Boutique gym acquisitions?

profile

September 02, 2025

by a searcher from Columbia University - Columbia Business School in Yardley, PA, USA

Has anyone acquired a boutique gym (think F45, CrossFit, OrangeTheory) and wouldn't mind sharing observations/lessons learned?
5
10
357
Replies
10
commentor profile
Reply by a professional
from The University of Georgia in Atlanta, GA, USA
I'd also add that you likely have a better shot at opening a facility that is not in urban or even suburban location but more rural. I've seen gym data where gyms in remote locations like Rome Georgia do 2x better than in Midtown Atlanta.
commentor profile
Reply by a searcher
from Pepperdine University in Piedmont, CA, USA
My two cents: these businesses can do well at scale. You need to own several and ideally have rights to an entire geographical area. Try to ensure it's a model that is not easy to replicate or has some barriers to entry, beware of copy cat offerings. Also, locations and lease terms can make or break you. From###-###-#### we ran two high end boutique fitness studios on the Peninsula (Bay Area). The first 5-6 years were incredibly lucrative and intended to open 3-5 additional locations. However, real estate was expensive, the economics simply did not work for many of the additional locations we explored. The market became saturated with "boutique" offerings. Look around there's a boutique offering on every corner. Classpass was a huge mistake, don't touch it or any like service it. Class scheduling, it's incredibly hard to monetize certain windows of time. You have peak hours and dead periods. Tried to monetize off peak hours with a variety of offerings but the numbers did not work. Someone else noted this, you have to be willing to teach classes yourself. Good trainers/class instructors are very key to your success. This becomes a double edge sword, you need to continually invest in them through additional training and certifications but then you'll need to retain them through either compensation or other incentives. Competitors will constantly come after your good instructors. Really spend time researching the franchise or licensing fees of the ones you noted. And yes, as Paul mentioned PE is in this space. We had a few PE offers in our 8th year but weren't ready to sell then. I could go on and on, on this topic. I spent a lot of years looking at several other models, exploring something from scratch, etc. Feel free to ping me if you'd like to chat more.
commentor profile
+8 more replies.
Join the discussion