HCM people
We want Grndhouse to be everywhere: in gyms, hotels, on holidays, at home – it’s boutique fitness in your hand
Louis Rennocks Co-founder, Grndhouse
Where did the name come from? Grndhouse came from “the grind in our house” and there’s no “i” in GRND because we’re a team. What happened next? We put all our existing productions into one place to build the business and launched a web-based prototype platform in January 2021. We got one thousand subscribers within the first month, which was a surprise, because our target had been 250. We made back the money we’d invested within the first hour. Business was going so well that we decided to seek investment. 18
Issue 4 2022 ©Cybertrek 2022
What funding did you raise? In November 2021 we secured a £1.5m investment for the launch of a fitness studio and app. Passion Capital was our lead investor, there were several angel investors, and the rest was Seedrs crowdfunding. We spent £1m in a couple of months and one year later we opened our studio in Paddington, which allows our online clients to come down and get the in-person experience too. What was your vision for the Grndhouse studio in Paddington? We wanted it to be a cool place to hang out, somewhere you didn’t have to bring a hairdryer or shampoo, but have a workout in a home from home. We wanted the workouts to be like a show. You can chill out in ‘the calm before the storm’, then go into the studio and the lights change – we wanted to create a different experience. You hired Zynk as designer, tell us more about the look of the space. We went for burnt orange because we felt this colour was universal, it wasn’t masculine or feminine. We didn’t do a deep dive into branding, it came about naturally. The light tunnel creates a good Instagram moment. You can take a picture and show the world where you are.
technogym/Grndhouse
photo: Grndhouse
You started off with a digital platform and then launched a studio – what’s the story? We were five best friends (me, Jay Copley, Connor Minney, Nik Naidoo and Izy George) who helped take Barry’s in the UK from one studio to, I think it was eight, by the time that we left. The pandemic came so we lost our income and started doing online classes on our own individual platforms – just like every other trainer at the time. We were doing strength training though, which really took off for each one of us. We looked at the market, saw that no one was owning the online strength training lane, which is what we’ve been doing all our careers, and decided to create Grndhouse.
