“Budget clubs have not killed the market. There’s still plenty of space for mid-market and luxury operators,” states Franck Gueguen, CEO of health club operator Club Med Gym, which operates 22 sites across Paris, as well as 23 clubs in Switzerland under the Silhouette brand. Twenty-one of the Club Med Gym sites are mid-market, although five – operating under the Waou Club Med Gym brand – are premium mid-market.

In spite of this current bias towards the mid-market, Gueguen is very clear in his opinions. “The future of the sector is high-end,” he says. And the success of Pure Club Med Gym – the company’s first venture into high-end facilities, which opened in June 2012 – certainly suggests there’s some truth in this statement.

Creating ‘bien-être’
Gueguen had, he explains, wanted to launch a high-end gym concept for some time, but realised location was the key. “Club Med Gym has been around for 34 years and we already had 21 clubs across Paris, with a 22nd in the pipeline that will open in April 2013. That made it particularly hard to find the right location for a Pure Club Med Gym.

“Then an opportunity arose in the Opéra Bastille – our new club is located within the Opéra building, in a basement space formerly occupied by a book/music store. As the Opéra belongs to the State, we had to go through a public bid process. It took two and a half years to secure the site, which we now rent from the Opéra. But we were confident it was the location we needed to launch our new concept.”

He continues: “In Paris, there are very few luxury clubs, and in the 12th arrondissement – Bastille – the demographics are high-end. It’s a very fashionable residential area experiencing a lot of growth. We knew the demand was there for a truly premium club.”

Indeed, in the first six months, the club – which has set a cap on member numbers, limiting it to 2,000 to maintain a sense of exclusivity – had already signed up 1,245 members, split roughly 50:50 men to women, paying i150 a month. Interestingly, 67 per cent of these had never been gym members before. “You have to remember that, in France, total market penetration is only 5.4 per cent,” says Gueguen. “Nevertheless, with Pure Club Med Gym, we’ve created a model that’s very specifically bringing new people into health and fitness. We’ve created a space where people feel good – a club to which they want to belong, where they feel comfortable and want to spend time.”

That sense of feeling good – of ‘bien-être’, as they say in France – lies at the heart of the Pure Club Med Gym concept, as Gueguen explains: “It’s about making our members feel at home, not necessarily in the décor or the feel of the club, which has been designed with a private members’ club in mind, but in the attention to detail.

“When members come into the club, every single one is greeted by a member of staff who comes out to welcome them in. We have a partnership with Babyliss, so we can lend members anything they might need – hairdryer, straighteners and so on. We have iPads in our lounge area, as well as newspapers and magazines and bowls of fruit, so people can relax with a coffee after their workout. We’ve already found that Pure Club Med Gym members spend, on average, 25 minutes more at the club than members spend at our other sites.

“So yes, we focus heavily on service – that’s a key USP for us. We offer dry cleaning, free towels, discounts on parking. There’s a member of staff on the gym floor at all times, and they really do talk to members. When it’s time for a class, rather than people having to queue, the instructor will go and find them, and we limit classes to a maximum of 30 people. Similarly, we offer a 15-minute, small group abs/stretch class every hour, and again the instructor will go around the gym encouraging people to take part – people don’t stretch properly otherwise, and it’s very important.

“For us, high-end is determined less by the facilities and more by training staff how to properly treat members. That’s been our biggest challenge, as we’ve never done high-end before, but we have 20 full-time staff on-hand to make sure our members receive the attention they need.

“In line with this philosophy, although our club is clearly premium, we haven’t opted for luxury at all cost. We spent i4m on the new club, but we didn’t want to be ostentatious. We’ve used nice, tactile materials – leather sofas and chairs in the lounge, good quality wooden floors and so on. But a lot of the work we’ve done to make the club really welcoming has been behind the scenes – the sort of things people might not immediately notice.

“For example, our air is filtered so it’s very clean, and we have diffusers of very gentle scent throughout the club. Each locker is also individually aerated. Meanwhile, our audio system allows us to split the club into four distinct areas, so we can play different music in different zones to create distinct moods.

“We also worked very hard with our lighting engineers to ensure that, even though the club is located in a basement, it offers a warm welcome. We wanted to create an immediate sense of calm when people walked into the club from the busy Place de la Bastille.”

Lighting masterpiece
The lighting is, in fact, the aspect of the club of which Gueguen is most proud, and you can see why. It’s gentle and calming – no glaring ‘you must work out now’ spotlights or fluorescent strips – but at the same time it successfully creates an uplifting, positive feel throughout the club. The light is adjusted throughout the day to help maintain this sense of calm.

Club Med Gym management worked closely with architectural firm Studio Marc Hertrich & Nicolas Adnet to create distinct spaces throughout the club, each offering a different atmosphere – again helped by the lighting. As you walk down the stairs into reception, the lounge to the right is mellow and inviting. Next to the lounge, behind a glass wall, is the main group exercise studio – a lovely 130sq m, dark wood sprung-floored space where the lighting, although adjustable, never seems to interfere with the relaxed feel in the lounge. A second smaller, open-fronted studio space sits alongside, equipped by NOHrD for the stretching/core sessions, which maintains an intimate feel in spite of the lack of door.

Meanwhile, in the changing rooms, you come to a relaxation area – featuring pale stone recliners and a waterfall wall – on the way to the sauna, steamroom and ice fountain. This area is peaceful and bright, but with such a warm light that it feels immediately soothing.

But the lighting pièce de resistance is located in the gym, which lies straight ahead as you come down the stairs into reception. The 74-station, Technogym-equipped fitness suite uses the bold colour scheme of the entire club – black, granite, red, grey – with padded red leather pillars that splay out into round sofas at the bottom. But what grabs the attention is the far wall – a curved wall of light, overlaid with a mirrored tree motif, which is made brighter or darker depending on the light conditions outside; if it’s raining, the light in the gym is brighter. Not only is this very effective in creating a positive feeling, but the wall itself is a beautiful art installation.

To the right of the gym lies a weights area with heavier lifting options – Pure Strength from Technogym – benefiting from cooler air conditioning. To break this space up further, so people don’t feel packed in together, there’s equipment at the bottom of a stairwell, more machines halfway up the stairs and more at the top.

Beyond this weights area is a functional training zone – Pavigym flooring, an adidas punchbag (the club has an exclusive five-year partnership with adidas for its staff uniforms), a Reebok rebounder and hooks for TRX suspension training – and a PT studio. Over 10 per cent of members currently do PT, at l70–80 an hour.

As a result of all these distinct areas, while only 1,400sq m in size, the club feels larger – an effect which is assisted by the use of mirrors throughout. And with the uncramped layout of the gym, as well as the way space has been made for living areas, it’s easy to see how it’s successfully appealing to both experienced and new gym members, enticing people to work out as well as hang out at the club afterwards.

Expanding the brand
So given his comments about the future of the fitness sector being high-end, and the success of Pure Club Med Gym to date, what are Gueguen’s plans for the brand going forward? “I’d like to create more Pure Club Med Gym sites: depending on the demographics of the area, I’d prioritise Pure over standard Club Med Gyms. But as I’ve said before, it’s all about the location.

“One option might be to upgrade some of our Waou clubs, but that’s yet to be decided. We could also potentially upgrade some of our Silhouette clubs to launch the Pure brand in Switzerland.

“But it all depends on financing: 21 Centrale Partners, the private equity fund to which Club Med Gym currently belongs, has been instrumental in our expansion in the last five years, allowing us to acquire Silhouette and open Pure Club Med Gym and the upcoming Club Med Gym in April.

“Longer term, who knows? In my own dreams, I’d like to go into new markets where there’s real potential – China, India. But even if that doesn’t happen, we have a strong urban concept, so at the very least I’d like to go into other European capital cities, as well as continuing to expand Pure Club Med Gym across Paris.”