In This Article:
It’s a fantastic time to be a fitness junkie. With studios like Rumble and Orangetheory rapidly expanding across the U.S. and in-home options galore with Peloton, which is prepping to go public this year, and upstarts like Mirror coming onto the scene, it’s hard to find an excuse not to work out.
Despite the extreme proliferation of barre-based classes over the last decade, Jennifer Maanavi, founder and CEO of barre-based fitness studio Physique 57, isn’t as concerned about her peer group as she is for people’s time.
“The fact that you can go to Instagram and check out healthy food, and look at instructors is great. If we could be promoting kale and biceps, keep it going. That's amazing. And if more people could work out, that would be the best. When people ask me, what's your biggest competitor, I say time. People just aren't finding the time. And Netflix is probably my biggest competitor,” she said during an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Breakouts interview series this week.
‘We would all be doing much better if just more people worked out’
Meanwhile, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said sleep is his biggest competition. Executives are rightfully thinking beyond their immediate industry to process how consumers are thinking through how they want to spend their free time.
“It's a vicious cycle. Yes, there are exercise studios on every block [of New York City], but we're really just vying for the same people. We would all be doing much better if just more people worked out consistently — not once in a while, but really consistently,” Maanavi said.
A record 60.9 million Americans, or 18.5% of the country, have memberships to health clubs, according to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association. The fastest-growing segment is the boutique fitness studio industry, which offers specialized and focused workouts like boxing, boot camp, and indoor rowing.
Physique 57 is an early player in the boutique fitness space, having opened the doors to its first studio (on Manhattan’s 57th street) in February 2006. The company has taken it slow and steady since launch. Maanavi, who founded Physique 57 with dancer and fitness instructor Tanya Becker, hasn’t taken a dollar of outside capital. Still, the company, which now has 13 studios spanning six countries with another one set to open in the Middle East this fall, has been profitable since its first year of business.
Roughly one-third of all gym-going Americans belong to a boutique fitness studio, which attracts members who are, on average, 10 years younger and more racially diverse than those who belong to a traditional gym.