Evolution Wellness has announced a major new partnership with digital fitness leader Wexer, whereby Wexer becomes the group’s exclusive platform and third-party content provider in the roll-out of Virtual Studio – Evolution Wellness’s online fitness space – across all Evolution Wellness brands.
Evolution Wellness, which operates over 170 physical locations across six brands in south-east Asia, began offering online fitness classes in March last year following the lockdowns in its markets. Well over 1,000 online classes were delivered between March and December 2020, led by in-house instructors across the Fitness First, Celebrity Fitness and FIRE Fitness brands.
The group’s new partnership with Wexer allows it to further extend this online offering, establishing Virtual Studio as a core product across its full estate: Fitness First, Celebrity Fitness, FIRE Fitness, CHi Fitness, GoFit and Fivelements.
In addition to ‘as-live’ content from these brands, Virtual Studio will draw in premium third-party content, curated by Wexer from its global content partners.
All content, both third-party and self-created, will be delivered via a white labelled Wexer Web Player embedded in Evolution Wellness’s member-facing app. The Web Player will be branded Virtual Studio and will be accessible via single sign-in to the app, which forms part of the operator’s proprietary member management software solution, CIRCUIT.
“This will ensure a seamless, branded, ownable member experience both in- and out of club,” explains Nad Myan, director of growth and innovation at Evolution Wellness.
Content and user experience will be carefully tailored for each Evolution Wellness territory, with Wexer creating nine different variants of the platform – for Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, as well as for three local languages. Each version will pull in only the relevant content for that territory, both from the Wexer library and from Evolution Wellness’s in-house production.
“Wexer’s world-class platform, with its unparalleled reliability, allows us to focus on what we do best – creating compelling member experiences – while leaving it to the global expert to support the vital but invisible back-end,” says Myan.
“Partnering with Wexer also guarantees strength in the depth of our Virtual Studio content offering, thanks to an exceptional on-demand library to complement our own live content.”
“Evolution Wellness has taken a long-term, strategic approach to online provision,” adds Evolution Wellness CEO Simon Flint. “As part of that, we acknowledge the need to monetise digital content. Partnering with Wexer to create our own-branded, flexible, monetisable platform is an important step in implementing this strategy.”
Sam Aldred, head of APAC for Wexer, says: “It’s exciting to see a group of the size and success of Evolution Wellness recognise the need to develop a full digital gym offering to work alongside its existing physical sites. We expect to see many others follow this example.”
Paul Bowman, Wexer CEO, concludes: “2021 will unquestionably be the year of the hybrid model for club operators. We are thrilled to be working alongside Simon and his team at Evolution Wellness in creating a solution that delivers against the needs of its members and the business alike.”
About Evolution Wellness Group
Established in 2017, Evolution Wellness is Asia’s leading health and wellness group with a vision to build a comprehensive wellness ecosystem. Its diverse portfolio of highly complementary brands spans the spectrum of fitness offerings from high value low price (HVLP), to full service and premium boutique gyms, virtual fitness, connected fitness, wellness and a subscription-based SaaS membership management system.
Besides its core business as owner and operator of Asia’s largest network of wholly- owned fitness clubs, Evolution Wellness also offers an attractive licensing programme for its HVLP brand GoFit and premium boutique brand FIRE Fitness, joint venture opportunities and management consultancy for its wellness brand, Fivelements.
For more information about this partnership please contact us at info@wexer.com