With the UK fitness market growing rapidly, Puma VCT 13 and Puma Alpha VCT recently invested £4 million to support the growth of NRG Gyms. The high-value, low-price gym group has over 35,000 members across the UK in cities including London, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield and this investment will support their continued expansion and team growth.

We sat down with CEO & Founder, Shafiq Ahmed to discuss NRG’s unique offering, their razor-sharp customer focus and what’s next for the brand. 

1.    What inspired you to launch NRG Gyms? 

Growing up, I really wanted to find a great value gym, with great equipment and service but found them to be expensive with a poor product offering. There needed to be a better solution out there for people who wanted to be fit and healthy.

With my background in both retail and corporate finance and with my previous experience in social impact, I wanted to democratise access to a great health, fitness and wellbeing offering all whilst building a positive community.

With that vision, NRG Gyms was born and my first gym opened in 2013 (in Gravesend). Not only was this gym profitable within the first 30 days of opening, but we quickly began to build a micro-community that shared our values.

2.    What makes NRG different to other gyms in the market?

Initially I focused on my mission of democratising access to health and fitness, offering gym membership at an affordable price while still providing great equipment and customer service.

Once I had established the business, I wanted to understand more about our members and potential members to ensure we were meeting their needs. It was particularly important for us to understand what non-members were looking for to establish any barriers that were stopping them from joining a gym. We asked them everything from the type of lighting that would work for them through to which gym equipment they liked. This research then drove our next phase of growth. We also focused on our female audience to better understand their needs such as dedicated stretching areas to bigger studios and as a result we have built female focused zones in our gyms.

From that point on we had a template in place to roll out for all our new gyms which has put our member at the heart of everything we do. However, we know that the needs of our members change so we have continued iterating our offering. For example, when we launched our Manchester gym we carried out a similar survey which highlighted that women want larger strength areas. So, of course we delivered for them and will continue to evolve our offering to meet the evolving needs of our members.

3.    How have you driven the growth of the business? What have been the biggest challenges?

I like to look at the growth of the business in phases- initially it was to get the business off the ground and we now have seven gyms across the country run by our highly effective team. With our recent investment we’re entering phase two of growth with strong cashflow, a strong management team and a focus on rolling out more sites and assessing potential acquisitions. While also mining our data as comprehensively as possible to ensure our offering meets the needs of our members (and prospective members).

Finding effective tech solutions to build our business has been challenging and really needs to improve as they often don’t take into account the practicalities of our industry and how we operate. But one of the things that I’m most proud of is the senior team I have built – both internally within the business and through the support we’ve received from the Puma team and our external suppliers. 

4.    What’s next for the business?

With the support of Puma’s investment, I have been further building out our senior team, focusing on recruiting highly experienced professionals who can help us achieve our next phase of growth.

We recently announced the appointment of former JD Sports CFO, Neil Greenhalgh who has joined our board as Non-Executive Director. Having spent 20 years at JD Sports, he brings a wealth of experience which saw the business grow from a small cap listed business with 330 stores across two countries, to a FTSE 100-listed global retailer.

Our ambition is to open another ten gyms organically in the next three years while also focusing on acquisition opportunities.  

5.    How has external investment from Puma VCTs helped to support your growth journey? 

Building a business can be incredibly lonely and with the support of Puma I’ve had an expert team with the likes of Rupert West (MD) and Kelvin Reader (Investment Director) who have a huge amount of experience in scaling businesses which has been invaluable. They’ve been there, done that and it’s incredibly useful to get their perspective on any challenges that we’ve faced while also advising us on the next stage of growth such as boosting our senior team.