For Matthew Mansell, physical activity was always a part of life. As an athletic child, he excelled at sport. He attended a rugby academy and eventually signed a two-year contract to play professionally in France. But it wasn’t until he got the idea for Athlo that it seemed physical activity could honestly be a way to make a living.
Athlo is well on its way to becoming the next fitness unicorn. Already making big waves among gym owners and fitness enthusiasts, it brings the idea of the sharing economy into the health sector.
The app allows people to share their fitness memberships with other users. For example, if you can’t make your yoga class next week, you can sell your space to someone who wants to try it out. Or, if you’re going on holiday, you can let someone else borrow your tennis centre membership and play while you’re away.
But that’s not all. The app also allows fitness clubs to offer short-term specials and other discounts to users. Plus, it compensates gym owners with a percentage of the revenue from spaces that are rented out in their facilities.
As Athlo founder Matthew Mansell explains, the app allows users to maximise the value they get from their memberships and will enable gyms to easily expand their services to customers who don’t want to commit to long-term contracts.
“It’s a product where everyone wins,” he said. “The gyms benefit from it, gym members benefit from it, and our users benefit from it.”
Staying Ahead of the Curve
What could propel Athlo to become the next fitness unicorn is its market positioning. Matthew Mansell says Athlo has studied consumer trends very consciously in order to position itself precisely to deliver exactly what people want right now.
“First and foremost, when you’re trying to offer a product to an end user, you need to look at what they want. Because there’s no value in providing a service that people won’t want and ultimately won’t use. So, primarily, we honed in on exactly what our users want and this is constantly evolving in one way or another”.
In the same way the COVID-19 pandemic altered many people’s attitudes toward work, it also changed the fitness space. Now, people want more flexibility, more variety, and fewer contracts, Matthew Mansell said.
“In the post-pandemic world, people are still in this hybrid model, where they are still working from home a couple of days a week and maybe they’re travelling into London two or three days a week. It doesn’t make sense for them to hold a gym membership in London, because they already have one at home,” he said.
“Our business model really suits this market. Our value proposition caters for all kinds of demands from users: the flexibility, variety, and that hybrid model. We allow our partnered gym members to sell the days and classes that they aren’t using. Our sellers make some money back from their membership when you’re not utilising it and all our users get access to all our other gym partners at discounted preferential rates.”
