PureGym CIO Andy Caddy keeps the sector fit for growth

At this time of year, the fitness gym market is at its peak. Post Christmas and Thanksgiving, a new year, and perhaps motivated by a resolution made over a glass of good French wine, people join gyms and begin the journey to fitness. From the moment an individual decides to increase their cardiovascular fitness and join a gym, their in-gym experience and the operations of an international gym business all rely on technology. That technology has to be customer-centric and make the experience a delight. Now in his second gym career session, Andy Caddy, Group CIO for PureGym, has honed the membership, exercise, and data muscles of this fast-growing business.

Founded in 2008, PureGym is a growing business. At the time of our interview, the UK-headquartered international business had 720 gyms, three of which opened that week. The business operates in three key European economies, the UK, Denmark, and Switzerland, as well as the US and a franchise business in the Middle East. It is the pace of growth that led PureGym to hire Caddy as Group CIO in June 2022. He says of his role:

Part of my job is long-term thinking, and when are we going to run out of capability, platforms, teams, and structure. So it is a nice mix of the big picture strategy and fulfilling the ambition of the company daily. A CIO role became apparent because we stepped up from being a UK business to an international business, and you need to do things a bit differently.

Caddy joined just as PureGym completed the acquisition of Fitness World in Denmark making it the market leader there and giving it a significant presence in Switzerland. It has since developed a franchise business in the Middle East and made a significant acquisition in the US. Like peers in retail and global engineering, he is striking a balance between centralized efficiency and local services that understand the customer.

Technology experience

As a subscription business, Caddy and his team are, in his words, obsessed with the online membership experience.

Our job is to make that as easy as possible for our members. That makes it sound simple. If somebody comes through our online joining funnel, I want that to end with them becoming a member.

That means PureGym develops, owns, and operates its own web platform, he says:

We are a totally online business, so all of our revenue comes via online. So to outsource that would mean we have the same performance as anybody else in the market.

That means delivering a top-end online subscription service and being aware of and keeping pace with the leaders in this field, he says:

If you are going to buy a Disney + membership, then you are pretty motivated to get onboard and watch Pixar movies. With a gym membership, some people are coming as they have made a choice, but any excuse might put them off. So if we are not making it easy, or something isn’t quite what it seems, then they go somewhere else. We have to make it as good a process as possible, and we obsess about it.

He adds that PureGym compares and contrasts itself with the major streaming services, which, like PureGym, do high volumes of transactions, but he also cites language learning website Duolingo and specialist holiday booking services. Not only is PureGym looking at the joining process, but the complete lifecycle of a subscriber's time with the membership, he explains:

We are a cancel-any-time business, and that is really interesting from a structural point of view, as that means you are always churning customers. If you make it easy, then they will rejoin. If you make it hard, which is what the gym industry did for decades, then people will resent you.

Our business believes you come along, you join, and we hope you establish good habits, but at some point your life will change, and you may need to move. We will make that easy for you, and then it is easy to rejoin.

A Braze customer relationship management (CRM) is central to that and enables one-click rejoining. Analyzing and learning from the streaming giants is not only essential, but they are, to some extent, competition for gyms, as the CIO admits gym membership is part of the attention economy that our digital world has created. He says:

They could choose to subscribe to something else other than a gym. Our subscription is very similar to other subscriptions; it takes one or two hours a week of your time, and it is competing with all the other things you do, so we have to understand why people do it and what they get from their membership.

Technical gym

Caddy and his team are not only obsessed with the membership experience, but the App members use in the gym is the second obsession, the CIO says.

The best thing we can do is make people feel comfortable in a gym. For new starters, it can be a very scary process. Our job is to help them start healthy new habits. We built our own App as the user experience in the gym is important to us.

Caddy cut his digital leadership teeth at low-cost airline easyJet in a seven-year career that saw him ascend to the role of CTO. He says there are clear parallels between the two organizations in terms of product, but also the energy of the two companies, he adds:

easyJet, culturally, was the right size of organization; it was passionate about what it was doing, which was changing the way people travel. PureGym is the same, a volume business with a simple product that has disrupted and ultimately transformed its industry. People here understand that if they do their job right, people get fitter, and that is a very nice industry to be in.

Following easyJet, Caddy was Group CIO for Virgin Active, his first session in the gym industry. He says his time at Virgin was great, but it was a very different business to PureGym, as it had a complex product offering.

Caddy has always been an advocate for the CIO as orchestrator, change leader, and advisor, he adds:

In truth you don’t need a CIO to get a CRM, you just get your credit card out. However, if the CMO buys a CRM without telling me, then I’m not doing my job. I am not going to stop them, but I want to sit with them when they make the decision. The days of ‘you are not doing anything unless it's in my datacentre’ have long gone. I don’t want to slow people down, and you have to make peace with that in our role.

Like many peers, he is passionate about change and, in particular, the human element:

It is about managing people and change. How do you help people through change curves? We are in the middle of the biggest storm of disruption ever, so we need to become the trusted partner to help people navigate that.

His team consists of 110, which he says is ideal, and he believes that once a team gets too large, it becomes hard to connect with everyone and their workloads. PureGym has stuck to the hybrid working model and is seeing the benefits, but it makes a real effort on the days when the entire technology team comes together. Caddy says these are important times. In addition, every year, there are back-to-the-floor days where the technologists go out to the gyms to build relationships with the gym staff and get first-hand experience.

My take

During a catch-up in the middle of the pandemic, Caddy and I pontificated on what the long-term impact would be on gyms. Home exercise and digitized platforms such as Peloton and Zwift were the only options available, and had the potential to change behavior. The latter remains a stalwart digital service for cyclists and runners, but as our latest conversation reveals, gyms are fitter than they have ever been. The cultural change that the pandemic delivered was an increased focus on health and well-being. Coupled with usable technology, the gym remains a healthy habit.