On February 25, keep submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong stock exchange, which once again pushed the topic of fitness to the high point of public opinion in the industry. On the one hand, consumers reexamine the value of Internet plus fitness enterprises represented by keep, and on the other hand, the huge marketing expenses behind keep losses, including the discussion on the flow of access and brand promotion. On March 4, at a community economic salon held in Changsha, Lewis, general manager of jianmeng Strategy Center, a local fitness brand, impressed the people present. "Jian Meng has the final say of our traffic center, not our adorable sales department." Traffic has become a new force in the fitness industry. 1、 The first half of fitness: breaking the contradiction between people and goods yard 2015 was a crazy year for China's sports industry. In October of the previous year, the State Council document No. 46 "several opinions on accelerating the development of sports industry and promoting sports consumption" was officially issued. National fitness has become a national strategy. Therefore, 2014 is defined as the first year of the sports industry. With the help of policies, social capital scrambled to enter the sports industry, and the subdivided fields of the whole sports industry have become the investment objects of capital. The fitness industry is no exception. Fitness o2o mode, new gym, intelligent fitness and other modes continue to emerge, including keep, lexe, super orangutan The Internet plus fitness enterprise represented by adorable and so on was founded in this period. Different fitness modes bring different operation modes. These new fitness models have broken the high threshold of the annual card of the traditional gym. Meng Wei, a senior practitioner in the fitness industry who settled in Changsha, told 36 krypton, "before that, many large chain fitness clubs in China generally made annual cards. The usual practice is to continue to open a second new store with the annual membership card fees charged, and then carry out pre-sale and innovation." New models such as monthly payment and super payment represented by lecke have broken the tradition and reduced the consumption threshold of consumers. Lexus fitness (screenshot of Lexus official website) "In fact, under the traditional fitness mode, consumers, coaches and venues are an irreconcilable contradiction, and the three form a situation of mutual loss," Meng Wei added. Coaches ignore professionalism because of performance pressure. Many coaches end up as promoters selling annual and monthly cards. On the other hand, consumers stop outside the gym because of high costs. For the local market, a large number of operation sites are idle due to the low investment of consumers, coupled with costs and equipment loss. The new fitness model solves these contradictions to a certain extent. Take Lexus as an example. Lexus aims at the perspective of "people". In terms of operation mode, it adopts the way of monthly payment and attracts consumers through low price strategy. According to the Leke applet, in Beijing, a monthly card for consumers is 239 yuan. Consumers can freely use venues and equipment and make an appointment for group classes. For consumers, it greatly reduces the economic pressure. "Lexus starts from the perspective of consumption threshold, but the most important thing is that Lexus uses its own platform rules and mechanisms to integrate coaches, venues and user needs. Under his mechanism, coaches will be required to be more professional, and local costs will be reduced. Under resource integration, the cost of individual has actually been integrated into the whole," Meng Wei said. In addition to lecke, when solving the contradiction between people and freight yard, super orangutan also aims at the angle of "people". Super orangutan adopts the sales mode of "no annual card, pay per visit" in its business model. It pays a single fee to buy group classes at a price of 69-159. Consumers can choose any group class or practice basic equipment. On this basis, the needs of consumers also require coaches to be more professional. "In terms of" venue ", super orangutans adopt more direct marketing. Compared with lecke, super orangutans invest more in individual stores. It reduces some fixed costs, such as rent, through brand influence, so as to reduce costs." Meng Wei believes that this is the biggest difference between super orangutans and lecke. Compared with the "human" perspective, another Internet plus fitness enterprise in Hunan Changsha, Jian Meng, chose to start with the angle of adorable goods. Jianmeng fitness (picture provided by jianmeng) Lewis, general manager of jianmeng strategic center, said that the biggest advantage of jianmeng is service. In terms of operation mode, jianmeng focuses on private education, adopts monthly payment, quarterly payment and annual payment system, develops standardized products and implements large-scale production through self-developed background management system, which reduces the cost of personalized services; Due to the advantage of cost, the sales volume is increased; The sales volume is increased to ensure that the coach has a large number of class hours. At the same time, the professional level of the coach is guaranteed through the self built talent training center. In addition, the improvement of private education services has a positive incentive to market promotion and publicity, and then promote the improvement of sales. "This mode of using digital technology + fitness data + platform link + market, like Lexus, generates positive incentives as a whole and reduces the overall cost," Meng Wei said. Jianmeng's way may be a dimensionality reduction blow for the private education module, especially for some small private education workshops. Abby, a fitness expert, has experienced it in these gymnasiums. On March 7, Abby said to 36 krypton after walking into a smart community gym led by Changsha Sports Bureau. "On the whole, the quality of jianmeng's private education will be better. The level of lecke and super orangutan coaches is a bit like removing the blind box, and the level is uneven." Abby's words were recognized by several other fitness experts who worked out on the side. Abby's fitness venue can be regarded as another new model - smart community fitness. It also pays 25 yuan a month from the perspective of "people", does not restrict the use of equipment and venues, and reduces the use cost of consumers to a very low level. "Now I think it's also very good in the smart community fitness center. Although there is no coach and the venue is not very large, it's cheap, free and convenient. It's OK to go next floor," Abby told 36 krypton. On the whole, the Internet plus fitness enterprises, represented by Yue, gorilla, adorable, and so on, have created a new model, breaking the traditional card prepayment system in the traditional gym, and establishing the relationship between people's freight yard with the monthly payment system, the secondary payment system and the service quality that are immediately in effect. With the impact of the epidemic, after solving the contradiction between traditional people and freight yards, the second half of fitness once again pulled fitness industry enterprises into the competition for traffic. 2、 The second half of fitness: traffic competition In 2020, with the impact of the epidemic, online demand rose sharply while offline activities were affected. On March 21, 2021, Lexus announced the opening of module enabling business - traffic enabling. The most critical step of Lexus traffic empowerment is to get customers. "For the gym, attracting members is the first step, and Lexus's flow empowerment is mainly focused on the first step of getting customers," Liu Danian, general manager of Lexus sports empowerment business department, said in an interview with the media. Leke believes that the first step of traffic empowerment is to reduce the threshold for users to enter the gym, reduce the economic pressure of consumers by means of monthly card and one-time payment, and increase the psychological pressure of consumers on fitness. In addition to the monthly payment system, Lexus also continues to obtain new traffic through various online marketing tools, such as "free experience card", combined with the marketing activities of the private traffic operation platform. In this regard, super orangutans play in a similar way. They lower the threshold of consumers through one-time payment, use high-quality and diversified courses to meet the fitness needs of different consumers, and use the community to gather consumers with common needs, so as to generate social interaction and enhance the stickiness of consumers. "Super orangutans also have some irregular promotions, such as the experience class of 9.9 yuan. That's how I came to super orangutans," fitness enthusiast Xiao Fei told 36 krypton. More and more people are walking into the gym (source: unsplash) In terms of drainage, jianmeng, who "came out" from Hunan Radio and television, is different from lecke and super orangutan. "It's not the sales department that decides everything now, but our traffic department," Lewis said. "Our traffic department has the right to speak, and they decide the next development direction.". Lewis tiktok is not just a private education hall, but also has a self built "Adorable" Red Net Center, which is specialized in online drainage and publicity through short video platforms such as jitter, public comment, Xiaohong book and community, and assists in drainage activities through promotional activities. "80% of our users are women, and these platforms are consistent with our customer attributes. Through our services, these users will bring us their own traffic on the above platforms, which will bring fission," Lewis said. Compared with lecke, super orangutan and jianmeng, keep has natural advantages in terms of traffic. According to the prospectus, keep has an average of 34.4 million active users per month, but it is facing the dilemma of user loss and re creation. Keep prospectus According to the data of the prospectus, keep's revenue is 1.1 billion, but its marketing expenses are nearly 800 million. The marketing expenses in 2021 have doubled. The description in the prospectus is that it strategically increases the expenses in traffic acquisition and brand promotion. Especially with the Kwai Chung, B tiktok, short hand video platform on the keep online fitness APP erosion, traffic expenditure has become an important expenditure for keep. After obtaining the flow, it is more important to retain it. According to the "2019-2020 white paper on the development of China's Gym market", the retention rate of general users of gyms in China is between 20% - 40%, and that of a few gyms can reach 50% - 60%. Xia Dong, CO CEO of Lexus sports, has repeatedly stressed in public that Lexus should change the core competence of the venue from "selling cards and marketing" to "operation and service". If the service is good, users will not leave you and eventually become a member of the ecology. The money that users earn and don't buy is not "retained". Xia Dong once said at the end of an interview with Netease News that after the flow is enabled, the monthly retention rate of lecke's members is about 60% - 70%. This value is consistent with the retention rate of super orangutan. Keqi, one of the founders of super orangutan, previously said in an interview with interface news that the user retention rate of super orangutan is between 60% - 70% through online reward mechanism and offline self-developed courses. After jianmeng adopted the model of digital technology + fitness data + platform link + market, Deng Chen, one of the co founders of jianmeng, once told 36 krypton that the current member repurchase rate has exceeded 70%. To sum up, various signs show that paying attention to traffic has increasingly become the most important thing in the fitness industry. Pay attention to traffic in order to improve service; Improve the service, you can ensure retention, ensure retention, and make money. This is another positive cycle after the positive cycle of people and goods yard. 3、 Thinking about the future "At present, the fitness awareness of consumers has not been fully popularized, the self drive of mass fitness is not strong, and more is the demand passively formed with the help of the external environment. There is still a lot of room for the development of the fitness industry," Meng said