TWIST OF FATE
Jewart’s Gymnastics took a big leap during the financial downturn rather than a tumble
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing were approaching, and Elaine Jewart, owner of Jewart’s Gymnastics in Hampton, faced a daunting question: During the Great Recession, could she risk the investment necessary to take advantage of her industry’s traditional “Olympics bump”?
That bump represents the enthusiasm for gymnasticsamong parents and children that often accompanies their viewing of the sport’sbiggest competition every four years.
The interest may not persist beyond weeks or months, but if a business-minded owner isn’t prepared for the surge, he or she is simply forgoing revenue like a retailer choosing to keep its doors shut on Black Friday.
Ms. Jewart, now 73, has been running a gymnastics program — moving and growing in different locations — since launching one in her basement in 1969. By her own admission, she was no shrewd businesswoman, failing to bring in as much money as she spent any year during her first four decades.
In 2007-08, she was still scrambling to pay down the mortgage on the Wildwood Road property she had purchased in 1980, where an initial 7,000-square-foot gym had already been expanded multiple times. Ms. Jewart had taken out multiple loans over the years, some with interest rates as high as 12.5 percent.
Many of the North Hills families that served as the customer base for Jewart’s were feeling the effects of the economic downturn,along with the rest of the country.
Did it make sense to expand again, at a facility then full of classes and teams and training programs serving some 700 youths?
“I was wondering about parents who might say, ‘We can’t afford to send the kids to gymnasticsanymore,’” Ms. Jewart said.
But then she began researching interest rates. She could get a loan at 6.75 percent — barely half the rate of some of her prior loans — to cover most of a $1.1 million project if she wanted to double in size.
The entrepreneur heading her own family business — Ms. Jewart has three children plus their spouses, ex-spouses and future spouses on the payroll — began talking to construction-related firms: steel suppliers, electrical contractors, asphalt pavers and more.
All were feeling the pinch of the recession, and they were willing to charge less for such workthan Jewart’s had seen in the past.
The chance to expand at a critical time, at a relative bargain, pushed Ms. Jewart
into a decision she recounted one recent afternoon in the gym, as dozens of boys and girls of various ages and skill levels — from toddlers on mats to WPIAL champions on parallel bars — twisted, jumped and vaulted around her.
“If I didn’t build but that Olympic bump happened, we wouldn’t get anything out of it,” she said. “It just so happened that the recession happened during the Olympics cycle, and that was to my benefit ... but it was a gamble.”
Part of the gamble was betting that parents, even during rocky financial times, would put their children’s needs and interests first. To help encourage that, a Jewart’s 2008 marketing campaign let them know that financial arrangements on class fees could be made for families having trouble. Some took her up on it but not many.
“They knew they could come to me saying, ‘My husband lost his job,’ and they’d be taken care of,” said Ms. Jewart, who never worried about people making up phony stories to claim discounts. “People don’t take advantage of us that way — They know we’re not highrollers.”
A 15,000-square-foot hangar-like building on the lower end of the property doubled the training and recreation space of a facility that is filled withmultiple gyms, climbing walls, party space and special training areas. It is also the base for the 200-member Pittsburgh Northstars competitive gymnastics team, whose trophies and banners linethe complex.
In all, Ms. Jewart said, the facility is being used by 1,300 participants in different programs, about twice the number as a decade ago.
That bump did occur that year, even though the expansion wasn’t complete until a few months after the Olympics ended. Jewart’s also obtained a loan in 2008 at 5 percent to purchase adjacent property that enlarged its parking lot and created an outdoor woodlands recreationspace for pre-schoolers.
With the growth, Ms. Jewart said, she started turning a profit — the first real “cash flow,” as she calls it — in 2012 and has ever since. The volume of students and enhanced revenue means she boosted her payroll, which is up to about 50 employees, 15 of them full time.
Ms. Jewart knows of some gymnastics centers around the country that fell on hard times during the Great Recession. Some even closed.
They were in areas where the general economy suffered more than the Pittsburgh region, she noted, but Ms. Jewart also points to how it was important for an operator like her to take a risk rather thanfear what could happen.
“Did the recession pay off for me?” she mused in response to a question, as young gymnasts worked out after school in every corner. “I’d say so.”