A finger-wagging midwife delivered our eureka moment!
By the mumpreneurs behind a gym empire
THIS time last year, Pip Black was pitching for millions of pounds of investment for Frame, the fitness company she co-founded with her business partner, Joan Murphy.
As the two of them met with private equity firms and venture capital trusts, Pip happened to be 37 weeks pregnant — and her timetable suddenly got even busier.
‘I went from one pitch to the hospital and had a baby,’ she says, laughing. ‘That was interesting timing, but, you know, it’s like with all things, you just get on with it. This was a massive part of our business growth and I was going to be involved.’
The following October, the pair duly announced a £6 million investment from Piper, a private equity firm. That’s testament to the strength of the business Pip and Joan created after meeting on a Cornwall surfing holiday in 2007 and instantly forming a friendship.
Then in their mid-20s, both were working in advertising after studying businessrelated degrees and had played sport to a high level — Pip hockey for England, and Joan track cycling for her native New Zealand, among other sports. Both saw a need for something new at a time when fitness was not considered fun.
Joan, 37, says: ‘You’d say to people at work: “I’m going to the gym” and people would say [she drops into a mournful tone]: “Oh. Have fun.” It was all negative connotations. Getting fit shouldn’t be a chore.’
BACk then, there was little on offer beyond big chain gyms and a few dedicated yoga studios, so they decided to launch something different: offering customers a variety of enjoyable fitness classes under one roof, while doing away with membership fees and expensive year-long contracts.
They got the business off the ground with the help of a £190,000 bank loan.
‘We always say we bored the bank into submission,’ says Joan. ‘ We didn’t really have much experience, to be honest.’
What they did have was energy and fearlessness. ‘We both have two children now, but we used to work 15 or 16 hours every day of the week. We were young, so we didn’t have anything to lose.’
They never even considered a ‘ soft’ launch. ‘ We just went straight in there. We had four studios and it began.’
Crucially, Frame offered something new. ‘It was the very first pay-as-you-go studio,’ says Joan. ‘And we’ve stuck to multigenre fitness. We really believe that variety is what you need to stay motivated.’
But it wasn’t all plain sailing. To start with, the premises they had picked for their first studio were under railway bridge arches in East London — and, it turned out, the bridge needed work.
‘As we were due to open, our road was closed and we couldn’t get into the premises,’ says Joan. ‘So we had a huge setback even before we had started. We also opened in March 2009, right at the beginning of the recession.’
But actually, the gym may well have opened at the perfect time to target increasingly cashstrapped office workers reluctant to commit to a gym contract.
Along the way, they did meet some raised eyebrows in the business and property worlds.
‘We always got called “the gym girls”,’ says Joan. ‘If you think people are being a little bit condescending or worse, then you think: “What’s my end goal and how am I going to get there?” knowing you’re not just the little gym girls [and thinking] “I’m going to show you.” ’ Show them they did. Today, Frame’s 300 trainers offer close to 1,400 classes a week in the six studios across London ( the seventh, in Farringdon, opens this month).
The firm has 45 full- time employees in its head office and in the studios, and it’s collaborated with Whistles to produce a capsule collection of fitness wear sold in shops nationwide.
Both Pip and Joan still teach classes, as they have from the start, and have strong, toned frames that make them walking adverts for their brand.
But the benefits of embracing fitness go far beyond appearance, and that’s the message they focused on when they launched their newest venture, MumHood, a programme of fitness classes and workouts for before and after pregnancy (available at mumhood. and at their studios). The idea was born about five years ago when Joan was pregnant with her first child. It took further shape as both became mothers: Joan is now mum to Zayden, four, and Jayla, one; while Pip has Phin, three, and Romilly, one. Joan recalls: ‘At my first midwife appointment I said I was a fitness instructor. They said: “Oh, you need to stop that.” ’
As Joan had lived in New Zealand until her early 20s, she knew that elsewhere, fitness is encouraged during pregnancy.
‘I thought, well hang on, this person sitting here is telling me to stop my job, and stop exercising. This isn’t right.’
So, after researching all that was available — and possible — they set about correcting the misinformation around what is safe activity for mothers-to-be.
The result: classes that were high-intensity, but low-impact; ‘totally safe but also interesting, fun and creative’, as Pip puts it.
Classes proved so popular they decided to take them nationwide by rolling them out in online packages. Pregnancy has been a huge plus for their business: a pregnant Joan stars in the online videos, while Pip road-tested the exercises, being five months pregnant herself when the pair launched MumHood in 2017.
‘They say childbirth’s like a marathon — you wouldn’t rock up to a marathon without any training,’ says Joan. ‘And that’s a really strong premise. There’s a bigger picture than just keeping fit through pregnancy.’
Both women use fitness as their ‘me time’ as they juggle their families and business. ‘ At the moment, we are trying much harder to take off at least one full day, if not both days, at the weekend,’ says Pip. ‘I rush off in the mornings and I make sure I’m home for bedtime every night, that’s quite a big thing for me.’
Then, she’s back on work email after the children’s bedtime.
‘For me, having that two hours with my kids is the most important thing. That and the fact we love what we do.’