Jim Graham, chief operating officer of The Gym Group, speaks to Alison Bledge about how the low-cost pioneer is continuing its journey of innovation and success following a strategic review of its proposition

The Gym Group transformed the fitness sector when it opened the UK’s first low-cost gym in Hounslow in 2008, providing affordable, high quality, 24/7 fitness facilities without fixed contracts. Within the first three years it experienced rapid growth, with 19 further gyms opening, and now has 59 sites in its portfolio – a figure that’s set to rise to 80 by the end of 2015.

Seven years on, the industry has become crowded with operators keen to duplicate the model and emulate its success. However, says Jim Graham, Gym Group COO: “We’re constantly evolving to stay ahead of increasingly homogenous competition. Our strategy is based on an intrinsic understanding of members, their needs, usage and attitude to our product and service.

We continually review our product, physical environment and marketing execution to ensure we’re giving members the very best offering.”

That review has, most recently, involved working with integrated communications agency Dinosaur to develop a new brand proposition. The resulting concept – ‘Find Your Fit’ – has been developed to appeal to real people with achievable fitness goals, aiming to inspire them to make the commitment to making exercise a part of their lives.

Graham explains: “We launched the rebrand nationwide in January 2015 with a new creative campaign celebrating the pride of real people in overcoming the barriers to getting fit.

“It’s a different creative direction for us: more human, personable and engaging. But it’s also deliberately different from typical health club advertising that tends to be bland, samey and predictable.”

Fresh interiors
To ensure consistency across the business, The Gym is also redesigning the interior of its gyms to ensure they align with the new brand position. True to its low-cost heritage, the gyms will remain functional and cost-effective in execution, but there’s a push towards making the space more convivial, more engaging at a human level and a more intuitive space to navigate and use.

Working with brand and interior design agency StartJG, the redesign introduces subtle adjustments to the environment, including a wider palette of colours, new materials and revisions to the layout and navigation.

“This is more an evolution than a revolution,” explains Graham. “Having built up an enormous amount of brand equity with 1.5 million members who love what we do, we were keen to stay true to our product offering, but we felt the time was right to build more personality and warmth into our brand and environment. It’s positive, confident with more than a hint of quirky humour.”

However, acknowledging the prohibitively high costs associated with a comprehensive rebrand and refurbishment of a large estate, the decision was taken to develop the new brand in such a way that it could happily co-exist with the old for a lengthy transition period.

Graham explains: “The Gym totally refurbishes its facilities on a five-year refresh cycle, and this provides the ideal mechanism to update and reconfigure the mature estate over time. Four gyms will be refreshed this year, including The Gym Brighton, with the programme gathering pace in 2016.

“Of course the 25 gyms being opened in 2015 will sport the new look, with The Gym Bracknell being the first to showcase the new brand and signage when it opened in January 2015, and the brand new Charing Cross gym – 200 yards from Nelson’s Column in central London – being the first to feature aspects of the new interior design.”

Being customer-led
Graham continues: “We know that members in different locations have fundamentally contrasting profiles, with often quite radically diverse demands. The Gym is very much a customer-led business. We’re also hyper-local, using data and insight to define what equipment we fit and where we fit it.

“We’re fitting less equipment in our gyms initially and carrying out detailed research on member behaviour and usage before completing the extensive fit-out in a way that’s most relevant to the profile of members we’ve attracted.

“For example, high demand for cardio equipment at The Gym Angel, in the north London borough of Islington, has resulted in more cross-trainers being added. In contrast, extensions are planned for The Gym Wood Green and The Gym Waterloo to support a growing demand for more functional training and free weights. A further six to seven gyms will also see their free weights areas extended this year.”

This customer-centric approach has also supported the new interior design, with greater consideration given to ease of navigation. Graham says: “Examining our members’ experience of using our gyms, we recognised the need to improve navigation and clarity over what to do and where to do it. Forty per cent of our members have never been a gym member before, and we understand that large gyms like ours with a lot of technology can be disorienting.”

One key new feature is therefore a members’ hub that offers access to free wifi and provides a central area for communications and engagement – including accessing the class timetable, booking classes, engaging a PT and using vending machines. This is in addition to kiosks at which members can join and manage their memberships.

Rolling out the model
With the new brand proposition now in place, The Gym has a strong opening programme and development pipeline for its roll-out: in addition to acquiring new-build gym sites in the UK, it continues to actively pursue acquisition opportunities at home and abroad.

However, as Graham concludes: “We don’t want to participate in a trolley dash for new gym sites. The market has seen that happen before and it didn’t end well. The best multi-site businesses are not the ones with the most sites – they’re the ones with the best sites. So we remain highly selective in our new gym locations, consolidating our leading position in the UK market.”