HCM people
We’ve never wanted to be the biggest, just the best
Paul Ramsay MD, 3d Leisure Tell us about 3d Leisure – what was the spark that started the business? Our founder, Mark Bremner, was a founding director of local authority contractor, DC Leisure. During his time there he saw that the market for hotel health clubs and gyms was growing, but no one was coming forward to operate these new facilities, so he launched 3d Leisure to fill that gap. Now, 30 years later, we run 120 sites and have expanded beyond hotels into other sectors, such as the education market and the corporate wellness sector. We’ve also recently purchased our own gym franchise brand – YourZone45 (www.yourzone45.co.uk). Mark is still actively involved in the business in his role as chair and offers a wealth of experience to our team. Our current portfolio is made up of approximately 50 hotel contracts, 25 corporate sites, 30 high street gyms, 10 education locations and 5 franchised sites. I’m especially enjoying our growth in the corporate sector, as it offers a lot of variety in the type of facility and demographic of members. Hotels are commercial entities and compete with each other and this means we’ve had to turn some contracts away as they’re in the same catchment as existing clients. There’s a board of six, with me as MD, Mark Bremner, Andrew Deere – the FD – operations directors Paul Dickinson and Dan 24
Issue 11 2021 ©Cybertrek 2021
Glue, as well as business development director, Mandy McCracken. The shareholders are me, Mark, Andrew and Paul Dickinson.
You’re celebrating 30 years of the company. How are things going? Very well at the moment – I’m almost embarrassed to say, but we’ve actually grown during the pandemic. One of our competitors, SLS, ceased trading as a result of the pandemic, and we were able to take over a number of its educational contracts. In addition, we won a contract to win a new-build corporate wellness facility and because there was some consolidation in the hotel sector – and we have great relationships with our hotel clients – this area also grew, as they looked to outsource more. When it comes down to it though, our success is as a result of the people we employ. We employ nice people and we spend a lot of money on supporting and training them and that creates a close-knit company ethos.
