National Post (National Edition)
JJ WILSON’S INDOOR CYCLE STUDIOS EXPAND EAST.
JJ Wilson venture expands east
Acycling competition as fierce as the Tour de France is arriving in Canada next year, though the players will be riding on stationary indoor bikes and its success will be measured as much in participants’ watts after a sweaty fitness class as it will in profit.
JJ Wilson, a “spinning” enthusiast and son of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, is opening up a chapter of his popular Vancouver-based Ride Cycle Club in Toronto in mid-February, a month before the planned Canadian debut of U.S. spinning titan SoulCycle.
“I don’t look at SoulCycle as a competitor, necessarily, I look at them as another place that a rider or client can choose to go,” said Wilson, who opened Ride with business partner Ashley Ander in Vancouver two years ago.
Along with a handful of other business ventures, Wilson has returned his energies to expanding Ride’s footprint after leaving his post as brand director of Kit and Ace, his family’s threeyear-old apparel venture — though he still sits on the retailer’s board.
“For me as an avid spinner — I’ve been doing this for 11 years almost — the more the merrier,” Wilson said. “You can get people enrolled and excited in movement; it’s a commitment to health, I’m all for it.”
New York-based SoulCycle, which opened in 2006, carved out an early spot in the boutique fitness craze, building up a fanatical and celebrity-studded following for its grapefruit-scented candlelit classes and instructors who disgorge mantras of empowerment to a throbbing musical score — for the not-cheap price of US$34 per class.
Ride Cycle Club charges $24 per class and offers packaged deals that reduce the cost of classes. The fee includes the rental cost of clipin cycling shoes, which help with riders’ stability and energy transfer on the cycles.
It’s part of a broader trend which has seen small boutique fitness studios dedicated to indoor cycling, crossfit, and even ballet popping up across North America as part of a generalized premiumization of the sport and wellness market.
The studios offer members perks such as country club soap, fresh fruit and cucumber water in exchange for premium per-class prices, and their sign-up policies lend a certain cachet to the practice — if you call too late to pre-book a spot for a class, it might be full. Typically, such studios do not fall into the classic gym business model of selling memberships, but opt for a pay-per-class model that is potentially more lucrative, as long as they can gain a following.
SoulCycle, which will open its first Canadian studio in March on Toronto’s King St. West, fits 55 stationary bikes in its studio. Ride Cycle Club has 43 bikes at its Yaletown studio.
“We want our spin classes to be full, which is a wider part of the experience,” Wilson said.
“I would rather have fewer studios and have people who come to the studio. I don’t want there to be so many bikes that you can always get a bike. Seventy to 80 per cent of our classes in Vancouver are wait-listed. There is a piece of that that is important from a brand point of view and from an experience point of view, because the classes that are fuller are just that much more fun.”
It’s a scarcity principle embraced in the earlier expansion phase of Lululemon, the athletic wear retailer founded by Wilson’s father, when it came to opening stores. The practice led consumers to seek out the retailer’s locations, leading to record sales per square foot.
“Having to register for a class or pay for it if you don’t show up is good business, because it keeps members engaged,” says Emma Hancock, partner at Toronto-based Heroes and Villains Advertising.
“(Indoor cycling) is an addictive activity, and if people don’t miss the classes and do it on a regular basis, they get hooked.”
Though boutique fitness is relatively new to Canada, the concept of a premium gym experience is more common in the U.S., Hancock said.
“It’s in many more neighbourhoods, just like Whole Foods is. The whole world has traded up in a bunch of categories, but it is not everywhere in Canada in terms of fitness yet.”
Big business has warmed up to the trend.
New York-based health club giant Equinox, which has opened three of its own luxury gyms in Toronto and Vancouver, owns 97 per cent of SoulCycle but has maintained it as a separate brand as the latter continues to open new locations. SoulCycle has 67 studios across the U.S. and plans to open four more this winter.
Still, some industry observers have questioned whether the trend is peaking, and SoulCycle put a highly publicized initial public offering of its shares on hold after filing a prospectus in July 2015. At the time, the private company reported US$122 million in 2014 revenue, up from US$36.2 million in 2012, while income rose to US$26.5 million from US$7.8 million in the same period.
Wilson isn’t worried, however: “I think there is a fine line for how many studios you can have and I’m cautious about that.”
He sees an opportunity for 12 to 15 Ride Cycle Club locations across Canada.
Ride Cycle Club has one studio in Vancouver and will open two more locations in the city next year. In Toronto, its first location will open in mid-February on the city’s trendy Ossington strip. Wilson is looking to open three to four of its studios in Toronto over time.
“We are anchoring in Toronto and Vancouver, and are just now starting to explore Alberta and we will work our way in — Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa. We are not necessarily looking outside of Canada at this time.”