What does Les Mills NZ stand for?

With 12 clubs across the country, Les Mills New Zealand isn’t the largest player in the market, but our 95 per cent prompted brand awareness is the highest of any fitness brand in New Zealand and our membership is as big, or bigger, than others in the market with 50+ clubs.

Our clear purpose gives us meaning and salience in the market. We exist to make humans fit for life, with a vision of being the world’s best fitness engine. We focus on four measurable pillars – join, train, stay, rave – and throughout our team, there’s a culture of showing up and connecting with members.

Research shows us to be the perceived market leader in terms of equipment and facilities, quality of group fitness instructors and personal trainers. In fact, group fitness is a major USP generally: 55 per cent of all club attendances are for group fitness, our instructors are world-class and our large studios – as large as 800sq m in Auckland City – welcome crowds of like-minded people who inspire each other.

“We’re connected by one family that’s truly driven by the purpose of fitness. It makes this a very special place to work”

We’re obsessive about the club environment. The look, the feel, the smell, the sound…  it must all come together to deliver an uplifting state change the moment you walk in. And we continue to innovate and redefine what big box means. ‘Boutique in a box’, for example, has elevated the experience and inspired members to try something new.

There’s also a great culture within this New Zealand-born business. I’d always aspired to work for Les Mills and I love it. Everyone feels so connected to each other and to the vision.

It all adds up to a great product that’s also great value. We know people will come and go throughout their lives, but if we enter someone’s life early and provide strong, memorable support on their fitness journey, they will come back.

What’s your relationship with LMI?

We have a pretty special sister company relationship with Les Mills International, with both sides of the business majority owned by the Mills family.

“The boutique experience is something we’ve really invested in. Had we not done it, I don’t think the business would be where it is now.”

We have different purposes and objectives – Les Mills New Zealand is bricks and mortar clubs, Les Mills International is programme design – but we’re connected by one family that’s truly driven by the purpose of fitness and that’s deeply invested in every way: spiritually, physically, financially. I believe both sides of the business feel that in a unique way, which makes this a very special place to work. We always know who we are doing it for and why.

Les Mills International (LMI) programmes dominate the timetables at all our clubs, making up about 98 per cent of all classes. LMI also uses our clubs to pilot new concepts, meaning ideas can be tested quickly and, if they aren’t going to work, fail fast. Not everything can be a success, but there’s an exciting appetite across both sides of the business to explore, innovate, move and create new things.

The LMI innovation team is inspired by global trends, but we’re also part of the conversation, increasingly approaching LMI to design programmes we believe our members would like or to help fine-tune the offering in a particular studio.

Tell us about ‘boutique in a box’.

The boutique experience is something we’ve really invested in since we came out of COVID. The innovation has been world-class and I believe pivotal to our continued success; had we not done it, I don’t think the business would be where it is now.

Our immersive cycle experience – with its 25m-wide screen, dark lighting and incredible sound system – includes THE TRIP®, SPRINT and RPM. We also have Progressive Cycle in Auckland, a new programme we’re testing with LMI.

CEREMONY® is our functional, athletic training boutique – an F45 type of workout, but really beautifully curated and with great attention to detail around music, lighting and the environment in general. We’ve focused on how people feel within the workout. It’s gone absolutely gangbusters; where it exists in our clubs, 36+ per cent of members have attended a CEREMONY.

CONQUER® is our boxing-based boutique experience, where similar to CEREMONY we use spotlights and darkness to create a mood and sense of anonymity. You focus on yourself and get into your own workout with your own bag.

Across all three – across all our group fit studios, in fact – we obsess over sound quality, with an in-house AV specialist ensuring it feels immersive, rich, balanced, inspiring, uplifting and with great base. It has to feel like you’re at a concert. It has to make you want to be there.

“We obsess over sound quality. It has to feel like you’re at a concert. It has to make you want to be there.”

Auckland City – our 6,500sq m flagship – is the only club that has all our offerings, but we’re rolling out our boutiques wherever we can. In the space of two-and-a-half years, we’ve gone from one to five clubs with CEREMONY and three to nine clubs with immersive cycling, with plans to roll it out to the other three.

Our new club in Dunedin, which opened last year, is a great example of the impact of ‘boutique in a box’. There are some lovely touches at this club, which was curated to really nurture a sense of community, but it surpassed its two-year targets within four months. CEREMONY and THE TRIP have unquestionably driven that performance.

Big box is not dead. Boutique studios don’t instantly have an advantage around community. You just have to listen to members so you know what will move the dial.

How popular is indoor cycling?

When I speak to operators in the US and Australia, I hear the same old rhetoric: that indoor cycling is dying. The pandemic likely played a role: people used indoor bikes at home and now it’s almost a case of PTSD if they try and do the same workouts as during those tough times.

However, we simply aren’t seeing this decline at our clubs, where indoor cycling has a constant presence among our top five programmes and accounts for 15 per cent of all club attendances.

In January 2024, the top five programmes across our 12 clubs combined were CEREMONY, BODYPUMP, THE TRIP, SPRINT AND RPM. In May [the latest data at the time of doing this interview], it was CEREMONY, THE TRIP, CONQUER, SHAPES and SPRINT. Cycling is absolutely holding its own.

“Big box is not dead. You just have to listen to members so you know what will move the dial.”

THE TRIP is the hero, though, and central to the continued success of cycling at our clubs. It accounts for 9 per cent of all club attendances and draws a broad audience. If you add off-peak virtual TRIP classes – without an instructor and using only one-third of the screen – that figure is almost 10 per cent.

Focusing just on Auckland City, in May we delivered 210 instructor-led cycle classes and 112 off-peak virtual cycling classes, with double the number of THE TRIP classes compared to SPRINT and RPM.

We have 85 BODY BIKES in that Auckland studio and for peak time classes in May, THE TRIP had an attendance level of 80+ per cent of capacity, while SPRINT achieved 70+ per cent. Several classes in both categories of cycle reached capacity over the period.

What’s the secret of this success?

There are a few important factors, starting with our investment in immersive environments: all our clubs that have immersive cycle studios perform better than those that don’t.

Take Taranaki Street as an example. It used to do 300–350 rides a week. Now, with an immersive studio, it does 1,200–1,300. The immersive screen is used in all classes, not just THE TRIP; in RPM and SPRINT, it’s used to project colours or images and create a mood.

The quality of our music curation is another big one, as is the quality of our instructors. LMI’s cycle programme director Glen Ostergaard still instructs classes in Auckland, for example. That’s aspirational for other instructors, who challenge themselves to be as good. It creates other champions.

And crucially, we keep checking in to make sure cycling is still delivering. We don’t ever take for granted that our investment will continue to pay back. We are endlessly obsessive about the music, the environment, the delivery.

“Indoor cycling has a constant presence among our top five programmes and accounts for 15 per cent of all club attendances”

Progressive Cycle is a good example of our continued innovation: a new programme where, rather than up and down, sprint and climb, you sit in the burn with continued resistance for longer periods. The music is also different from our other cycle programmes. It’s in pilot at Auckland City, with two classes on the timetable each week, and it’s delivering impressive numbers so far.

Any other trends you’re exploring?

Wellness and mind-body is an important one. LMI’s pilates-inspired workout SHAPES has already gone gangbusters in our clubs. Created as part of a new Limited Edition series, there was outcry from our members when we took it off the timetable; we had to put it back on again. The other Limited Edition category, Strength Development, is also proving popular.

“THE TRIP is central to the continued success of cycling at our clubs. It accounts for 9 per cent of all club attendances.”

Then there’s recovery; we’re already exploring ways to service our members without making it too much of a niche offering. The answer is likely to be hot-cold spaces – sauna and cold plunge – within our changing rooms.

I’m also really excited by the prospect of exploring our customer journey and rebuilding it using human-centred design. We’re already asking our members about the moments that matter to them. We cannot assume we know what they want: we have to ask. And we have to really, really listen to what they say.