Joe Weider, mighty businessman.

Joe Weider, mighty businessman

Back in the 1940s, Joe Weider, who had just launched his first fitness magazine, ran into Charles Atlas at the New York Athletic Club. Atlas told Weider, "You're no good in business. Look at me. When I sell my course (12 lessons, each a dozen mimeographed sheets), I make more money than you, and I don't have to manufacture weights, ship the heavy weights or invest a lot of money."

Today Weider presides over a body-building conglomerate with sales above $350 million and more than 4,000 employees. Its far-flung operation include publishing, manufacturing and marketing of weights and exercise equipment and nutritional supplements.

Weider's five magazines dominate the field, the equipment division has an 8 percent share of the market, and the nutritional supplement business, an estimated 35 percent.

At 68 the still-fit Weider continues to expand his privately held business with an aggressive acquisition program. And last summer Weider came out with his fifth magazine called "Moxie," targeted at women 35 and older.

Underpinning all of Weider's business interests is a fervid belief in the benefits of body building: "It's as necessary as brushing your teeth. I believe in superfitness and training with weights to build a strong and vigorous body because only by being physically fit and strong can anyone achieve their full potential mentally and physically." To Weider, exercise is not a mere recreational activity but rather the heart of a whole lifestyle.

Unlike Charles Atlas and other fitness gurus, Weider said, "I never catered to laziness and quick fixes in nutrition and fitness. Selling you a sweatband won't make you lose weight. What Atlas sold might make money, but it would never make you strong, and he in fact used weights and did gymnastics."

Weider's proselytizing has paid off. Affable, engaging and articulate, Weider has turned the once ridiculed sport into one with close to 30 million adherents.

Founder of the Mr. Olympia contest in 1965, Weider also put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the map. Early recognizing the potential for women body building, his magazines began to prominantly feature female body builder champions.

Weider's almost messianic sense of mission has not gotten in the way of clear-headed business acumen. "Muscle & Fitness," his flagship magazine, has a circulation of 627,000 and is printed in six foreign languages. As the exercise movement caught fire, Weider capitalized on it by starting four other niche player magazines. "Flex" is directed at the competitive bodybuilder, "Shape," at women. "Men's Fitness" is a men's lifestyle magazine.

In starting a new magazine, Weider spurns formal market research and techniques favored by other large businesses: "We know our market." In starting "Moxie," for instance, he said, "my market research is that in everyday life I deal with many women, who I meet in gyms and aerobic classes and I receive thousands of letters from women in their 30s to 50s."

Weider's magazines have helped tighten his lock grip on other parts of the body building industry, providing him with an outlet to advertise his food supplements, exercize equipment and other products. In a typical issue of "Muscle & Fitness," 40 out of 250 plus pages are advertisements for Weider products.

One competitor, Twin Labs, a Ronkonoma, Long Island-based vitamin company, sued Weider for antitrust violations in not accepted Twin Lab advertisements in his magazines. The case, dismissed for lack of evidence, is currently being appealed. Weider refused to comment on the case.

One thing that sets Weider apart from many entrepreneurs is his willingness to relinquish control and let others attend to the details of management: "I learned long ago creative and imaginative people can't provide the stabilizing force of good administration. A few ideas that are losers could have destroyed everything."

To oversee day-to-day operations and finances, Weider hired Allan Dalfen as president and CEO in 1979. Despite never having lifted a weight, Dalfen has helped grow the company from a 20 person operation a decade ago and masterminded its acquisition program.

Last year Weider purchased Weslo, a home fitness equipment manufacturer based in Utah, for under $10 million. Weslo's products, marketed under its own name, Health Master and Pro Form, already account for more than half of equipment division's $185 million of sales. Other acquisitions include a manufacturer of athletic injury prevention products; Tiger's Milk, a nutrition snack bar company; and Schiff Vitamin, a mainstream vitamin company.

Under Dalfen's guidance Weider's equipment division has shifted its marketing emphasis from mail order to a network of 6,000 retail outlets.

As Weider tells it, he foresaw in the 1950s the boom in body building that he more than anyone helped to engineer. In 1939, at the age of 16 he began by publishing a newsletter called "Your Physique," which would evolve into "Muscle & Fitness," doing everything himself at home, including printing. At the time there were no body-building magazines; at best the incipient field would share space in magazines which covered boxing, wrestling and weight lifting. In 1942 Weider, relocated to New Jersey, found a newsstand distributor, and soon his magazine circulation reached 50,000. By the 1950's Weider controlled 16 magazines with a total circulation of 25 million, with titles such as "American Manhood" and "Fury." But when the distributor, American News Co., was sold, Weider was left with $7 million of unpaid receivables, and he was forced to retrench to one magazine, "Muscle Builder." When he moved to his current location in Woodland Hills during the mid-1960s, his revenues were $5 million.

Weider bristles at the suggestion he had a blueprint to grab control of every facet of the business. "We had to develop these businesses because no one else was there. People couldn't buy the equipment we talked about, so we went into the business of manufacturing weights. Body builders wanted a place where they could compete, so we created a body building competition. Because the competitions lost money on every show, we couldn't find promoters so we began promoting shows and to set up channels at many countries, we formed the IFBB." So Weider explains every step of the way.

Montreal-based IFBB, acronym for the International Federation of Body Builders, is headed by Weider's brother, Ben Weider. An important vehicle for the Weider promotion machine, it has helped catapult the careers of virtually all of body building's superstars.

In his push to expand, Weider has not escaped controversy. His competitors, for example, grumble about his close links with the IFBB and the competitive circuit. Weider answers that in 1974, when the competitions began to turn a profit, he surrendered his control and put up the shows for bids from promoters. His brother, who Weider said first served at the helm because no one else was willing to assume the full-time, non-salaried position, is now elected democratically. To rebut the charge the shows serve to promote his magazine, Weider points out all the other body-building publications go to the shows and photograph and interview the stars.

Hailing from the poor Jewish section of Montreal, Weider first got involved in body building because as a skinny kid, he had to defend himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood.

Professing to have more energy now than ever, Weider is not ready to slow down, although he is grooming several people, including his nephew, to succeed him. He said he has no intention at the present time to go public: "What would we do with the money?" He said his organization needs a year or two to digest its recent acquisitions before it can think about new ventures. He has resisted the temptation to expand beyond the fitness business: "We only do what we know," he said.

One goal close to his heart is to have body building, as distinguished from weight lifting, recognized as an Olympic sport by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is set to reach a decision soon. Although body builders and weight lifters use the same equipment, the objective of bodybuilding is to attain a physical aesthetic, not to squat or bench press the heaviest weight. A major obstacle to Olympic recognition is the issue of steroids. Despite Weider's stance against them, many of the body builders featured in his magazine are rumored to have used steroids, and the controversy continues to haunt the sport.

The nutritional value of Weider's food supplements has also stirred debate. In 1985 Weider ran up against the Federal Trade Commission which challenged the advertised benefits of Weider's nutritional supplements. Weider settled by offering refunds to customers and toning down the claims on the products' labels. "We never claimed any food or supplement could build muscles by themselves," he now says.

Weider presides over his empire from a two-story building in Woodland Hills. In the lobby hang three full-body portraits of body builders in a style reminiscent of Eakins or Whistler. Weider's large, cluttered office suite is furnished with Empire period antiques and full of bronzes by Remington and other Western sculptors. On the walls there are large landscapes by Hudson River School and Western artists.

Weider, who has worked hard to change the public perception of body builders as muscle-bound, brain-dead narcissists, is himself the best testimony against the stereotype. Forced to drop out of high school to take a job, he is largely self-educated. An avid reader, he has recently read Peter Gay's biography of Freud and I.F. Stone's study of Socrates. He works out at his home to classical music. He began collecting American art before prices skyrocketed. One Bierstadt he bought for $20,000 would be worth close to $1 million today, he said.

Weider lives with his wife of more than 30 years in Hancock Park. An ex-model, Betty Weider writes columns for his magazines and is frequently photographed in its pages.

Despite a reputation for hard-nosed business tactics, Weider says he is not tough enough in dealing with people. "I find it difficult to reject people who make an effort or do something to advance themselves. I remember when I was a kid I walked to the city to shop to get a job, and none of the proprietors needed anybody."