Free fitness classes in shops are the new trend

Original Article: Independent.IE 

If you’re heading to London for Christmas shopping, there are a few ways to preemptively offset the effects of the Christmas pudding.

In the city of the Thames, sportswear brands like Lululemon, Reebok and Nike are offering free classes to their customers.

Lululemon provides a free yoga or fitness class on Sunday mornings in its Marylebone store in London, for example. Yoga mats are provided.

In Reebok’s Fit Hub in Covent Garden, it offers free evening classes like 'Gymbox’s Badass', 'Hardcore HIIT', and 'Contortion Yoga'.

These brands are expanding their focus and building relationships with their consumer, David Minton, a keynote speaker at tomorrow’s Ireland Active conference, told independent.ie.

"Some of the big brands are getting into fitness and offering it free of charge - people like Nike who are offering free runs. In Reebok, you can join one of their classes in the Fit Hub. Lululemon are offering free classes in their shops and they create studios in their shops. Sweaty Betty is a London brand and are offering free classes," he said.

"This is a new area where the brand is looking to create more of a relationship with the consumer."

How is this impacting the health and fitness industry, Minton asks.

"We don’t know yet because they’re trying to build a direct relationship with the consumer, not just sell them a kit."

According to Minton, the free classes aren’t just getting a big take-up. It’s also the boutique-style, higher end shops and gyms that are going from strength to strength.

"The biggest trend is in boutiques. I’m aware of the advertising that people like Ben Dunne do and how people are trying to provide lots of things for very little money. In London, we’re now going to the opposite extreme, low cost is amazingly successful, for people who are paying below 20 pounds per month. Now just imagine if people are paying 20 pounds per session or more," he said.

"There are new boutiques that are all expanding in the UK.

"They provide night club lighting, night club sound, better look facilities, and top instructors, and you feel you’ve had a top experience.

"Maybe some people are not having the Starbucks and instead having the experience."

IHRSA European Congress, London

David presented at the IHRSA European Congress on Wednesday. His presentation looked at the state of the European fitness markets, particularly within the UK. He also led a tour group around 3 Central London clubs; Third Space Soho, EasyGym Oxford Street and the Oasis Sports Centre, Covent Garden. 

Here are some infographics used in his presentation...

July: Gym Owner Monthly

Focus on London...

The 2017 State of the UK Fitness Industry Report reveals that there are now 6,728 fitness facilities in the UK with 12% of the sites being in London.

London alone has a staggering 1.7 million fitness members, that’s 1 in every 5 people in London being a member of a gym compared to 1 in every 7 within the UK.

The fitness industry within London has a market value of £1.14 billion (24% of the overall UK market value) and a penetration rate of 20%.

Original Source: Gym Owner Monthly

One London Techie Goes Swimmingly

A London start-up company has conquered the world with its swimming app, SwimIO. The app has recorded almost 3m swims covering a distance of 4 billion meters, that’s around the world 100 times.

Now live in 155 countries, SwimIO is the first swimming app to go global. The app encourages more participation by providing a local search and live timetables so users can find where their nearest favourite swimming activity is taking place. The top five countries, by page views, is UK, USA, China, Spain and Poland.

Users access search and live timetables over 3m times every month which equates to 4m swimmers, 9m sessions and 27m total page views (68% from mobiles). So, finding out where the nearest lane swimming is available or where a mums and toddler’s session is taking place, is now at the touch of a button.

Live timetables are currently being used by over 500 swimming pool sites in the UK and Ireland and through some new technology and APIs these timetables can be viewed on the pool website, on the app, on screens in reception and via voice phone service. At home, users can even create their own weekly timetable and print it. Expansion of the API service is being rolled out to all English speaking countries and the number of page views are expected to double in 2017.

SwimIO is provided by Active in Time (AiT) originally based at Google Campus, near London’s silicon roundabout and the founder, Dan Morgan created it out of frustration of not being able to find pool space for his water polo club. Dan took on the task of bringing swimming pool marketing from the 1990’s to the present day, linking new technology and water together for the first time. Dan says, ‘it’s cool that around one third of public pools in the UK have been early adopters of the technology which provides a seamless digital gateway of choice to the consumer.’

AiT plans to integrate its live timetable APIs to new services to be launched in the UK soon including, Reserve with Google, Facebook Calendar, Amazon Alexa and Yell who are all looking to add local search, linked to live timetable APIs, plus transaction. These granular, on-demand searches, essential for today’s consumer, are due to explode in 2017 and AiT are ready to integrate all local pool providers with these new services.

http://www.helloswimio.com/

Editors Notes

‘Swimmer Dan Morgan’ the founder, created the app in his bedroom in 2011 and now swimmers have recorded over 3m swims, clocking up over 4 billion meters, that’s the equivalent of 100 times around the world. In June 2015 Dan put the first swimming app on the Apple Watch and before that the Pebble Watch. Dan’s aim has always been to put swimmers on equal terms with runners and cyclists in the world of wearables and software and SwimIO is the first app to integrate with popular running and cycling apps along with Apple’s HealthKit so workouts can be logged.

Active in Time (AiT) is the sister company of LeisureDB

Contact

Founder, Dan Morgan dan@activeintime.com 07894 998333

Operator Software, Jamie Buck jamie@activeintime.com 07887 768312