◎keep refocuses offline, and it is necessary to face not only the increasingly fierce offline, but also the development of coaching career paths.
Reporter Wang Ziwei Reporter of Meike Liu Xuemei
html On December 18, sports technology company Keep announced that it will uniformly upgrade all its offline fitness venues to "Keep Preferred Fitness Hall" starting from February 21, and the group exercise courses in all departments will be reduced to 49 yuan per session.
It is understood that there are 19 venues upgraded this time, including 9 Keepland self-operated stores and 10 cooperative stores. The cooperative stores cover gym brands such as Omegia Oxygen Cabin, Muscle Dog, Yuanliyueti, Rongma Fitness, etc. The relevant person in charge of
Keep replied to the "Daily Economic News" that in the next year, the number of Keep Preferred Fitness Center plans to reach 100 stores and the number of coaches will exceed 300.
reporter saw in keepland mini program that among the optional courses from the 18th to the 20th, the prices of keepland self-operated stores and cooperative stores are still different. The prices of keepland self-operated courses are mostly in the two levels of 89 yuan and 129 yuan. Since the 21st, the courses in each store in the course schedule will be 49 yuan.
Keep is not the first fitness brand to choose to cooperate with traditional gyms. Since 2021, LeChe has been renovating the gym. Previously, Leke told the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that it has completed more than 100 stores.
The consensus in the industry is that there are two major difficulties in transforming stores: one is standardized output, and the other is the management of cooperative stores.
Keep said in an interview with "Daily Economic News" that in daily operation management, keep has special operation personnel to connect with store managers of cooperative stores to deal with problems such as coach scheduling, user feedback, and operation process optimization. In terms of standardized output of
, in addition to the evaluation of hardware facilities, such as locker rooms and exercise classrooms in cooperative stores, keep has achieved a unified coaching training system and curriculum system in terms of coaches and courses, and the coach assessment standards and teaching process has also been improved.
Keep told reporters that there are currently more than 20 types of keep group classes, covering categories such as dance, fighting, static, and training.
In fact, this is not the first time Keep has made efforts offline. As early as 2018, keep launched its offline projects. After the epidemic began in 2020, large-scale store closures occurred in Beijing and Shanghai, and all Shanghai stores were closed. At that time, this decision was interpreted by the outside world as the offline cost was too high and it was impossible to make a profit.
However, an insider told reporters that keepland's operating effect was not bad at that time and there was no loss. The closure of stores may be a strategic consideration at keep, that is, focus more on the online market.
During the strategic contraction of keep offline, Leke and Super Orangutans are still conquering the city. At present, the number of Leke stores nationwide has exceeded 800, and the number of Super Orangutan stores has exceeded 240. The two are still in full swing in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
Leke Gym Image source: Photo provided by the company
This time keep refocused offline, using the "increase the amount without price" method: keep offline stores are mostly concentrated near shopping malls and office buildings with convenient transportation. The convenience of site selection is higher than that of Leke, and it compares with the Super Orangutan that uses supermarkets as the main scene. In terms of price of
, keep's price of group class 49 yuan per session in Beijing is lower than the price band of lovefitt, a group class brand under Leke (59-79 yuan), and is much lower than the price of Super Orangutan group class that has risen once in 2021 (89-159 yuan).
However, Keep needs to face not only the increasingly intense offline, but also the development of coaching career paths.
Keepland was the first to develop, and the ace course that was highly sought after by consumers was Zumba Zumba. At that time, keeppland gathered a group of high-quality Zumba coaches. But in the following years, many celebrity coaches resigned one after another. One of the resigned coaches told reporters in an interview that keep at that time had "almost no plan" for the coach's career path.
In response to this, keep responded to reporters that there are currently career path planning for coaches, mainly training, content creation and store management."In the future, coaches will not be limited to the workplace development of offline sports and fitness scenarios. As a sports technology company, Keep will provide them with a large number of career development options, which is Keep's unique advantage." Keep told reporters.
Currently, the industry generally believes that high-quality coaching is the core factor in the success of the group class. This keep focuses on the team class, which is a test site to test whether it can make longer-term plans for coaching career planning.
