Barry’s: Office return to City comes ‘hand in hand’ with thriving fitness industry
The return of office workers and recovery of the fitness sector come “hand in hand”, according to Barry’s Bootcamp London co-founder Sandy Macaskill.
Gym-goers’ routines were set off course during the pandemic with “stop-start” closures hitting the fitness industry hard over the past three years.
For the head of Barry’s, which has seven studios in London out of a total sum of nine, Londoners’ heading back to the office can only be a good thing.
The boutique fitness studio’s St Paul’s site has seen a pick-up in the number of exercise class-goers in recent weeks, with this week marking its busiest day of footfall since 2020.
There had been “more bodies on the streets” in the City lately, with Macaskill suggesting that economic fears may have pushed workers to want to be “visible in the office” in order to feel a sense of job security.
Londoners may also be heading into their workplaces due to not wanting to fork out extortionate costs for utilities this autumn, the chief said.
Gym-goers need to “establish patterns again to get back into being active,” he said, which was a “big challenge.”
Macaskill added: “Fitness can be broken down into ‘can you tie your shoes and get out of the house?’”
“I don’t think it’s any surprise that we had our busiest day on Monday [last week], as a result of more people coming into work.”
Macaskill has been left disillusioned about ministers’ enthusiasm to support the sector amid the pandemic, saying businesses “got a raw deal” compared to hospitality.
“I think the wrong message was sent, consistently,” he said, arguing that pandemic support for pubs was seen to outweigh that for fitness companies.
The government had also missed an opportunity to promote healthy lifestyles with their daily televised Covid-19 briefings, the fitness boss said.
While revenues had not yet returned to 2020 numbers, energy bills have soared for the firm, with its chief calling inflationary pressures a “pinch point.”
However, the co-founder was still bullish about the future of the sector and his firm. Macaskill argued that in bleak times exercise was a venture for Londoners to turn to as a way to “be positive and be in charge of our narrative.”
“People need to do as much as they can to keep spirits up,” he said.