Anytime Fitness is a 24-hour health and fitness club. The company operates over 3,000 franchised locations in 20 countries. The gym facilities are open 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. Chuck Runyon, Dave Mortensen, and Jeff Klinger founded Anytime Fitness in 2002. Runyon is the CEO of the company. Anytime Fitness is based in Woodbury, Minnesota. According to Forbes, Anytime Fitness was the fastest growing health club franchise in 2014. In 2015, Entrepreneur Magazine ranked Anytime Fitness first on its global franchise list.
History
Runyon, Mortensen and Klinger first met in the early 1990s while working for a fitness club in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1995, they jointly purchased and ran Southview athletic club for seven years. During their ownership of the club, its membership rose from 500 to 4000. They sold the gym in 2001. During their ownership of Southview athletic club, they worked for a consulting firm focused on improving underperforming athletic clubs across the United States. They developed the idea for Anytime Fitness after surveying the expectations that long-term members of large gyms had for their fitness clubs.
Chuck Runyon, Dave Mortensen, and Jeff Klinger founded Anytime Fitness in 2002. Eric Keller, a former employee of Southview athletic club was interested in their business concept and agreed to become the first franchise owner of Anytime Fitness. They provided Keller with support in choosing a site location, marketing strategies, equipment selection, and membership sales. The first franchise location opened in Cambridge, Minnesota later that year. They chose the site because of the lack of other fitness clubs in the immediate area and a population large enough to support a fitness club. Shortly after, two more locations were opened by former Southview athletic club employees in Duluth and Albert Lea, Minnesota. Runyon, Mortensen and Klinger sold 29 franchises before they opened their own corporate-owned location in Bemidji, Minnesota.
In February 2005, Anytime Fitness opened its 77th club, the first location outside of the United States, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. By 2012, the franchise had opened locations in Australia, Canada, Grand Cayman, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, New Zealand, Qatar, and the United Kingdom.
Jeff Klinger left Anytime Fitness in 2009 to pursue other interests.
In November 2012, Anytime Fitness bought Waxing the City, a small chain of waxing and hair removal salons. Runyon and Mortensen converted Waxing the City into a franchise model similar to Anytime Fitness.
The company hired celebrity tattoo artist, Jimmy Hayden to tattoo its purple running man logo on nearly 200 franchisees, corporate employees, club managers, and personal trainers at an annual conference in 2013. Hayden is also an Anytime Fitness member. The company estimates that more than 2,000 people have the tattoo, including Runyon. Mike Gelfgot, a personal trainer, received the first tattoo when he accepted a dare to get the purple running man logo tattooed on him permanently at a conference. Anytime Fitness provides a tattoo artist at its monthly training events and covers all expenses. The company will reimburse anyone who submits a photo of their tattoo of the logo and describe why they wanted the tattoo. The tattoo typically costs around $100.
In December 2013, Anytime Fitness purchased a 38-acre site in Woodbury, Minnesota to build new company headquarters. Roark Capital Group acquired a large minority share in Anytime Fitness in March 2014. Erik Morris and Steve Romaniello, two directors from Roark, joined the board at Anytime Fitness after the acquisition. Mortensen and Runyon remained the company's primary holders and continued to run the business.
In November 2015, Anytime Fitness opened its 3,000th club in Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Operations
As of 2015, Anytime Fitness had over 3,000 gym locations and 2 million clients. Each location is open 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. Members have secure access to facilities including unstaffed hours with a computerized key fob. There are gym locations in all 50 US states, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Grand Cayman, Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Qatar, India, Chile, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. In 2012, the company had 120 employees. Approximately 100 of them were located in Hastings, Minnesota. 75% of the Hastings employees worked directly for the company while the other 25% worked for ancillary businesses Provision Security which supplies clubs with surveillance systems
Technology
Anytime Fitness launched their website, Anytime Health in 2010. The company developed an app for the website in 2011. The app is available to members and serves as a platform to download workouts, track food, and interact with other users.
Awards
In 2010, the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub Association named Anytime Fitness the fastest growing fitness club. Franchise Chatter titled Anytime Fitness as the franchise with the best business model in 2011. The Star Tribune called Anytime Fitness one of Minnesota's top workplaces in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The company ranked first in Minnesota Business Magazine's best company to work for in 2012 and 2013. Forbes ranked the company 14th as America's most promising companies. In 2014, Entrepreneur Magazine ranked Anytime Fitness number one on their franchise 500 list. In 2015 and 2016, Anytime Fitness was ranked first on the publication's top global franchises list.
References
