Since his parents enrolled him in judo classes at the age of 4, Ernesto Rojas he does not remember Not a single week without stepping into the gym. He likes sports so much that even on his trips as a teenager to learn English in Los Angeles, a fitness mecca, he soaked up the latest trends, which in pre-globalization times could easily take about 10 years to land in Spain.
“I lived through all the stages and almost without wanting to I accumulated a lot of information of all areas of the business,” explains this businessman from Vigo. He was a competitor as a child, a user later, he became a coach and at only 22 years old, his boss and mentor at that time opened the doors of management for him by putting him in charge of a new center in Zaragoza “with a fairly American concept” and twenty people on staff to take advantage of that privileged vision he had of the sector.
Brais González He studied Sports Sciences and worked in the afternoons as a monitor at a center. He was also offered to take the reins of the establishment until it closed due to the emergence of low-cost chains. “It was one of the things that made me learn the most in life,” he says. He decided to become self-employed and rented space in a physical therapy clinic for functional training. A room of 20 square meters with which he came to have up to 70 clients. Meanwhile, he followed the trail of Rojas, an old acquaintance in the city’s sports circles, “from the sidelines.” “He thought that kid had to have something special, so young and with such responsibility“, he says. So he did not hesitate to be one of the first to enroll in the new gym paradigm that he had been thinking about for some time and decided to rehearse upon his return to Vigo on an unused squash court.
Nothing was conventional in the first Study District. Neither the place, nor even the name, is far from the usual baptisms in gyms with the owner’s nickname or any concept inspired by ancient Greece. Rojas was looking for closeness as the antithesis of large venues “in which personalization is lost” and with the idea that there could be a venue in every zip code. “I carried my notebook and at the end of classes I wrote down the good things I had seen for improve my own business“, recalls González. “And I thought he came to see what the Coca Cola formula is, but from the beginning we had a very good vibe and I even gave him the contact of a supplier,” adds Rojas.
Same business vision
The definitive spark between the two jumped on the way to a weightlifting course. The car broke down and during the long conversation they had while waiting for it to be fixed, the same vision of the sports business and a certain symbiosis in their professional careers. That talk instantly came to Rojas’ mind when he thought about moving to his own premises and giving it a different sign of identity. They saw each other again and out of the cafe came “a napkin with grandmother’s account” that still makes them laugh today when they remember it.
With the good numbers it was giving the first training room from Distrito Estudio and a scalable business plan summarized “in two or three Excel sheets”, the two obtained a couple of personal loans to start a business. The first month they spent everything planned for four months of work. “We spoke with the suppliers. I imagine they saw our enthusiasm and we managed to certain margins to pay. The business was opened with a third of what it really cost and we managed to get it working well and very quickly. Everything we earned was reinvested,” details Rojas, who spent many days at the beginning of 2015 hitting the streets of Vigo with advertising brochures and laying the seed of a successful digital marketing strategy through social networks promoting “the passion for sport”.
Shared care
Distrito Estudio offers WOD, bootcamp, D45 and yoga classes shop style to make tailored suits for each of the users. “We have three pillars: personalized attention, very well-kept facilities appearance premium in which you forget about gyms as something ugly, rusty or dirty, and the community as added value – they say -. “The people take care of the center, the people take care of the people, the trainer takes care of the client, the client also takes care of and respects the trainer.”
Rojas and González are now in the final stretch of the works for the inauguration in Madrid of the Studio District number 12. Five are their own, always financed with the cash, and seven are franchised. The next exercise aspiring to reach 17 or 18 operating centers. David Estébanez joined the tandem as director of expansion and development, key in the ambitious 2022-2025 growth strategy with an average of between four to five openings per year. They have more than 4,300 members and turnover reached 3.4 million euros in 2023 after an increase in 36% compared to 2022. The company is preparing its first round of capital raising with which it aims to gain muscle and increase annual openings to seven or eight.
New Balance Attraction
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Its innovative business model caught the attention of New Balance. Distrito Estudio is the only chain of official centers of the sportswear brand in the world. In the gyms there is a store with products adapted to all sports disciplines. Until its founder, Jim Davis, traveled to Vigo to see the project in person and chose to set up a Balance District in Valencia. It was, as Rojas acknowledges, “a pat on the back very powerful.”
This year, The Global Health & Fitness Association invited Distrito Estudio to give a conference at the largest global sports industry fair held in The Angels. The project returns to where it was born, another dream fulfilled. How many are left to fulfill? “We are clear: the Study District is going to be largest boutique fitness company of the world”.
2024-03-11 06:02:36
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