Purpose Brands, the US$3.7 billion company formed by the merger of Orangetheory Fitness and Self Esteem Brands, has appointed Tom Leverton as CEO.

Leverton most recently served as an operating partner at Pritzker Private Capital, co-leading the firm's activities in the services sector. He's also previously served as CEO of CEC Entertainment (parent company of Chuck E Cheese), Topgolf and Omniflight, and formerly served as chief development officer at FedEx Office.

Under his stewardship, Purpose Brands, is aiming for rapid expansion. A merger of equals between Orangetheory Fitness and Self Esteem Brands, the company currently has six million members across 7,000 sites in 50 countries. Its brands including Anytime Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, Waxing the City, Basecamp Fitness/SUMHIIT Fitness, The Bar Method, Stronger U Nutrition, Healthy Contributions and Provision Security.

Leverton is tasked with steering the financial performance, workplace culture, innovation and continued global expansion of the Purpose Brands portfolio and services. In addition to being appointed CEO, Leverton also joins the Purpose Brands board of directors.

HCM caught up with Leverton, who is now 10 days into the job. He said the main draw for him to the health and fitness sector was the fact that it can enrich and save lives: “I started off as a medical device engineer and it was really rewarding, because in that job I spent time in the operating room, and saw the output of my work could save lives. Later I was CEO of a medical helicopter business, and again, if you do your job well, you contribute to saving people's lives. The health and fitness industry worldwide saves people's lives directly through improved health and wellness, as well as improving lives through longevity and increased self esteem.”

He sees tremendous potential in the sector: “In 2023 the global health and wellness industry was worth US$6.3 trillion, and we're going to go to US$9 trillion by 2028. That is incredible growth and Purpose Brands is well positioned to be part of it.

“Wth our new improved scale, we're going to be able to give our franchisees every tool possible so they can deliver the best health and wellness experience to their members, which will drive further growth.”

Leverton brings a number of skills to the business: “My career has crossed marketing, operations, finance and many other critical points where we want to leverage our scale, but one of the important pieces that I have was on the development side. As chief development officer for FedEx Office, we opened up over 500 stores in two years during the initial push, and that really helped me understand the importance of market dynamics, the importance of local operations, the importance of performance and overall member treatment.

“With Purpose Brands’ strong franchisee base, there's a big desire to grow and to expand. About half of our locations are international and half are domestic here in the United States, which gives us tremendous white space across all five of our consumer facing brands.”

At the moment there are no plans for mergers or acquisitions, as there is so much growth potential within the company and some work to do in terms of merging the two companies. “Integration is always a challenge,” he says. “I've had some good experiences in my past with bringing two different companies together with different cultures. The great thing about Purpose Brands is that Self Esteem Brands and Orangetheory have a lot of overlap with their cultures. Both of them are high energy, innovative, founder-infused cultures. We just need to be very careful that we pay attention to the service that we deliver to our franchisees and the development that we give to our employees.”

He sees personalisation as one of the current exciting trends, as well as recovery and longevity. Going forward he talks about investing further in these areas and continuing to innovate.

“Our scale will allow us to do more investments in technology, so we can deliver benchmarks and standards to the franchisees so they can better run their businesses and provide more enhanced services to the members,” he says.

“We're also going to be able to deliver new innovations to our members so they can improve and track their health and wellness, for example through body scans and personalised coaching.

“Anytime Fitness has a relationship with Apple+ and we’re bringing that capability in to deliver to our members for free when they sign up. Orangetheory is continuing to push the boundaries on brand new workouts all the time to make sure that we are helping our members burn fat and build muscle.”

Having come from outside the sector, Leverton praised the energy of the workforce and how that translates into what members experience: “Because we are a purpose driven company, saving lives and making lives better, there's a desire to improve the services that we deliver to our franchisees like I haven't seen in most industries, a desire to innovate and just do more and more.”