The Fitness Industry
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Who wins and loses in the cut-throat exercise market? Looking good and being fit has become more important as we have become more wealthy. Yet most new gyms and fitness centres fail. Evan Davis and his guests work out the secrets of success in this growing industry, which is is worth over £5 billion in the UK.
GUESTS
Stuart Broster, CEO, Anytime Fitness UK
Tommy Matthews, Managing Director, Be Military Fit
Dawn Tuckwell,, Director and Co-founder, Action PR
PRESENTER: Evan Davis
PRODUCER: Julie Ball
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the programme. And today we are looking at one of those idiosyncratic industries, one that tells us something about modern consumer society. It's the health and fitness sector. The richer we get, the more we want to buy a better, fitter body. And there are plenty of |
| 0:22.2 | businesses out there trying to sell us one. I think deep down, we know we'll not end up |
| 0:26.6 | looking as healthy as the model in the poster, but we are still pulled in. So what drives us |
| 0:31.2 | to fitness? Why so many fads in that sector? And what makes some businesses work better than |
| 0:37.1 | others? Well, I have with me three guests who know all about the fitness industry. Let us meet in that sector and what makes some businesses work better than others. |
| 0:40.9 | Well, I have with me three guests who know all about the fitness industry. |
| 0:41.8 | Let us meet them. |
| 0:46.5 | First up is Stuart Bruster, the chief executive of any time fitness. |
| 0:51.3 | So just tell us a bit about the business, Stuart, how big and how you see it positioned in the market. |
| 0:52.8 | We are midmarket. |
| 1:11.1 | We're 163 clubs as of today. We're second largest in the industry. Who's the largest? Pure Jim. They've gone over 200, which is the first time in history of the industry. Anybody's been over 200 clubs. We are spread from Lanzhen to John O'Groutes. Literally. Literally. Well, Elgin to Truro. It's not as good. Pretty close. And as I said, we sit within the mid-market, which is actually quite a good space to be, really. Right. So what do I get as a customer? You don't have pools, or do you have? No, we don't have pools. So we just have dry facilities, yeah. So, C.D. |
| 1:27.7 | Is that a thing you have to think about? |
| 1:29.0 | I mean, it is pools? Oh, absolutely. You have to think about whether you have a pool. You know, to be quite honest with your pool is a very expensive thing to have. And actually, I suppose, nine out of ten people want it, but one out of ten people use it. So to be class with you, you know, that's always the challenge. |
| 1:26.7 | That's the first consumer insights of the, of ten people use it. So to be quite, that's always a challenge. |
| 1:44.8 | That's the first consumer insights of this strange sector. |
| 1:49.2 | Now, what do I pay generally to join in any time? |
| 1:52.6 | Our average yield, excluding the AT, |
| 1:55.5 | because obviously you have to collect money for the government, |
| 1:57.6 | is about £33 across our portfolio. |
| 2:00.0 | Per month? |
| 2:00.6 | Per month, yeah. So it's about a pound a day |
| 2:02.3 | and that would be the mid-market price. |
... |
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