OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
BARRY’S
Boutique is about being specific and consistently doing what you do brilliantly, and it’s very hard to challenge, says Barry’s UK CEO Sandy Macaskill
Can you recap Barry’s UK story? We launched Barry’s to the UK market in January 2013, opening our first site on Euston Road in central London. At that time, very few people here knew the Barry’s brand; we were only the second studio outside the US – the first being in Bergen, Norway – and even within the US, there were just seven studios at the time. Back then, landlords didn’t see gyms as businesses they wanted in their developments. We had to work really hard to secure our first few sites, with our second and third locations benefiting from landlords who were Barry’s customers. It took until 2018 for a landlord to actively want us. Things are different now. First, although my brother James and I own and run the UK business, to everyone
else Barry’s is a global entity and a big brand name. That certainly helps with landlords as well as other potential partners: I can pick up the phone now and feel pretty confident that the person on the other end will be receptive. The wider environment has also shifted, with landlords now seeing gyms as highly desirable tenants. We now have nine sites: seven in London, one in Manchester and one in Liverpool. What are you seeing in the London market? We never believed, even in the depths of the pandemic, that the future of fitness was online. Human nature was always going to favour a return to in-person as soon as lockdown ended.
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LONDON BOUTIQUE STUDIO REPORT 2023
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