Pure Fitness was launched in 2003 to complement Pure Yoga
“T May 2015 ©
here’s nothing wrong with a mistake, as long as you don’t make it twice. You have to
just try things,” says Colin Grant, CEO of Pure Group – the market leader in Asia, which encompasses fitness and yoga, dining, nutrition and apparel in its lifestyle portfolio. “What’s the worst that can happen?” For those of a more conservative
nature that’s easier to say than it is to do, but this approach has stood Grant in good stead throughout his life – not that there seem to have been too many mistakes along the way. A serial entrepreneur from the age
of 12, when he became the sole agent in Hong Kong for a West German tennis brand, importing 300 rackets – a venture he admits “ended in tears” – a number of successful start-ups ensued. Aged 15, Grant set up his
Cybertrek 2015
own tennis racket stringing business, catering for both the local club and professional tournaments, and in 1985, at the age of 18, he founded movie rental chain Movieland in Hong Kong – a business his brother still runs – followed by Mr Bean Coffee in 1991. And that’s not to mention his semi-
professional tennis career, ranked number one in Hong Kong for over a decade and competing in international competitions including Wimbledon and the Davis Cup. For many people that would have
been enough but Grant, it seems, isn’t one to sit on his laurels. “My video rental business was going well. I owned it 100 per cent and I was making good money. I had 22 staff and I had a great life,” he says. “But it really wasn’t challenging me, and it took up literally a couple of hours a week, so I was starting to look for something else.”
Blazing a trai l The next step – into yoga – happened quite by chance. “It was July 2001 and I was on a golfing holiday in Whistler, but one day we couldn’t play golf because it was raining. Someone suggested we do a yoga class, which to me was a crazy idea – I went to the gym and I played tennis, but I’d never done yoga in my life. But we did a 90-minute class and to this day I can remember how it felt coming out of that class. It was a totally different feeling from coming out of the gym, and it felt amazing. So the next day I actually cancelled golf, even though it wasn’t raining, and did another yoga class and really enjoyed it. “I went back to Whistler the next
month and just did a week of yoga, and again I really liked it. But when I got back to Hong Kong there was nothing like what I’d experienced in Canada, so I decided to look into opening a yoga studio.
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