Vancouver ranks among Canada’s fittest cities, but running a successful gym in the region is not easy.
Perhaps it is because of the region’s reputation for active residents that the fitness-club sector has a wide range of ambitious entrepreneurs muscling in to attract members and a slice of what Statistics Canada earlier this year valued at a $2.9 billion industry in 2014.
The trend among the more successful gym chains is to diversify with multiple brands, to have a niche to stand out from the crowd and to have smaller facilities.
Diversification was largely why Steve Nash Fitness World parent SNFW B.C. Ltd. (SNFW) recently bought the B.C. master franchise rights for the UFC Gym brand, which features mixed martial arts training.
It was also why Club 16 Trevor Linden Fitness co-owners Trevor Linden and Chuck Lawson bought Lower Mainland franchise rights for the Orangetheory Fitness (OTF) brand, which provides fitness classes.
UFC Gym facilities and Orangetheory Fitness locations are considerably smaller than full-size gyms.
“We looked at mixed martial arts and what is happening with that globally but also in Canada, where there is a unique and educated fan base,” said SNFW COO Chris Smith.
His company’s primary business is operating 16 full-service gyms and five larger sports clubs, which all carry the Steve Nash name. Business is profitable and Smith said the company’s 22nd location is set to open in West Vancouver at Park Royal North Mall in early 2017.
Linden and Lawson’s main venture is their eight-location Club 16 Trevor Linden Fitness chain, in which all gyms include separate women-only sections called She’s Fit. One of those centres opened earlier this year in Surrey and the next launch will depend on finding real estate.
“We were looking for another niche brand that we could go into,” Linden told Business in Vancouver.
“It’s a lot easier to find a 3,000-square-foot location [for Orangetheory Fitness] than a 25,000-square-foot location [for a full gym.]”
Similar thinking took place at SNFW, where the new UFC Gym in Kelowna and one under construction in Coquitlam are each about 7,000 square feet. That is much smaller than the SNFW gyms, which are up to 25,000 square feet, and the SNFW sports clubs, which are up to 42,000 square feet.
Getting in on the action are also the many entrepreneurs who have bought Anytime Fitness franchises from that Minnesota-based gym giant.
(Image: Club 16 Trevor Linden Fitness principal Trevor Linden and his partner Chuck Lawson have both bought Lower Mainland franchise rights to the fitness-class venture Orangetheory Fitness | submitted)
There are 16 Anytime Fitness locations in Metro Vancouver, said the company’s national media director Mark Daly. Eight of those locations opened in the past year, and Daly expects another seven to launch in Metro Vancouver within the next year.
Anytime Fitness gyms are open 24 hours a day. Although the gyms are staffed up to 10 hours per day, members can enter after those hours by using key fobs.
The facilities are stripped down versions of larger gyms. Gone are expensive trimmings such as pools, cycling facilities, saunas or juice bars. Capital is instead pumped into high-quality free weights, cardio machines and resistance equipment, Daly said.
Anytime Fitness’ global expansion has rocketed to a pace of more than 300 new locations added annually, and the company now operates more than 3,300 gyms.
Earlier this year, the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association ranked Anytime Fitness as the world’s fastest-growing sports club chain for the ninth consecutive year in a row.
In contrast, some gym chains that pioneered the sector decades ago have sputtered in Metro Vancouver.
The Gold’s Gym brand had been closing Metro Vancouver gyms in 2013, when its then-vice-president Tim Hicks told BIV that the company planned to open 20 gyms by 2015.
Instead the company shrank to two gyms and is now planning to reopen a third gym, in Port Coquitlam, in September.
No one from Gold’s Gym responded to BIV’s requests for an interview.
