I NTERV I E W
we’re not back to where we were pre-COVID: we have to be very sensible about what we’re spending. But we can certainly move forward. There’s real energy and excitement in the business. How has Fitness First been faring since the start of the pandemic?
photo: fitness first
Even though our clubs are mostly in London and the South East, it’s a ‘tale of two estates’ when it comes to our recovery and growth. We split our estate into three categories: 21 residential clubs, where the majority of members live in the area; 18 city clubs, where a very high proportion of members work near the club; and six city & residential clubs – Baker Street and Camden, for example – where there’s a crossover of residential and corporate in the same area. Our residential and our city and residential clubs are recovering well. They’ve been growing every single month since we opened in April last year – even now, during Omicron – and are getting back to a strong position. We aren’t back at pre-COVID membership in any of these clubs yet, but a lot of them are getting close and they’re all profitable again. Unfortunately, in the other part of our estate – our city clubs – it’s been hard going all the way through. A lot of our city members are still on freeze. It means they haven’t cancelled of course, which is great, but we’re not getting any revenue from them at the moment and we obviously don’t know when they’ll come back.
Have there been any positives from the city?
There are pockets that have done well: a handful of city clubs where, for example, a local business has brought the whole office back. In those locations, we’ve seen decent returns and joiner numbers. Last November was also really interesting for us. We saw a spike in September and October, which was fantastic and then November was a record month. It was our best ever November in the history of Fitness First, both in terms of returners and new joiners. Even in the city, we joined more new members in November than we did in September and October, which never happens. We thought this was it – that it was all happening again – then along came Omicron. We do believe the city will come back, though. We just don’t know exactly when. Clearly there’s going to be some hybrid working, so we need to understand what that means for us – how we fit into workers’ lives if they’re only in the office two or three days a week. But we do genuinely believe our city clubs will be profitable again; some already are, by the way, although a number are not. Have member motivations and behaviours changed?
Some people still don’t feel ready to go to the gym, and Omicron certainly didn’t help. However, in our residential and our city and residential clubs, our January 2022 sales figures are only 1 per cent behind where we were in January 2020. It seems caution among
January 2022 sales figures are only 1% behind January 2020 36
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