Sondre Gravir, CEO of Nordic fitness operator SATS, has urged delegates at the HCM Summit to focus on member activity rather than membership numbers. He says that regular visits are fundamental to customer retention, business growth and financial performance.
SATS has recorded close to 50 million visits to its clubs over the previous 12 months and says visits are the key performance indicator (KPI) for the business, linked with higher engagement, stronger loyalty and improved financial results.
“We measure activity more than memberships,” Gravir said. “We build products for people to be engaged and come back, and we try hard to use our data and insights to motivate our members.”
Gravir said SATS actively challenges the assumption that members who pay their subscriptions but rarely visit are good for business. He argued that members who do not use their membership are more likely to cancel, particularly when household budgets are under pressure and consumers reassess their spending.
“Active members are loyal members,” Gravir said, adding that inactive members often leave because they stop training rather than because they switch to a competitor.
Group training is central to SATS’ engagement strategy and a key point of differentiation. The company has increased the number of classes offered and expanded its dedicated studios and training zones by 28 per cent over the last couple of years.
Group training members stay with SATS 1.8 times as long as other members. Because they also pay slightly more for access to classes, their lifetime value is around twice that of non-group training members.
Looking ahead, Gravir identified people, product and community as the three pillars of SATS’ strategy. The company plans to invest 5 per cent of revenue in upgrading its clubs and aims to maintain leverage at between 1.5 and two times net debt to EBITDA, although its current ratio is below that range.
Brain training
Fitness operators can differentiate their businesses and develop their longevity and healthy ageing services by incorporating cognitive training into workouts, Anna Milani told delegates, in conversation with Oli Patrick.
The founder of Sparkd, which pioneered brain-body training in Singapore, explained how combining physical exercise with cognitive challenges could help bring an approach used in neurological rehabilitation and elite sport to a wider audience.
Her concept uses dual-task training, where participants perform a physical and cognitive task simultaneously. This could involve doing squats while completing a memory exercise, responding to visual stimuli while moving, or combining cardiovascular activity with maths and decision-making games.
Milani engaged the delegates in a brain training exercise which involved giving a number to certain actions – such as raising a hand or clapping – and then doing the action when she called the number while jogging on the spot. It was harder than it sounds.
Exercise already supports brain health. Milani explained that neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganise in response to experiences, learning and stimuli – underpins her approach. Adding cognitive challenges requires participants to engage the networks involved in movement alongside those responsible for functions such as attention, memory and decision-making.
Milani’s approach starts with a baseline assessment, using a tool appropriate to the participant and their goals. Computer-based testing can assess areas including processing speed, attention, executive function and working memory, with some tools comparing results against normative data.
The findings then inform programming. Participants continue to develop cardiovascular fitness, strength, balance and coordination, while cognitive challenges target the areas identified for improvement.
Milani stressed the importance of understanding the underlying difficulty before deciding how to address it. “Often we think our memory is the problem, but actually often it’s our attention which is the problem,” she said. “We are not paying attention first to even process and remember. It’s quite important for me to identify where is the weakness, so we can make it stronger.”
A 2022 corporate pilot at JLL’s Singapore headquarters resulted in strong engagement, and participants maintained lifestyle changes after the programme finished. Around 30 participants completed an eight-week programme comprising two 45-minute group sessions each week, with assessments before and after the intervention.
Improvements included 5 per cent better planning, 7 per cent better verbal reasoning, 7 per cent better holistic health and 11 per cent better self-efficacy. Nine of the 12 cognitive dimensions assessed showed an upward trend.
Next on stage is Olympian and Gladiators star, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey. After lunch the HCM Summit will hear from Everyone Active’s Duncan Jefford, Sir Muir Gray and Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi, before an unscripted session with Total Fitness CEO, Sophie Lawler, and Fitness First UK managing director Marc Diaper.
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