I studied sports science from 1999-2001 was also working as a PT, which I continued to do until 2014. Throughout this time, I saw an opportunity to improve the ways in which I, and my colleagues, serviced clients through tech innovations.
From 2003 through to 2010, I was involved in a number of tech companies and was also one of the first-ever franchisors for Jetts. After selling on a lot of my businesses, I saw an opportunity to begin culminating my experience into a concept that was completely unique, and offered a sports-based fitness to the public; something that offered a team-based format to users and went against the grain of the existing fad-based fitness providers at the time. It also needed to offer the functional aspects and conditioning that I valued from my studies. This is where 12RND Fitness was conceived.
In order to ensure that the product retained credibility in the sports industry, I wanted to get an athlete involved with the brand. Through mutual channels, I reached out to four-time world champion professional boxer, Danny Green who became my co-founder and has been an integral part of developing the concept.
I made the initial decision to open a 12RND concept store to test the product. I created solutions for what I had identified as barriers to growth in the fitness industry. I could see that the 12RND concept had highly differentiated value propositions through conversations with friends, family and associates. Upon opening the concept store, it was immediately successful, reaching capacity within the first six months despite zero brand awareness. It was very well supported as filling a gap in the market.
When we were looking to open our first concept store, I made sure to find a suitable location in a highly competitive space, where there were other pre-existing fitness providers, this ended up being Toowong, QLD. I did this to ensure it would perform well against competitors, and I was looking to either succeed or fail fast. Upon the success of this store, we opened a second company-owned store which was opened in Milton, a neighbouring suburb, to test proximity between clubs and also to test size, because Milton was a significantly smaller space.
My process is the same whether I am starting a new business or growing an existing business. I make a lot of assumptions, then set out to prove or disprove them. If disproven I scrap them and if proven I systemise them to be scalable and repeatable. Then I continue to focus on creating extreme value for all stakeholders and ensure all developments will be working towards that aim. Essentially, we were testing assumptions that we couldn’t expect a future franchisee to test themselves, before commencing franchising, such as deciding how large/close territories could be and the ideal club size.
Another major focus of 12RND is to continue optimising existing club performance through simplified operational systems, robust educational resources and a high-value product offer. As we now look to expand into new global markets, we are also investing in further development of our technology suite to support systems and facilitate growth. Our aim is to have the capabilities to onboard 100 new clubs per month anywhere in the world within the next three years.
Above all, I look to recruit the best people. To date, the company has grown organically through advocacy in which most members and franchisees have been friends or family of people in our existing network. As a result, our company culture has also been shaped quite naturally and continues to attract like-minded individuals with the same shared values and work ethic.
Tim West, Managing Director, 12RND Fitness
