Chuck Runyon, CEO of Self Esteem Brands (SEB), has told HCM that rumours the company is considering selling its Anytime Fitness brand are “categorically untrue”.

”It’s not happening,” he said. “We’re aware there’s turmoil in some parts of the fitness franchise market, but we have confidence in our model.”

Speaking to HCM recently, Dave Mortensen – who co-founded Anytime Fitness and Self Esteem Brands with Runyon – said the company is aiming to reach 10,000 locations in the next five years, with Anytime Fitness the key to this growth, as its largest brand.

The company recently launched Anytime Fitness in France and Austria while also eyeing Scandinavia.

The SEB model involves rolling out Anytime Fitness as the mothership and then supplementing this with its other studio brands – Basecamp Fitness, The Bar Method – and beauty brand, Waxing The City. Basecamp is called SUMHIIT in other parts of the world for licensing reasons.

“We generally work on a 3-1-1 model, by which I mean for every three Anytime Fitness clubs we put in a market, we’d aim to put in one of each of our studio brands," said Mortensen. The studio brands need a slightly higher population density to support their model.

"In some markets, especially smaller countries, we’ll go into an area development agreement rather than a master franchise relationship.
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“When it comes to global expansion, we adopt a ‘glocal’ approach, implementing an 80/20 rule: 80 per cent of what we do with our brands, we bring to each country to maintain consistency; 20 per cent is localised in partnership with our master franchisor. It’s the master franchisor who makes us go from good to great.”

Read the full interview here.