The weather is getting warmer, but for some industries, the cold winter is not over yet, and the gym is one of them.
Xinhua News Agency, Chengdu, March 13 (Sun Xiaohui) on the afternoon of the 12th, a spokesman of the National Health and Health Commission announced that the current epidemic peak in China had passed. With the trend of the new coronavirus epidemic in China easing, all walks of life are returning to work one after another. According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of March 2, the resumption rate of small and medium-sized enterprises nationwide had reached about 45%. The weather is getting warmer, but for some industries, the cold winter is not over yet, and the gym is one of them.
During the isolation period of the whole people at home, the gyms that lost their passenger flow were like falling ice caves, closed businesses and closed doors. Countless fitness coaches also changed their careers to seek their way out one after another. With the surge of resumption of work, can the dilemma of the gym be relieved? Where will online “cloud” fitness, which became popular due to the epidemic go?
△Before the outbreak of the epidemic, citizens exercised in the gym. Xinhua News Agency reporter Jin Liang fast shot
The Gym suffered a cold winter
into March, the warmth of the early spring has appeared, but for the gym, the cold winter is not over yet.
Recently, a “Internet celebrity gym” near Jiuyan Bridge in Chengdu announced its closure. Hundreds of members began to defend their rights in order to recover their membership fees, some employees of the gym also said that their wages in January had not been paid.
Affected by the epidemic, the service industry is struggling, and the gym is a representative category. Physical gyms that rely on marketing models such as card handling and teaching, after falling into a shutdown situation, high rents and staff salaries have become problems, and those with strong strength can still retain a glimmer of vitality, however, the gym with difficult cash flow can only close the door and find another way out.
Some media interviewed the person in charge of a fitness training club in Shanghai. The interviewees said frankly that assuming that they could resume work in March, 50% of the gyms might be eliminated. If they could resume work in April, 60%-70% of gyms cannot resist this level.
Gyms are closed one after another, and fitness coaches are also in a difficult situation.
It is understood that the salary system of most fitness coaches is basic salary + commission for sales classes. If the commission for sales classes is lost, coaches can only get a few basic salaries.
On February 12, a message “fitness coaches sell motorcycles to repay loans and are arrested on high speed” on the internet attracted public attention.
According to the official data of Meituan, from the outbreak of the epidemic on January 20 to February 23, about 75000 Meituan take-out riders were added, more than 37 percent of the new riders come from life services such as fitness coaches.
Although some gyms in China have begun to resume work one after another, including head fitness clubs in China, due to the fact that gyms are crowded places, the risk of transmission is relatively high, even if returning to work, the number of people must be strictly controlled. The relevant staff of the gym said that even if they return to work, it is difficult to recover in a short period of time. On the one hand, it is the public’s fear of the epidemic, on the other hand, it is easy to breathe easily when wearing masks, which affects the fitness experience.
It is reported that a Japanese gym has confirmed three cases of covid-19, with about 600 close contacts. It can be seen that even if the domestic epidemic situation has eased, the severe situation of the gym has still not improved effectively.
If you turn offline to online, can cloud fitness break the situation?
Compared with the cold winter of offline fitness, online fitness is booming during the epidemic.
△ super gorilla. Photo source: data from China Business Network station
B shows that the cumulative amount of fitness sports videos played at Station B during the epidemic reached 0.66 billion times, an increase of nearly 200% over the same period last year, the total viewing duration of users increased by 164 percent year-on-year, and the total number of new fans of fitness UP increased by 240 percent year-on-year.
The well-known sports software KEEP has jointly launched stay at home sports series teaching videos with Xinhua Sports, and Xinhua News Agency has also launched special videos such as champion teaching you fitness. Some physical fitness companies have moved to live broadcast under the threat of online craze, trying to attract popularity in the form of paid or free teaching to bring vitality for themselves.
During this period, super orangutan launched a paid course, “Super scarlet squatting-14 days ‘companion’ training camp”, priced at 399 yuan, all of them are full. According to the upper limit of 30 people per shift and 399 yuan per person, the income is about 260000 yuan, the official TikTok account of super orangutan, “Super scarlet squatting”, has nearly 300000 live live online users during the new year.
But Can switching online really relieve the cold winter in the gym?
Relevant insiders in the industry said that online fitness is more about maintaining stickiness with customers, ensuring students’ exercise habits and expanding brand influence. However, in the long run, fitness will return to the offline, or the trend of online and offline integration.
The transformation of teaching mode, the guarantee of curriculum quality and the realization of traffic are all the problems that gym practitioners need to challenge.
Although the online live broadcast crosses the barrier between regions and spaces, it also makes the competition among peers more intense. In the face of general manager Lin Lin’s fitness live broadcast, the range of audience choices is greatly increased, and the quality of fitness content and marketing methods will determine whether the number of people watching is considerable.
For Super orangutans, brand influence can attract users to pay for their paid courses, but for other well-known fitness companies, even if there are enough viewers accumulated, whether this part of the population can be absorbed into the composition of the real economy is also unknown.
Is stagnation and self-reflection
The epidemic is like the same basin of cold water, which makes the domestic gym “cool”. In the period of stagnation, it also gives domestic fitness enterprises an opportunity to reflect.
△Smart gym chain brand light pigsty. Source: according to the white paper on fitness industry 2018-2019 released by
Green Orange technology on the official website of the company, there are 97746 gyms nationwide, and 3099 gyms were closed in 2018, the closing rate was 4.36 percent, and 528 gyms were closed within one year.
Wang Feng, founder of Smart gym chain brand Guang pigsty, said in an interview with Xinhua Sports that the sales-oriented operation mode and extensive management of domestic gyms are the key to losses in the fitness industry. “I don’t pay attention to the basic habits of cultivating members’ fitness. I am only busy with constantly pulling new people to handle cards. It is difficult to guarantee the stickiness of users. Once it is hit by the epidemic, it is difficult to fight back.”
He believes that gym operations must have a sense of hierarchical and accurate service, be supported by data, control the costs of venues and personnel at the same time, and improve the ability to resist risks.
It is understood that as an emerging brand of Internet smart gym, light pigsty suffered little loss in this epidemic. Wang Feng said that the main reason is that light pigsty’s gym aims at “small but beautiful, the floor area is generally small and the rent pressure is light. On the other hand, professional coaches are basically part-time and do not need to pay a lot of wages.
Preparing for a rainy day is a risk awareness that all walks of life should possess. After the impact of this epidemic, I believe that more and more fitness enterprises will pay attention to the necessity of cost control, and the importance of “two legs” walking online and offline.
Wang Feng is optimistic about the development trend of gyms after the epidemic.
“Online fitness will not have an impact on physical fitness, but will” drain “for physical fitness ‘, let those who are interested in fitness during the epidemic go to the physical gym for more standardized training.”
Wang Feng also mentioned that after the SARS epidemic ended in 2003, domestic gyms ushered in large-scale development, and this new coronavirus pneumonia also made people realize the importance of improving immunity, I believe that after the epidemic is completely over, the gym will usher in another boom.
Is stagnation and self-reflection.
Look forward to the spring blossoms in domestic gyms after the long cold winter.