The new 1Rebel club occupies a prime stretch of ‘shop frontage’ in the City of London
he launch club for new microgym operator 1Rebel occupies a prime stretch of street level
‘shop frontage’ close to the Gherkin in the City of London. This
meticulously crafted club offers showers designed by a glass designer for the Apple stores, a celebrated international DJ is responsible for mixing all the club’s music, and exercisers get not just one complimentary towel but can choose from towels at ambient temperature, warmed on exposed copper piping, or refreshingly infused with eucalyptus. It’s this kind of attention to detail that makes 1Rebel a ‘boutique’ microgym in every sense of the word, according to the brand’s co-founder James Balfour. “The fitness industry uses the term ‘boutique’ rather loosely,” he explains.
“If I go to a boutique hotel I expect, and usually receive, five-star accoutrements. That’s not always the case in a so-called boutique gym. The changing rooms, for instance, are usually a big let-down.” Ahead of the first club opening in
January, 1Rebel’s management team made some bold claims. They talked about the brand being “an industry disruptor”, with the website stating:
February 2015 © Cybertrek 2015
“We’re revolutionising London’s fitness industry… we’re ditching the tired model and building destinations, not just gyms.” These are claims that 1Rebel’s
young and ambitious team – which consists of Balfour, 31, fellow co- founder and former lawyer Giles Dean, 39, and operations director and fitness industry veteran Kevin Yates, 37 – wholeheartedly stand by.
“We’ve conceived 1Rebel as a premium experience from start to finish, from the classes and instructors through to the changing rooms and the organic food and juices people can buy. It’s a five-star offering that we really don’t think has existed until now,” says Balfour.
Meet the team On paper, and indeed in real life, the exuberant trio seem a formidable team. Balfour descends from fitness royalty, his father being Mike Balfour, founder of Fitness First, who established a global chain of over 500 clubs in 25 countries. Balfour Jnr deliberately avoided the
fitness industry in his teens and early 20s, choosing instead a life of extreme adventure, joining expeditions to places like the South Pole and Everest (at 24, he was one of the youngest to reach the summit), before eventually
succumbing to a desk job in investment banking for three years. But by his mid-20s he was ready to
come into the fitness fold, cutting his teeth with the launch of health club chain Jatomi Fitness in Eastern Europe in 2007, along with his father Mike and former Fitness First operations director Tony Cowen. Yet Balfour now readily admits he “wasn’t really proud of the product”. One gets the sense it was too run of the mill for James, who by then had experienced the excitement of glaciers and death- defying mountains and longed to bring the essence of this into a fitness brand. Balfour first met Dean, a Cambridge
graduate, when the latter was living in Warsaw and eventually joined Jatomi as its in-house lawyer. The year was 2013, and both men had been impressed by the “phenomenal” microgyms of New York (SoulCycle, Barry’s Bootcamp)
– but believed the concept could be made even better. Dean explains: “James and I had both noticed how popular the NY studio-based concepts were, and were independently telling Mike that we saw these as the future. Mike put us in a room together and told us we both wanted to go in the same direction. 1Rebel was founded from there.”
Read Health Club Management online at
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