What is One Playground and what does it represent?
One Playground is a ‘superboutique’, an all encompassing Playground for all things health and wellness. Our vision is to reimagine the design of a gym, and provide everything under one roof, for one membership. Our company values are to be #1 One Team, of #2 Great Humans, who #3 Get Better Every Day, so we can #4 Design The Future, and, most importantly… #5 Do Cool Sh*t!
How is One Playground impacting people’s lives, and what keeps customers coming back?
Community and member engagement is a core focus at One Playground. The goal is to create the best gyms, not the most gyms.
After spending years working in big gyms that spend millions of dollars on equipment, but tend to neglect the member experience, it made us ask the question “what really matters to members?”
What really matters is the people and the sense of community and connection. One Playground runs a number of member events throughout the year, aiming to increase member satisfaction, educate members and build loyalty through community. Focusing on people and creating the best member experience possible has resulted in thousands of satisfied members, a higher than industry average retention rate and hundreds of happy and successful staff.
How does One Playground measure client success, is it always physically related?
Absolutely not, we care about so much more than just looks! In 2020, for the first time ever, our members were no longer coming to us to look better. In fact, the number one reason our members were joining us was to feel better. In 2021, we opened our first Wellness Playground, which moved our offering from just fitness to include wellness.
Our mission is to ‘Inspire Change’ (for the better) in people’s lives, so in a way we measure success through positive member sentiment. For example, we have a member with cerebral palsy who is working with one of our coaches to learn to walk, and another who suffered a stroke and had a goal to complete the Sydney City2Surf run. One of our coaches helped him to get there and actually ran it with him. At One Playground, the real measure of success is health, happiness, community engagement and becoming just 1% better every day, whatever that may look like for an individual!
What are your TOP tips for running a successful fitness business?
Recognise that employee satisfaction, staff education, training and culture are some of the most important things. For us, happier staff means happier members. We think of One Playground as a people business, not a gym business!
What do you see in the future of fitness in the next 12-18 months?
Great question! Tech advancements are definitely at the forefront. Gym equipment powered by artificial intelligence now exists within the industry which can measure and track an individual’s progress based on biometric data, meaning a hyper-personalised experience.
Personalised experiences will become more important than ever before. Members are no longer as easily satisfied – they expect to be more than just a number, which is why we focus on thinking big, but acting small. Focusing on nurturing connections and community is invaluable, but often overlooked. By taking a more community based approach, we see positive results for member retention.
Members are becoming more aware of wellness as a way of preventative health and to enhance mental health. In addition to strength and fitness training, they want to have the opportunity to use recovery services and wellness classes. Furthermore, we often engage experts to come in and provide wellness classes to our members that are not on offer as part of our regular timetable. For example, last year we hosted a number of breathwork workshops.
But of course, this is scratching the surface and the future is filled with opportunity!
