NEW OPENING
gymBUG’s CV stage will look exactly like the stages at existing FX Leisure clubs
GETTING THE BUG “I
t’s probably a sign of our age that the best word gymBUG MD Alun Peacock and I can come up with
to describe the offering at the new club is ‘funky’. But to be fair, provided you’re not a teenager with a whole new set of adjectives to describe what’s cool and what’s not, that’s precisely what it is. I’m being shown around what is, at the time of my visit a month before opening, still pretty much a shell, but which will open as the premium budget operator’s inaugural site in November. The CV stage has already been built – a raised area that will host 65 pieces of CV kit, clustered in front of a wall that’s currently awaiting its huge screen – and spotlights are now being set into the perimeter board above it. But other than that, it’s still a 1,022sq m (11,00sq ft) building site on a retail park in St Helens. So how can I already visualise how ‘funky’ gymBUG will be, other than the obvious excitement on Peacock’s face as he describes the sound system, lighting, bold colour scheme, graffi ti wall, functional area? Simple: it’s because I’ve
effectively been exposed to the design ethos already, at the sites operated by gymBUG’s sister companies, FX Leisure and Hale Country Club & Spa.
EXPLORING NEW MARKETS Now is probably a good time to backtrack to the beginning of the story – the tale of how FX, Hale and gymBUG came to be. Peacock was at school with brothers
Stuart and Andy Taylor, and indeed played junior golf with Stuart before their sporting paths diverged: Taylor to become a professional golfer and Peacock to play professional rugby. But their careers outside of sport also had a striking symmetry. As manager at JJB, Peacock opened the operator’s fi rst club – in Warrington – in late 1998;
It helps that, as a family-owned company, we don’t
have to produce monthly numbers for shareholders – we just stay true to our long-term vision
36 Take part in the Health Club Management reader survey:
www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQDN2R6 November/December © cybertrek 2012
There’s a new premium budget operator in town, and it’s really delivering on both pledges: premium and budget. Kate Cracknell visits the inaugural site in St Helens, north-west England
Taylor opened the fi rst FX Leisure site with his brother and father a few months later, and just a few miles away. While JJB subsequently expanded into a large estate of health clubs – a chain which, in 2009, became DW Sports Fitness, with Peacock by this point associate director overseeing group operations – the Taylors quietly grew their portfolio to seven FX Leisure sites, all owned on a freehold basis and all, while mid-market by price tag, highly innovative and design-led. Several years down the line, on leaving DW, Peacock joined the Taylors as a consultant on both their FX brand and their new high- end project: Hale Country Club & Spa. “We’re a small family business and we were actually very happy just continuing
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