Viva Gym is changing the fitness game

They believe strongly in providing excellent service with state of the art equipment, without demanding hiked up monthly fees or forcing their customers to sign long-term contracts.

The business model has worked in a number of international markets because it delivers true value for money for gym users. The concept essentially cuts out many of the expensive extras, and passes those savings on to the members. This value for money has very broad appeal to existing gym users, but also to customers who has never been a member of a gym before.

Expensive extras

Viva Gym has introduced the 'dry gym' concept which cuts out the expensive extras and delivers a high quality fitness product with excellent service at an affordable price.

"We are so committed to our product and service quality that we do not obligate our members to take out long-term contracts when they join. The fact that our customers can leave at any time means we have to stay at the top of our game when it comes to service delivery," says MD of Viva Gym South Africa, Chase Emson.

Customers do not accept bad service - the trouble is that when there are monopoly players in any industry, they can afford to give bad service as there are no alternatives. As a general rule, the more competition in the industry the better the service needs to be.

Main goal

The main thing Viva Gym would like to show their audience is that equating a cheaper price with poorer product and/or service (especially when it comes to fitness centres) does not always have to be the case.

"The reality is that Viva Gym is more affordable because it does not provide a pool, and that makes a significant difference. A pool-user in a traditional gym should be paying in the region of R2,500 per month and a non-pool user should be paying in the region of R250 per month, but at present in South Africa everyone is paying approximately R500.

"Effectively, gym-users are subsidising pool users, and at some point the gym users will decide that they no longer want to do this," says Emson.