandfather, Gerard, a president of General Electric until 1945, had originally moved the family there.
After he graduated from law school, David Swope worked in the Peace Corps in Bombay, India, where he helped set up a legal aid society. Another Peace Corps volunteer in his group was Lillian Carter, mother of President Jimmy Carter. When he returned to the United States, Swope then worked for several years as a corporate lawyer in New York City before he took over his father's business affairs.
At the time he took over the tennis club, and even when he transformed it into a fitness club, Swope said, he was "a most unlikely candidate for this business. ... I was not exercising at all, but over the years it's become a part of my life, too. ... I started with the Nautilus equipment."
In 1985, Club Fit bought a tennis club on a seven-acre tract in Briarcliff Manor and turned it into a second health club.
Eventually, the company bought four more acres at the North State Road site in order to fit in more activities there.
Over the years, Beck's son and daughter joined the company. Her daughter, Ellen Koelsch is vice president of marketing. Her son, Bill Beck Jr, is vice president for operations at both clubs.
GIVING BACK
The Business Hall of Fame award went to Club Fit not only because the business has been financially successful, said Marsha Gordon, president of the Business Council of Westchester, but because the company "has an extraordinary commitment to the communities in which it has its clubs."
One of the ways Club Fit gives back to the community is by employing mentally retarded people. Beck sits on the board of directors of the Westchester ARC. Club Fit also supports free screenings of films in county parks during the summer and fundraising events for Sport Connections, a group supporting cancer survivors.
In 1990, Swope and Beek started their third fitness club in downtown White Plains, but the area was depressed, and the new club struggled until it was sold to New York Sports Clubs in 1995.
With the money from the sale, Swope and Beek renovated the Briarcliff club from 1995 to 1998 at a cost of $12 million to $15 million. The Jefferson Valley club was also renovated in another $10 million project, just completed.
At both locations the club now has a nursery for children up to 5 years old, an "energy center" with activities for children ages 5-13, a 25yard lap pool and a separate, warm water pool for arthritis classes.
Now that the renovations are done, Swope said, he's open to expanding the business in other ways.
