Malvern KX Pilates studio (above, credit: Kit Haselden) and Aaron Smith (below, credit: Julian Kingma).
Fit to franchise: Beyond 10 years of KX Pilates Aaron Smith explains why the journey is more important than the destination when growing a fitness franchise
y career in fitness started working as a personal trainer, M but it was not until I went overseas and saw how the personal touch one-on-one training offers could be scaled up to the business level that I was inspired to develop a dynamic Pilates studio brand in Australia. The idea was to keep it boutique to maintain the personal touch, but grow the community around it, so it always had a buzz. After an ordinary start, I can tell you there’s nothing sadder than an empty studio on opening day, I got my act together and people started hearing about us. Now, KX Pilates has more than 70 studios Australia-wide with an overseas master franchisor in Indonesia and country partner in China. Our core offering is a 50-minute session giving clients a full-body dynamic Pilates workout using customised equipment, including our purpose-built reformer machine. However, the workout is only really half the reason why our 20 Australasian Leisure Management Issue 143
clients are so loyal. The community aspect of our studios is important because it makes a fitness session something clients look forward to in their day or week. Just as sport brings people together, exercising together helps with motivation because it’s about sharing achievements. Foundational elements The concept of achieving through steady incremental improvement is embedded in the foundation of the business, and it serves us well at a client level and a business level. KX stands for ‘Kaizen eXperience’ - where kaizen is the Japanese concept of continuous improvement. It’s clear that the fitness aspect of what we offer is an example of continuous improvement, but KX reaches beyond that: we also consider ourselves a lifestyle brand. We want to see the kaizen attitude cross over to our clients’ daily lives. This, as much as the Pilates, was the reason I saw KX as a movement from the beginning. Leveraging kaizen, in a business sense, has been hugely rewarding. If you start a business, my advice is to make sure one of its core values is about how to make things better! Our culture is not just focused on what the letters ‘K’ and ‘X’ stand
