That China’s fitness industry has been in disarray for many years is being thrown in to the spotlight with the high-profile bankruptcy of a well-known gym, one which had hundreds of thousands of memberships, in Suzhou of our very own Jiangsu Province.
“Join us and create miracles together”; today, the home page of InGym’s website still displays their invitation to the world. Founded in Suzhou 20 years ago, at its peak, InGym was once at the forefront of the domestic fitness industry, with fitness centres across the Yangtze River Delta and hundreds of thousands of members.
But it would now appear to be all over. Government departments in Suzhou have confirmed that InGym has filed for bankruptcy. Poor management is the reason that has been given, while efforts have also been made to reassure InGym members as to their subsequent rights.
It’s a bankruptcy that has been looming for a while now. Since August, many have reported through People’s Daily Online’s “Leadership Message Board” that InGym is in arrears with employee wages and has difficulty refunding members for their private training.
Employee Chen Li was among those taking to the People’s Daily. Chen said she is owed more than ¥60,000 in salary for nearly half a year, reports The Paper.
Hu Mi, Director of the Sports Department of East China University of Political Science & Law, has analysed the industry’s predicament. Hu believes that fitness companies are overly dependent on the sale of prepaid cards and private-teaching classes, which account for approximately 90 percent of their income.
In addition, the rapid development of personal training in recent years has called in to question the professionalism of many coaches, such that cannot meet the needs of high-end clients.
Many gyms’ coaches are as a result pressurised by management to sell more classes to members. With that hardly their field of expertise, the result is often angry members and coaches who leave their jobs in search of a stressful position elsewhere.
Hence the emergence of a new trend, namely fitness institutions termed “small but sophisticated”. With minimalist venues and a focus on short-term packages, these scaled-down gyms cooperate with freelance coaches to reduce the price of personal training courses.
Such a solution may well be the saviour of the industry, as InGym is also hardly the first to go under. The sector has been plagued by bankruptcies, lost memberships, mergers, hostile takeovers and a host of other problems for at least these 2 decades.
And personal issues. Many women are turned off from going to a gym on account of the behaviour of the opposite sex, many of whom also even make a habit of smoking in what, after all, is a place of health.
One local foreigner with whom The Nanjinger spoke today, said, “My gym has changed hands three or four times in the last couple of years. I stopped going recently because of the incessant smoking, by both customers and coaches! I hope they go bankrupt too”.
