Gym members were ‘a family’
Final workouts have been interspersed with hugs and tearful farewells as Palmerston North’s Configure Express women’s gym approaches its last days of business.
Following the liquidation of the national chain, Palmerston North gym owners Debbie and Steve Punnett will close their branch on Friday after the emotional and financial strain of operating it became too much.
The Punnetts said the announcement was met with an outpouring of love and support from the members they’d come to consider as family.
‘‘We had big dreams for our ladies. Configure was their space, not ours. The focus was on giving them a safe, friendly place where they could be themselves,’’ Debbie Punnett said.
Most members of the gym did not know until last week’s announcement that six months after the Punnetts took over the franchise in 2015, it became clear that Configure was in desperate financial trouble.
‘‘We didn’t know we were entering a franchise that was already failing. There were 23 clubs when we started,’’ Punnett said.
She said they had kept a brave face for 18 months because they did not want their worries to invade the space they had built for their members on The Square. Staff will be fully paid out, and members who are in credit will be refunded. The couple has arranged deals for members at other gyms around the city. Gym member Charlotte Jones, 36, said she was utterly shattered by the gym’s closure. Jones said there was a real need for a gym like Configure, and nowhere else came close to what they had done for her. ‘‘They have the warmth, the passion, and the empathy that’s needed. Those girls and Debs are like family.’’ She said she was in a difficult place when she joined in 2010. Her husband had just died in a car crash and she felt hollowed out and listless.
For a long time, Jones couldn’t bring herself to eat enough, and was in and out of hospital as an eating disorder took its toll.
The women at Configure went above and beyond mere fitness instruction, she said. They got her eating regularly again, and offered a sympathetic ear and advice when grief threatened to overwhelm her.
Jones said they helped bring her back to the happy and bubbly person she used to be, and she didn’t know what she was going to do without them.
Punnett said the thing she would miss the most was the feeling she had made a real difference in the lives of women like Jones.