Cover Story
A healthy investment
The Anytime Fitness franchise is in a league of its own INVESTMENT LEVEL: £105,000-£120,000
T
he UK expansion of Anytime Fitness is making fast progress, with over 145 clubs either open, about to launch or in their planning stages. The clubs in the UK
have been received extremely well, with membership numbers being the highest globally out of all Anytime Fitness centres which, worldwide, number 2,665 clubs with two million members in 20 countries. Anytime Fitness opens a new club every working day. So it’s not surprising that, in 2013, the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association announced the brand to be “officially the world’s
fastest-growing fitness club” for the seventh year running. Convenience of the product – both for franchisee owners and club members – is one of the key factors in the success of the brand. Where Anytime Fitness really stands out from the crowd is in its use of proprietary access software, security and surveillance technology. The integration of these systems allows owners to run safe and secure clubs with greatly reduced staffing needs.
Anytime Fitness clubs are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year without requiring extra employees. This gives franchisees an enormous
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competitive advantage, as payroll can be the most significant expense incurred by traditional fitness clubs. The member check-in software is fully integrated with the on-site security systems.
CEO Chuck Runyon, along with Dave Mortensen and Jeff Klinger, developed this simple concept in the US in 2002. Chuck describes how the brand came to fruition: “We’d bought up three failing clubs, turned them around and got them up and running successfully. What we noticed, however, was that most of the members were using the same equipment every visit and other stuff was underused. We thought that because we were paying out for the space
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