INTERVIEW
PURE GROUP – a potted history
January 2002: First Pure Yoga opens in Hong Kong Central
December 2003: First Pure Fitness opens in SoHo, Hong Kong
September 2004: RED Bar + Restaurant opens at IFC mall, Hong Kong Central
November 2005: Pure Yoga opens its fi rst international site, in Singapore
April 2006: Pure Yoga opens in Taipei
June 2008: First of two Pure Yoga studios opens in New York, operated by Equinox
August 2013: Launch of Pure Apparel and nood food
“I teamed up with a business partner,
Bruce Rockowitz, who I’d known for 30 years – we actually did that fi rst class in Whistler together and he’d loved it too. He agreed to fund the venture if I’d build it, and we became equal partners. “At that point there were only four
other yoga studios in Hong Kong, run by yogis and with a combined fl oor space of about 2,000sq ft, each offering maybe three classes a day. “We did it differently. I wasn’t a yogi,
but what I had to my advantage were funds, resources and an entrepreneurial business background. Although hardly anyone in Hong Kong practised yoga at that time – people used to ask me why I was setting up a yoga studio – we were able to invest in what we believed people would want. In my mind, the worst that could happen was that it wouldn’t work – I’d have survived. “We put in US$1m and bought
October 2013: Pure Yoga launches in Shanghai
6,500sq ft of space, which we opened under the Pure Yoga brand on 21 January 2002. We had two big studios
34 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
At Pure Yoga, members can find yoga, fitness, apparel and food all under one roof
that could each take 35 or 40 people, a nice lounge area, a retail area selling clothes, changing rooms and lockers and showers – none of the other studios in Hong Kong had showers – and we provided mats and towels. We also had quite a comprehensive schedule of classes: when we fi rst opened, we offered a full timetable with three types of yoga and great teachers. “It really opened up the experience
to the mass market – we’d get lawyers, bankers, housewives, bar tenders and students. Everybody could come because all they needed to do was turn up in shorts and a T-shirt. “At the time we didn’t know nobody
else had done what we’d done, or that ours was the largest yoga studio in the world. Now you walk into our
May 2015 © Cybertrek 2015
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