This month’s vlog was filmed at FiitBOXX and Foxx Studios in Joo Chiat, Singapore. Many thanks to Ken, Jen and entire team for their support and hospitality.
Read This Month’s Headlines
- Xponential crushed 2022. According to their recent investor presentation, the leading fitness franchisor has now opened over 2,600 studios and sold over 5,400 licenses across its ten brands, with XPOF members growing by 32% in 2022 to 590,000.
- Great news also for Planet Fitness, which ended 2022 on 17 million members, a growth of 1.8 million members during 2022.
- On the acquisition side, Carlyle Group has acquired a majority stake in VLCC, a Delhi-based beauty and wellness chain, which was headed for an IPO
- Arch Amenities, the provider of wellness, amenity and meeting services for fitness centers, commercial and residential properties, hotels and private clubs, has acquired Hutchinson Consulting.
- AI software company LeanTaaS announced that it has acquired Hospital IQ, which provides automation solutions for hospitals. Their combined valuation tops $1 billion, welcoming a 2023 unicorn.
- The Michelin Star for fitness businesses, The Fit Guide, has just launched! This new global standard of excellence for the fitness industry will have New York City as a launch pad. Congrats Jack and Matt!
- Content giant, Netflix, branches out into fitness content with upcoming launch of Nike Training Club classes – is online content alive and kicking?
- Last but not least, wearable technology is the top global fitness trend in 2023, according to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)’s international survey of 4,500 professionals. Second is Strength Training with Free Weights and third, Body Weight Training.
- Anytime Fitness Australia just hit a significant milestone, surpassing 600,000 members. In recent months the brand has witnessed record numbers of Australians joining their local clubs helping the brand deliver on its ambition to be Australia’s most welcoming gym network. 600k members, wow, fantastic work to Nicole and her team.
- Fitstop celebrated its 100th location open across Australia and New Zealand. Congrats Pete, Alan Rebecca and the team now on 101 locations!
- Revo Fitness announced it will open 10 more clubs in Western Australia across 2023 – huge congrats to Andrew and the team.
- Australian Pilates brand inLIFE Wellness launched their franchise Joint Venture Opportunity where Owner and Operators now can partner with the franchise company with a USD$65,000 investment. In addition, inLIFE Wellness Pilates Instructor Certification School is going from strength to strength with record enrolment numbers for 2023.
- Congrats to Australia based, and now global fitness franchise, UBX, on their first gym in Ireland, as they opened in Dublin. Fantastic to see Michael and the team continue to expand their wings.
- BUMP Fitness & Health – a 6-month-old franchise business – is on a tear. With 2 company owned stores already they plan to open another 5 sites in the next 3-6 months.
- Aquatics and wellness franchise, Aqua Global, now offers Aqua wellbeing & fitness training packages – facilitating workshops from the world’s leading experts Aqua-yoga Pilates & Aqua-balance for resorts and hotels
- Viva Leisure brand “Club Lime” launched its “Flex App”, a casual membership app that allows members to set up an account, purchase a single visit, 7-day, 14-day or 30-day Flex pass.
- Last but not least, WhatIF Foods, new to the Fit Summit Community, has recently launched in Australia and New Zealand their high protein noodles.
- Aktivolabs, a Singapore based digital health science company, secures a US$10 million capital commitment from Mitsui to fuel global expansion
- Doogether, Indonesia’s number one leading healthy lifestyle application, has raised an extension to its pre-series A funding from Living Lab Ventures. Congrats to Fauzan and the team.
- TITLE Boxing Club, signed its first international deal, expanding the brand to nine countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
- Spartans Boxing Club is officially in 3 countries, having just opened their first franchise in Cambodia. Huge congratulations to Naz Musa who is now Founder and Executive Director of Spartans Boxing Club and Russell Harrison who has just been appointed CEO.
- Our friends at REVL are set to open 5 NEW REVL locations across Australia & Singapore in Q1 2023 – their Singapore second and third studios will open in March with a fourth under negotiation. In Australia they will open two new gyms in Adelaide and Victoria. Congrats to Josh, Ben and the team.
- Also in Singapore, Platinum Fitness have opened up their third 24-hour outlet at Robertson Quay. Congrats Marc and team
- CrossFit Unit is proud to welcome you to their latest box, the 5th iteration – located at Kallang Wave Mall.
- Singapore’s first snap Fitness 24/7 gym to open in Woodlands this month
- Tock’s Performance Lab, a holistic hyper individualized fitness PT gym opens in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore
- The Professional Triatheletes Organisation (PTO) will head to Asia for the first time with the inaugural staging of the PTO Asian Open in Singapore taking place on 19-20 Aug 2023
- In Thailand, Jetts Fitness has reached the 40-club milestone in Thailand with the opening flagship club in the town of Si Racha. The club is located in Central Si Racha, the new megamall, owned by global retail giant The Central Group.
- Mövenpick BDMS Wellness Resort Bangkok, located adjacent to the-state-of-art BDMS Wellness Clinic, reopened doors with a revitalised array of Wellbeing offerings
- In Vietnam, California Fitness & Yoga, celebrated its 15th anniversary with the giveaway of seven ICONIC Gold membership cards. Made from 24 karat gold, these limited-edition cards offer California’s most exclusive membership tier – and are each worth over approximately US$7,000
- Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest hotel franchising company with more than 1,600 hotels in 20 markets in Asia Pacific, unveiled its 13th and 14th hotel in Vietnam
- In partnerships, UOB Vietnam has partnered with mental wellness tech company Intellect to enable its small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers to provide well-being support for their employees.
- Last but not least, Singapore-based lifestyle app CardsPal boosts fitness offering through partnership with AI-powered fitness coach ActivEdge.
- Let’s start with a huge birthday – Les Mills Asia Pacific celebrates 25 years. What. An. Achievement.
- Myzone has worked with next-generation tech to unveil the MZ-Smart Station, a truly effective circuit training solution.
- Life Fitness launches Aspire Cardio – a new product series that includes a treadmill, elliptical, recumbent bike, and upright bike. All these created specifically to (1) Improve operational efficiency, (2) Create memorable exerciser experiences and (3) Enhance club aesthetics.
- CLMBR Secures Additional Funding (Successful Series B Funding) & Unveils New CLMBR 02 Machine
- TRIB3 marks another international territory launch with the opening of two new state-of-the-art studios in Amsterdam, TRIB3 Rozengracht and TRIB3 Middenweg. TRIB3 has developed one of the world’s most loved group workout experiences, which fuses strength training with HIIT underpinned by live heart tracking and is one of Europe’s fastest growing fitness franchises.
- ISSA Launches Yoga 200 Virtual Training Program in Partnership With Yoga Alliance
- FitnessKPI has been one of the 120 startups chosen (among 1,500 projects) to participate in the startup acceleration programme, led by Juan Roig, owner of Mercadona. FitnessKPI stood out for innovating in artificial intelligence for the fitness industry, implementing an AI solution that can make future predictions, predicting members at risk of dropping out and automating actions with leads, partners, or ex-partners.
- Bodybike expanding their sustainable range with the BODY BIKE SMART+ Forest Green – made using recycled ABS plastic resin and will be available from January 2023
- Collective Wellness Group was certified as a “Great Place to Work” last December. The certification is a two-step process including a survey to the employees and the People & Culture team completing a questionnaire about the workforce. Overall, CWG achieved an outstanding result with 93% of employees saying CWG is a great place to work compared to 56% of employees at a typical Australia-based company.
- Therabody Announces 25-year experience wellness industry leader, Monty Sharma as their new Chief Executive Officer.
- Fantastic to see our friends at Sweatworks continue to deliver incredible new digital services, this time to Nix Hydration and Y7 Yoga. If you are looking to expand and monetise your offerings look no further than Mo and his team – they do fantastic work on digital software and hardware products.
- Fitness management software, Hapana are excited to announce their partnership with Strong Pilates. The Australian Pilates franchise are migrating all 30 of their open sites on to Hapana’s platforms this month, with plans for 50 more studios opening across 2023.
- Oura launches an employer-focused wellness arm with the promise of bringing its sleep insights into all corners of industry: corporations, higher education, athletics and the military.
- Premium equipment designer and manufacturer, ZIVA, expanded their custom product offerings. Brands can now customise a wider range of storage racks and free weights and make their mark with intricate designs and true-to-life colours that put their personality into every detail of their facility.
- News from us, our 2023 World Festival in Singapore over 12 – 15 June is now NASM certified. By attending, you can gain up to 1.8 continuing education credits (CEUs).
- In Afghanistan, the Taliban banned women from gyms and parks in December but now Afghan women are defying the Taliban ban to open underground businesses — everything from schools to beauty salons and now gyms. They are running group fitness classes to keep women active and healthy. FIT Summit believes health, education and wellbeing should be everyone’s basic human rights, we are inspired by the actions of those incredible women.
