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Only by replacing or even surpassing the experience of on-site coaching, can the user’s stickiness be improved.

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Text | Special Observer Liu Tiantian

Edit | Huang Zhen 曜

When “distance learning”, “live fitness”, and “cloud fitness” have become high-frequency words for practitioners in the fitness industry, “online” is considered by some practitioners to be the only direction for transformation and self-help.

As a continuous entrepreneur who has worked hard in the fitness industry for 12 years, he has also been thinking about where the fitness industry will go under the current “smell change” mood.

It is undeniable that through the catalysis of this epidemic, the online penetration of fitness has increased rapidly and unprecedentedly during the epidemic, but can short-term benefits translate into long-term industry trends? Can the online branch of the fitness industry be out of control like this, and completely replace the offline fitness business?

Our view is that due to this epidemic, China ’s fitness population will greatly increase, and more and more people are willing to pay for fitness, but most people will develop fitness habits. It takes a long way. The fitness industry will continue to thrive, and it will accelerate integration and division again. The business model will undergo profound changes, and online and offline integration will be a long-term trend.

The offline traditional chain is facing the shock

2003-2013 is the golden decade of traditional offline fitness development. Since SARS in 2003, China has shouted the slogan “National Fitness”, and a number of large chain brands such as One trillion Wade and Wales were born. The rapid development of these early brands benefited from a market window period when supply was less than demand, but even during this window period, there have been no national oversized chain brands in China for decades, mainly for these reasons:

1. Offline store investment is heavy, and business expansion mainly depends on cash flow turnover of presale : Traditional stores generally have an area of ​​more than 1,000 square meters, and the investment cost is flat.The average investment is more than one million yuan. Most of the investment costs depend on the cash flow of pre-sale, which cannot fulfill the purpose of occupying the country quickly during the market dividend period.

2. The product cannot be standardized and highly dependent on people. : Traditional fitness clubs mainly provide comprehensive fitness service products, including expanded equipment, personal education, and group tours. Lessons, swimming, etc., but the product experience is highly dependent on coaches, cannot be standardized, and cannot be quickly replicated.

3. The operating model and management concept are backward, the member experience is poor, and the renewal rate is low : The management model of traditional fitness brands is basically sales-driven Management mode, focusing on marketing but not products, focusing on flow but not services. Therefore, in the establishment of corporate culture, personnel training, etc., operators are unwilling to invest energy for a long time. After locking the consumer’s future consumption funds in advance, traditional fitness clubs have not brought continuous and stable services to consumers, coupled with the difficulty of maintaining fitness itself, the traditional gym renewal rate is less than 20% on average, and monthly income mainly comes from new customer.

4. Operating costs have increased dramatically year by year, making profit more and more difficult. : Rent and manpower are two important costs of traditional fitness clubs. Under the environment of rising housing rents year by year, the profits of clubs have also fallen year by year.

After 2015, as the market floods into more and more new fitness brands, consumers have more and better choices. This traditional model that relies solely on pre-sale fitness cards that does not focus on user experience has been severely impacted. Traditional fitness brands that have not yet formed a good reputation and brand moats have struggled to maintain in recent years, and some brands have closed down. The new crown epidemic became the last straw to crush the camel. The epidemic is over, the traditional model will usher in a period of integration again, and investors will be cautious about the model of investing in offline stores with heavy assets.

But the grim form will also force the transformation and upgrading of traditional brands with a certain capital reserve base and operating capabilities.

We have observed some traditional brands, and have begun to use the Internet and the Internet of Things to create digital service management systems and strengthen the construction of technical teams. As it has been working offline for many years, it has a better understanding of users’ perceptions and habits. Through dataization and visualization of management and consumer behavior, it can quickly guide the direction of operation management, greatly improve the efficiency of operation management, and reduce operating costs. Intensify efforts in product supply and services to introduce high-quality coaches and courses to improve word of mouth. After returning to the nature of commerce and re-emphasizing the supply of products, these brands will also find ways for enterprises to continue to survive and develop.

For these traditional brands in transition, can they quickly restructure the team and development model and establish a good brand image to win consumer recognition, that is, to maintain a good profitability, and to seize it faster Market share so as not to be swallowed up by new fitness brands remains a continuing challenge.

Online fitness breaks out in a short time

The fitness industry has gone through many detours online. Since the Internet gale entered the fitness industry in 2012, the entire industry hopes to use the Internet to find the fastest way. In China, super-brands such as the American classpass and 24-hour industry can appear.

2015-2016 is a period of explosive development of online fitness platforms in the industry. Each brand and capital entered the market and acquired users through the rich fitness content on their respective App. Because it is free and convenient to exercise anytime, anywhere And has the advantage of richer and better fitness courses than offline gyms. In the early stage of brand establishment, it has capital assistance, rapid development, and acquired a large number of online users.

But unlike the education industry and other online consumer platforms, the fitness industry is still in its infancy in China. The consumption of fitness products does not belong to the “high-frequency, just-needed” type of consumption. It is consciously voluntary online. There are still a small number of people who exercise on the platform at home and continue to pay for fitness content. As a result, all online fitness brands are gradually facing weak user growth, the proportion of active paying customers is not high, and large-scale cash is difficult to achieve. .

Since 2016, many online fitness brands have quickly withdrawn from the stage because they can neither find a profit model and other monetization channels, nor can they continue to finance blood transfusions from the capital market. What remains are the head brands that have strong financing capabilities and have a certain amount of users online. But even so, in recent years, the growth of active customers has been sluggish, and how to make rapid profits has still plagued these companies.

But this epidemic made the online fitness platform usher in a bonus again. The number of online users has skyrocketed, the proportion of active customers has increased significantly, and the operating data has been rising steadily. The top “pure online” excellent brands have become the epidemic due to the high-quality content and strong online operation capabilities. The “model student” of the fitness industry.

As a new fitness retail brand focusing on spinning bikes, in the face of the epidemic, we also quickly launched home fitness courses targeted by the live broadcast platform. According to the training needs of different users, we used small class training camps. Free service for members and their families. Since its inception, we have been focusing on the design and optimization of live course content. A large number of entertainment and interactive elements have been incorporated into our courses, which have been welcomed by users and active in groups.Over 95%, the community operation centered on meeting user needs has achieved good results. At the same time, during the epidemic period, the team also put more energy on polishing products and improving user experience, and accelerated the upgrade of smart bicycle hardware, The live broadcast system, the interactive design of sports entertainment and the enrichment of the course content are intended to provide users with a richer and better experience after the epidemic.

We know that the large-scale awakening of public fitness awareness does not represent the development of fitness habits. As the epidemic continues to be controlled, most users who have not developed sports habits are still unable to consciously, regularly and continuously exercise. The proportion of to c family exercise will decline as the epidemic ends. Users, compared with the data in the epidemic, will be greatly discounted. Of course, the increase in the total base of the fitness population in China will bring some benefits to online brands, and the users of online platforms will grow steadily.

In fact, the outstanding players in the industry are already considering how to increase the customer acquisition cost and increase brand influence with the end of the traffic bonus era and increasing customer acquisition costs. We believe that in addition to launching a wealth of fitness courses, we provide users with more targeted and personalized fitness product content through big data, and integrate social and gaming during the fitness experience to counteract the boringness of individual sports. , Continuously motivating users’ exercise interest will be an important force for future online platform monetization.

New pattern of fitness industry: online and offline deep integration, complement each other

At present, there are three main models in the domestic fitness industry: “traditional direct chain” model, “pure online” model, and “integrated online and offline” smart fitness business model. The latter two are new fitness business models. mode. The three types of models are still being explored in their respective fields, with a view to optimizing the best models and creating Chinese super fitness brands.

The “traditional direct chain” model will increasingly focus on a small number of brands with a certain financial foundation and operating capabilities. These brands are actively embracing the Internet, using online as their service user, improving business efficiency and An important means to reduce operating costs. The “pure online” model is also being explored for several years. It tries to use its traffic advantages and digital management advantages to explore the possibility of introducing online traffic to its own offline stores to realize monetization. For example, keepland is keep trying to monetize offline. One of the ways.

And some smart fitness brands that “combined online and offline” have performed well in the past two years, because they can meet the needs of users for a good offline sports atmosphere and social needs, as well as digital operation through the Internet Means provide users with more targeted products and are loved by consumers, and the brand has gradually established a moat. However, due to the scarcity of high-quality coaches in the rapid development, there has been a problem that the product experience cannot be maintained steadily.

We believe that in order to become a benign and profitable brand with rapid growth, we must simultaneously address the two core pain points of the current industry development: 1. User pain points: fitness is anti-human, fitness awakening, fitness habits Not yet developed. 2. Enterprise scale pain points: The products are not standardized enough, fitness products are highly dependent on coaches, and high-quality coaches are scarce. Therefore, in the operation of Happy Cycle, the live broadcast center outputs standardized courses to stores, on the one hand, using technology and the Internet to make consumers’ sports processes happy with the integration of music, lighting and game interaction; Through centralized management and control, enterprises can continue to provide consumers with products with a high-quality experience. The core of the operation is to use a digital management system to obtain consumer behavior data to guide the product iteration direction-let users complete fitness in a happy exercise process, establish a sense of self-fulfillment in game interaction, and eventually form stickiness to our sports products.

Practice has proved that consumers prefer group courses with “offline social”, “one-to-many, strong interaction” and “music” elements. The repurchase rate is significantly higher than other products, so We believe that under the circumstance that most Chinese people have not developed an independent sports habit, the creation of “offline group sports scenes” has a great impact on consumers’ continuous exercise.

We are constantly optimizing our business model. We have seen that “live teaching”, “offline scenes”, “entertainment and socializing”, and “digital operations” will create quality fitness products and provide users with a super fitness experience. An important direction for building a fitness superbrand. Therefore, the further deep integration of online and offline complement each other is the general trend of the future fitness industry.

But the huge challenge that “live teaching” needs to face is: How to replace or even surpass the experience of live coach teaching through live teaching, so that consumers continue to pay? The industry will find more solutions to this problem in the future.

Related reading:

Super Viewpoint | Han Wei, CEO of Music Sports: Physical fitness must do live broadcast Traffic, closed loop, monetization three stages

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