A Boom in Low Tech and No Tech

Not all industry in the New Economy will involve such showy high-tech fields as microchips, computers and lasers. A large number of unglamorous service jobs will proliferate between now and 1990 (see table). And many new products will be low tech or no tech. A typical example: one of the greatest growth industries for the rest of the century will be the broad field of health. Americans are living longer, and the children born during the baby-boom years (1946-64) are trying to guard their youth as they head toward middle age. Fitness is a health-related business that is notably prospering and likely to get considerably bigger. Imprecisely defined but including at least the gyms, equipment, clothing, foods and vitamins for staying healthy, the fitness market will reach $35 billion this year, up from $30 billion just two years ago. That is bigger than the combined sales of Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Kodak.

The industry first began blooming in the mid-'70s, when the young and affluent discovered tennis. Soon thereafter came jogging, aerobics and other fitness fads. No conclusive medical evidence has yet proved that exercise alone prolongs life, but that does not seem to bother those out there sweating. They maintain that they look better and feel better; maybe so, but they do keep pushing up sales of everything from running shoes to joggers' wristwatches as they puff along.

Almost all the new entries into the exercise market seem to lift off like a Saturn booster, find their target, fall back a little and make piles of money for their inventors. Nike of Beaverton, Ore., first hit it big manufacturing running shoes (1982 footwear sales: $580 million). In 1980 the company got into running apparel, and sales of shorts and shirts bearing the company's famous "swoosh" mark have sprinted from $8 million to a projected $115 million this year.

Leotards and tights to wear while exercising are now a sleekly packaged business with estimated sales of $500 million a year. One company in that field, Flexatard Inc. of Los Angeles, has seen sales jump from $363,000 in 1977 to $25 million last year. MacLevy Products Corp. of New York City turned out about 2,400 treadmills for indoor runners last year, at prices ranging from $640 for a simple nonmotorized model to nearly $6,000 for a superdeluxe electronic version that measures speed and mileage and displays distance on a small screen. About half of MacLevy's treadmills find their way into executive gyms and other posh clubs in big U.S. cities, where large corporations try to keep their workers trim, fit and healthy.

High tech is trying to get into the fitness business with more and more electronic whizmos that give exercisers a more precise idea of how much energy they are expending. Huffy of Dayton, Ohio, a maker of stationary exercise bicycles, next fall will introduce its Model 500 Aerobic Fitness Cycle. Sensors in the handgrips will check pulse rates and display them on a small screen. Price: $250.

Fitness, like cooking and camping, is prone to gadgetry. Numerous blood pressure devices are on the market. Seiko and several other makers sell watches that monitor pulse. Barre Rorabaugh, president of Huffy's sporting goods division and a participant in the 1979 Boston Marathon, foresees the day when someone will be pumping away on a bicycle, all the while reading his pulse, blood pressure, elapsed time, mileage and calorie burn-off. When Americans are not exercising, they seem to want to read about it or see other people doing it. Health and diet books make up six of the 15 titles on the New York Times bestseller list. Jane Fonda's workout how-to video cassettes placed No. 2 on the charts last week, behind the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.

Like other areas in the New Economy, the fitness business demands training and expertise. Many exercise centers are hiring people with advanced degrees in exercise physiology. Membership in the American College of Sports Medicine has increased by 38% in three years, to 10,500. Starting salaries for gym physiologists can range from $13,000 to $15,000 a year and rise to as much as $40,000. The need for them is expected to mushroom as America works up a sweat for fitness. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.