Pure has essentially evolved into a lifestyle brand. If you want to work out and live a healthy life, you don’t need to go far
Operating in Hong Kong
“There are really three categories of health club in Hong Kong,” explains Colin Grant, founder and CEO of the Pure Group. “The hotel gyms are super
premium and charge £250–300 a month, and then there are the budget operators at between £30 and £50. We’re in the middle, but we’re not mid-market – there isn’t really a mid-market in Hong Kong. We’re a premium lifestyle brand and we charge around £100 a month for membership. “For me, you can charge £100
– you can charge £200 – but it has to be good value. We’re constantly innovating and for £100 you get an awful lot. We offer members free clothing – you walk in and we have a whole pile of socks and shorts and vests and shirts you can grab. You can take as many towels as you want, we have mobile phone charging stations around the club, and there are apples at the front desk; we spend £150,000 a year on complimentary apples. “We also run a lot of loyalty
events. It’s all part of the brand and the experience, as well as building a community. “A lot of boutique clubs are
studios and it’s almost the norm – we opened one a year and a half ago that’s 15,000sq ft and that does about 700 check-ins across 30 classes a day, while our largest site is 35,000sq ft and has up to 12,000 students a day – but back then it was very, very different.”
Brand extension So how has the Pure Yoga offering evolved over the years? “We’re constantly trying to innovate and move forward. We’ve introduced new forms of yoga – aerial yoga, wall rope yoga, yogalates – and bring in guest teachers. We run workshops and retreats, teacher training and yoga conferences to keep it interesting and challenge our members to grow in their practice. “We’re also about to launch a new
online media channel – mypureyoga. com – as an extension of the Pure Yoga business. Anyone in the world will be able to log on free of charge, accessing a wide range of yoga classes from 15 to 90 minutes, covering
May 2015 © Cybertrek 2015
different yoga disciplines and catering for beginners through to advanced. The site will launch in a number of different languages and it will be our online portal for people to get the Pure Yoga experience anywhere in the world.” But the Pure Group isn’t just about
yoga, having diversified fairly early on in its lifetime. “Yoga was becoming very popular with a certain segment of the market, but we wanted to complement that with a fitness offering. We opened our first gym – Pure Fitness – in Hong Kong in December 2003. “In addition to fitness and yoga
we also have our own clothing line, Pure Apparel, and Pure Dining. Pure Dining encompasses nood food – cold pressed juices and smoothies, salads and sandwiches, which we offer in as many of our locations as possible – and RED Bar + Restaurant, which is a full restaurant offering. “At the moment, Pure Apparel is a
ladies line, but we’ll be launching a men’s line in summer 2016, and fitness wear.
opening up in Hong Kong now, which is good for the market, but I’m not planning to go that route with Pure. I’d prefer to offer great cycling in our gyms. Because for me, the business model of the big box gym is really, really strong and it’s long-term. We’ve had members leave and come back again, because they didn’t actually get what they wanted at the microgyms, whereas with us they can get a lot of what they need under one roof. “The biggest challenge in
Hong Kong is the rents, and that’s another reason for being comfortable with where we sit. If you go to a landlord and you’re renting 30,000sq ft, you can get a longer lease and slightly better terms than if you’re renting 1,000–2,000sq ft. If you rent 1,000sq ft you may get two years. We’ll get 10 to 15.”
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 35
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