The Gym Group's digital journey through Covid-19 and beyond

Jasper McIntosh, Chief Information Officer at The Gym Group, tells us how technology is enabling the business to successfully adapt to customers' needs...

Jasper McIntosh, Chief Information Officer at The Gym Group, met John Treharne, the founder of the company, in 2011 when he was running a boutique technology company. Treharne set up The Gym three years earlier with a vision to be genuinely disruptive - to create a chain of low cost, no contract gyms open 24 hours a day, making them more accessible to the many people who needed early or late opening hours. 

"John had taken some existing technology, like building access control systems and online subscription models, and applied them to the gym business" McIntosh says. "By looking at overseas models he saw that he could reduce running costs by using technology to support the sales process and enable the business to keep the doors open 24-7. This technology enabled low cost model means that more than a decade later membership fees are still on average less than ￡20 a month."When McIntosh joined the company there were 15 sites. Today, there are more than 180 across the UK. "The model had been proven, so we took the idea and scaled it out across the country" he says. 

Up until March 2020 the company had been steadily growing. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, but McIntosh explains that its challenges have led to a lot of innovation. One example of this is their partnership with fitness app Fiit, which McIntosh says, "is really enabling us to expand our health and fitness experience outside of the four walls of the gym."  

Additionally, some sites have been trialling dedicated Fiit areas. "These are custom-built Fiit 'pods' where people can experience digital content inside the gym, but individually. We've also converted an area of these gyms to custom-build Fiit studios where we deliver the content in a larger group exercise space, with immersive LCD displays and a fantastic audio experience,” he explains. 

"We're coming at this from all different angles - there's the typical in-gym experience, there is bringing a digital experience into the gym environment, delivering a digital gym experience outside of the gym environment, and then there are digital product enhancements that wrap around all these to bring to other areas of people's exercise regime." 

While the Fiit pods seem designed for social distancing, they were actually created before the pandemic. "The implementation went live in the post-Covid environment, but the thinking behind it pre-dated the pandemic,” says McIntosh. “The experience of group exercise is really powerful in a group of people, but also has value outside of a group setting. An individual may feel connected and engaged with the content they see on the screen, but may not necessarily want to do that in a group environment, or there may not be a group session running at the time they want to do it. It's about providing the member with options to have that experience in different settings and at a time that suits them."

Click here to read the full interview with Jasper.