INTERVIEW
The Reebok Sports Club – Facts & Figures
Location: Canary Wharf, London, UK Opened: 2002 Size: 9,290sq m (100,000sq ft) Membership: “There are 105,000 people working in Canary Wharf, and 80 per cent of our business is currently corporate – our clients include BP, Citigroup, Barclays,” says MD John Penny. “But Canary Wharf and the surrounding East End is developing residentially, so we’ve introduced a weekend membership – Friday to Sunday – which is already growing.” Fees: “The headline rate for a non-corporate individual is £112.50; corporates receive up to a 10 per cent discount depending on how many memberships they commit to. Then there’s the weekend deal, which costs £67 a month.” Competition: “There’s Virgin Active Riverside and LA Fitness West India Quay, but our main competitors are the mini gyms in-house at the banks, some of which are free for employees.”
Members’ club As if all that weren’t enough, Penny is now embarking on the final – for now at least – leg of the upgrade: the club itself. “There are three elements to the club
upgrade,” says Penny. “There’s a bit of general refurbishment to future-proof the club and reinforce a leading market position for the next fi ve to 10 years. There’s yield enhancement, driving more revenue per member via new facilities and offers. And there’s the added sizzle, enhancing and improving facilities to create an even more luxurious feel. “We’re also looking to create a new
style, giving it more of a members’ club feel – aspirational, comfortable, luxurious, informal but dynamic, rich materials and fi nishes. The designers from Sparcstudio talk about eclectic style, post-industrial chic. There are lots of dark browns, olive greens, armchairs, rugs, a new lighting scheme. The club is a very social place where people meet after work, train together, stay around afterwards, so very importantly there will also be strong wifi throughout.” He continues: “We’re starting with a
new-style changing room, which we’re developing to integrate all the bolt-ons we’ve introduced over the years. We have a three-tier locker room system: one you have access to as part of your membership; for £25 more a month you get into a whole new area with your own private locker; then there’s an executive lounge, which we call Premier Plus, that costs another £85 a month for a full-size locker and all sorts of treats, including us doing your laundry for you. “We’ll also be looking at the gym to see how we can offer members even
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more. We’re considering a much larger stretch zone, for example, and a new pilates area. Then there’s the group exercise timetable, where we have lots of exciting things coming up: Tabata for example, which will be huge in an area like Canary Wharf where people are time-poor (see HCM June 13, p70). “The three gym fl oor zones we created
18 months ago have also proved very popular: we now have a specifi c combat timetable which I’d like to add to; the functional area is booming to the point that we’re having to look at expanding it; and Olympic lifting – while it required a bit of member education, as heavy weights aren’t really what we’re about – has become so popular we’re also going to have to evolve that area further. “My mind is racing and there’s lots I
want to do. The luxury for us is that, as a 9,290sq m (100,000sq ft) club, we have the space to offer a wide range of options, allowing people to try out new things and discover what they like – something that’s sustainable for them. “But it’s the 80/20 rule: 80 per cent
of your business has to be bread and butter, which means offering a certain amount of equipment and a certain number of certain types of classes all the time – having enough facilities to look after the membership and ensure they’re well maintained. The other 20 per cent is what we call the ‘sizzle round the edges’ – innovations in equipment, new group exercise offerings, little extras like shining members’ shoes and offering free chair massages on the gym fl oor. “We’re going to keep the club open
throughout the refurb, and work should be fi nished by around mid-2014.”
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
Refurbishment: The third and fi nal stage is the health club itself
Future prospects So will that then be job done for Penny? Where does he see the club in five years’ time? “The population of Canary Wharf could grow to 120,000–140,000, and our capacity is around 10,000–11,000 members. Once we get there, it becomes about yield management and capacity management, looking at what contributes the most per square foot, assessing bottlenecks, and letting those factors decide how we develop the club.” And how about the fi tness sector as a whole – how will it move forward?
“We’re already doing much better at making fi tness more readily available whatever your income – the local authority and budget offerings have really opened the market up. “The opportunities have to revolve
around how we improve the nation’s health: the synergies we can make with health and medical services, but also schools and sports development – how we get the mentality of sport and physical fi tness in at grass roots. “I’ve always found it challenging with
wellness though. Lots of clubs are being proactive about wellness testing and it’s breaking through slightly, but most members will only address something when it becomes a problem. They don’t think about preventative healthcare and don’t want to pay for it. It’s up to us to re-educate them. It’s interesting how much people will spend on going out versus the benefi ts of having a PT. We have to try and change people’s perceptions of what’s valuable.” ●
August 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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