Quick and shameless plug. If anyone is interested in investing in or operating their own Anytime Fitness, please reach out. AF is the largest gym brand in the world (6000+ locations) and it’s the fastest growing brand in Asia. AF dominates market share in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore and is also doing really well in Japan and Hong Kong. So now we’re working on taking over Taiwan. Our 9th, 10th and 11th gyms are scheduled to open Q4 this year and we should be opening at least one location per month next year.
So far the financials are great…actually outperforming our original projections! Our goal is to get to 101 locations in 5 years, but we need your help to make it happen. So if this is interesting to you then shoot me a message thanks
Yes, Kaohsiung was before my time (and the current Anytime Fitness Asia corporate) so I don’t have a lot of details. But I think the previous master franchisee (or maybe it was even just a regular franchisee from America) came to build out Asia on his own, which included 4 or 5 locations in Kaohsiung? I’m not really sure. They all closed before or during Covid. And then after the start of covid, the current Anytime Fitness Asia company purchased the rights to 9 markets in Asia and has absolutely dominated over the last 6 years. The current company is called IBA and while I don’t agree with everything they do (and in fact, fight with them often) there’s no doubting their insane track record. They just crossed 600 gyms total last month under their stewardship, which as I mentioned, has been just a little over 6 years.
Understandable skepticism since I didn’t provide a full picture. But fyi:
Since my wife and I signed on to be Regional Agents officially in November of last year, we have opened 4 gyms and the next one (Hsinchu Zhuke) opens at the end of this month, then Xinzhuang Xingpu opens at the beginning of November and Taoyuan Qingpu should open in December, followed by 3 more locations that should open in January that I cannot reveal yet. All of these are directly involving me and my wife.
We have had discussions with a couple dozen individuals/groups that are looking to start opening their own locations. This has yielded about 7 very serious prospects so far that I hope will sign on to begin opening gyms over the course of the next year.
AF has opened over 100 clubs in Singapore over the last 7 years (which includes covid), over 100 in the Philippines in the last 6 years (also including covid) and they have opened over 100 clubs in Malaysia in the last 26 months! AF has also opened over 1000 clubs in Japan in the last 7 years (this is not IBA, Japan is owned by a Japanese entity) Anyway, just pointing out the insane pace of growth and I honestly am certain that IBA will be disappointed if we take 5 more years to get to 101 here in TW. But I’ll be thrilled so, for me, that’s the goal lol.
Yep, I think that our growth strategy is much better planned and the AF brand in Asia is soo much stronger now than when those other gyms were built. We will see though! It’s still early days so anything can happen.
What do you want to do? Be a passive investor in a group fund? Own your own gym and let us manage it? Or own your own gym and operate it yourself? I’ll send you a message
Edit: Ahh your DMs are closed. Ok, well an AF gym typically costs 350-400k USD depending on the size of the location and how much construction is required (particularly if there is rezoning and/or safety hazards that must be approved). We have raised various funds to build packs of gyms, and each of those funds has its own minimum contribution, usually in the 50-100k USD range. And we’ve slowly built up the network now that if there’s a potentially great business operator without enough capital, we might be able to find an investor partner(s) to put up the money. So lots of ways to approach this.
Yes I found a ghost listing of Anytime fitness in Kaohsiung before, there maybe is some opportunity in Kaohsiung given how busy the gyms are in my specific area, but it’s limited to certain areas. We can chat about it if you DM me.
Not exactly. Inspire Brands Asia took a large investment from a PE firm 5-years ago to fuel its growth. From all of my observations over the past 3 years, the PE has remained passive. This sale is for the PE firm to divest its interest in the company, likely at a very nice “profit”
According to all the active players at the top, nothing is changing in operational structure.
That said, they might sell in the future. It would only make sense. But for now, they plan to keep growing crazy fast (the goal is 1000 clubs across all of IBA’s markets asap)
@PeiHua-Connie@Brianjones We’re hosting an investor day on October 22 at Taipei 101 for anyone who wants to learn more about the opportunities to be part of AF’s expansion. Message me and I can share more details.
I have the same response, honestly if you want investors in your business you should come down to the South to talk to us not ask us to haul ass up North. This is a better move for you as you’ll get more of a feeling of what’s happening and the interest also.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll definitely let you know if we do an info session like this down south. The upcoming Taipei event will have corporate flying in teams from Philippines and Singapore HQs and many of our largest investors from overseas are attending, hence the Taipei location.
For transparency’s sake though, our focus is on Northern Taiwan. Planning to build the first 50-60 in the north before we shift our focus to the rest of Taiwan. Of course, if there are folks who want to get started on other parts of Taiwan sooner, we’ll support. But strategically, the priority is to take over Greater Taipei first. AF built ~100 clubs in both KL and Manila before spreading to other cities in Malaysia and the Philippines.
Basically all of them. At our sales conference this week, the Malaysia team was bragging that they’ve never had a single club close. I believe a few in the Philippines and Singapore closed during covid.
Also, it is kinda semantics. For example, there’s a club in Singapore closing next month when their lease and their franchise license both expire. So because the license is expiring, they’re not technically relocating to a new location. (sometimes a club will close when its lease expires and then reopen somewhere else under the same license) However, I would bet that this owner (who owns several other locations) has another active license and will eventually open in a new gym in a new location. Does that mean the one that’s closing could actually be considered relocating?
Anyway, I’m not dense to the point of your question, and the honest answer is nobody will close when they’re making ridiculous amounts of money. Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia AFs are printing money. The worst performing clubs are still profitable.
First, let’s be clear about something. My comment above was singling out Singapore, Philippines and Malaysia. I can also state unequivocally that Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and (now from all the early indicators) Taiwan are all producing great financials. The rest of the world I cannot speak to, but it sure seems like AF clubs in the US struggle a lot.
So that said, why does AF do so well in these specific markets compared to other gyms? In my opinion, it’s because we were first in these markets and we built a product that was good enough. AF’s value proposition to consumers is fairly unique: we created the “convenience gym” market with the idea that consumers would appreciate being able to get to the gym anytime, anywhere. All of our gyms are open 24/7 and all offer full reciprocity (one membership allows access to all 6000+ locations around the world)
It’s similar to the 7/11 model…you get used to there being one on every block and it being open 24 hours a day, so it becomes your default place for what it offers. Because we were first in these markets and because we are by far the largest gym brand in the world, we have a bit of a moat against all other competitors. Snap Fitness, 24/7 Fitness, and Jetts Fitness are the other 24/7 full reciprocity brands and they are all way behind us both globally, as well as in most of these specific markets.
So that’s a large part of the secret sauce…the brand’s network. I’ve never really loved the idea of paying massive franchise fees for access to a brand’s IP, HOWEVER, in the case of AF it literally unlocks the competitive advantage that all of your customers gain access to the largest network of gyms in the world. In the case of Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, it unlocks access to 3 or 4x as many locations as the next competitor in your country. Corporate will talk about a lot of other things within products and services, but I think the reciprocity and ubiquity of the brand is what it boils down to.
I think that it’s a great well know brand in Asia, no doubt about it. I do think Taiwan obviously has strong competitors such as Fitness Factory and World Gym though.
I can see the membership everywhere being a nice bonus for frequent travellers, that kind of traveller will be more common in places like Neihu and Hsinchu.
I’m a member of Fitness Factory they do a lot of things pretty well but the overcrowding in some of their most popular outlets can really annoy me (I possibly go to their biggest location nationally), plus the smell of sweat, I wish their busiest location didn’t smell so bad . In Taiwan the exercise classes are a very important part of the package.
Fitness Factory is our main Taiwan competitor. I think we share similar clientele.
Not sure if we’re better with overcrowding…our spaces are much smaller than Fitness Factory but then we also take a correspondingly lower number of members. The 24 hour model helps some, as does being able to see in real time the number of members inside the club.
Haha, we have piloted some scents to help with the odor. And yeah, we do group classes at all the locations in Taiwan. It is very much part of the community building.
