Industry veterans join Les Mills

Les Mills is beefing up its senior team with three major new appointments.

Keith Burnett, CEO, says this is an exciting time for Les Mills: “We’re in the process of building a team of fitness experts whose key purpose will be to help our club customers build better, more profitable businesses.”

Martin Franklin, formerly COO at Holmes Place, joins as customer experience director to oversee the development of the business, with a focus on supporting club customers. He says his primary focus will be to help clubs “unleash the power of our programmes.”

Former REPS registrar Jean-Ann Marnoch is joining Les Mills as instructor experience director, overseeing the instructor experience strategy and working with new head trainer Dave Kyle. Kyle says: “I’m looking forward to further developing the existing trainer talent we have through better team cohesion and engagement. There’s also a lot of new talent out there and we’re looking to find more ‘rockstar’ instructors to help our future growth.”

Les Mills has 90,000 instructors in 15,000 clubs around the world.

Jean-Ann Marnoch

Nasta takes on expanded COO role

Retention Management Europe has named Jon Nasta as its COO. In his new role, the former MD will oversee the company’s sales and marketing teams and manage the roll-out of new or expanded service offerings, as well as developing further strategic alliances and overseas growth.

Since joining the company in 2008, Nasta has overseen triple digit growth and has been instrumental in spearheading many new initiatives and enhancements.

“Jon’s passion, experience and work ethic have always been an asset for us,” says the company’s CEO and founder Richard Ekstrom. “His new, expanded role as COO will be a positive influence for Retention Management, our alliances and our client base.”

Retention Management helps fitness centres increase retention, ancillary revenues, sales and profitability. The company offers email marketing and social media among its services.

Jon Nasta

DC Leisure grows business development team

DC Leisure has bolstered its business development team with the appointment of three new managers.

Kamran Tirmizey, Damian Watts and Jamie Woods, all former DC Leisure contract managers, joined the team in April and will work alongside the two current business development managers. They will be supported by the newly appointed business development co-ordinator, Victoria O’Neill, who joins the company with extensive third sector experience.

Education co-ordinator for Physical Company

Physical Company has appointed Sue Wilkie as education co-ordinator.

Wilkie will oversee marketing and administration of live and online education; ensure all courses meet the SkillsActive training provider requirements; and manage the training team.

Sales and marketing director John Halls says: “As we grow our live training dates and add the new EX:CEL online education platform, this appointment will help keep the standard of training provision at the high level our customers expect from us.”

Sue Wilkie

Legend expands senior team with COO appointment

Legend Club Management Systems has appointed a new COO. Paul Simpson joins the company to help expand its products and services, through investment in software development capability and customer service capabilities.

The company has seen tremendous growth year-on-year for the last three years, according to MD Sean Maguire. He says Simpson – with his strong IT background and management experience – will help build on this growth.

milon announces new UK distributor agreement

Fitness & Health Solutions Ltd (FHS) has been appointed as the exclusive UK distributor for milon.

FHS is a collaboration of Stuart Davis, who has 20 years’ experience in the UK health and fitness industry, and Raf Swerts, the Benelux distributor for milon.
Swerts has introduced the circuit into 100 facilities during the last three years. He also owns 16 clubs that use the circuit and claims it helps retention and appeals to the deconditioned market.