PureGym will be maintaining the momentum of its swift rollout next year, with 60 to 65 new sites planned, in line with this year’s new club tally.

The low-cost operator – which recently hit its 700 milestone – released a positive investor statement this week. Year-on-year revenue grew by 28 per cent in Q3 and adjusted year-on EBITDA increased by 46 per cent to £51 million.

The rebrand of the US Blink Fitness estate will be completed this year and around 25 new club will launch before the end of the year.

At last month’s HCM Summit, PureGym COO, Rebecca Passmore, spoke about the secrets behind the success of the operator’s “breakneck” expansion.

Efficiency and cost control is at the heart of the strategy. Having grown up in low cost retail – at Aldi, TKMaxx, Asda and Walmart – Passmore has applied the same principles at PureGym.

“Staying true to your low cost principles is fundamental,” she said. “You have to offer a great product at an affordable price while always keeping control of the costs. It is essential for value creation. If you’re going to get hit by a barrage of costs, you can’t just pass all of this onto your members. You've got to build a war chest. You've got to build resilience, and you've got to be focused on driving efficiency without compromising that customer experience.”

PureGym has used technology to support the low cost model. “This has been refined over the years and is now a well-oiled machine,” she says. “From our contactless entry points and our speed gates which remove the need for a reception desk to our CCTV and emergency help points. This allows us to run unstaffed overnight, and all of this is supported by an incredible CCTV team and our internal incident, emergency escalation process.”

This is now being implemented in Blink Fitness to save on staff costs which “were off the Richter scale,” pushing the US chain to the brink of bankruptcy.

“We've effectively echoed the supermarket checkout model,” she says. “We've driven significant efficiencies through the use of technology, saving on labour costs, while really ensuring that we don't compromise that member experience.”

Next up will be the use of AI to spot members who are trying to enter clubs without a subscription, as well as optimise layouts, kit quantities, identify when kit is out of use or faulty and spot incidents when they happen.

Passmore also shared PureGym’s BOLT – Best of Latest Thinking – cost engineering model which is now in its third iteration with a fourth under development. She describes this as true low cost engineering which is used all over the world.

“When you're opening a site a week and you only have one format design you can really drive procurement savings out of your network, and then, as a result, you're able to keep capex costs low, but also drive superior terms,” she says.

She also talked about the company’s relentless focus on marginal gains, look for 1 per cent improvement every day – studying the kit quantities, trialling equipment of hot trends, images in the latest CRM campaigns.

“These individual decisions may seem small in the grand scheme of things, but each individual one really does add up, and it really does create momentum and drive the business forward,” she says.