Private | |
Genre | Fitness |
Founded | 2002 |
Founders | Chuck Runyon, Dave Mortensen, and Jeff Klinger |
Headquarters | Woodbury, Minnesota, USA |
Revenue | $967 million |
Website | Official site |
Anytime Fitness is a 24-hour health and fitness club. The company operates over 3,000 franchised locations in 20 countries. The gym facilities are open 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year. Chuck Runyon, Dave Mortensen, and Jeff Klinger founded Anytime Fitness in 2002. Runyon is the CEO of the company. Anytime Fitness is based in Woodbury, Minnesota. According to Forbes, Anytime Fitness was the fastest growing health club franchise in 2014. In 2015, Entrepreneur Magazine ranked Anytime Fitness first on its global franchise list.
Runyon, Mortensen and Klinger first met in the early 1990s while working for a fitness club in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1995, they jointly purchased and ran Southview athletic club for seven years. During their ownership of the club, its membership rose from 500 to 4000. They sold the gym in 2001. During their ownership of Southview athletic club, they worked for a consulting firm focused on improving underperforming athletic clubs across the United States. They developed the idea for Anytime Fitness after surveying the expectations that long-term members of large gyms had for their fitness clubs.
Chuck Runyon, Dave Mortensen, and Jeff Klinger founded Anytime Fitness in 2002. Eric Keller, a former employee of Southview athletic club was interested in their business concept and agreed to become the first franchise owner of Anytime Fitness. They provided Keller with support in choosing a site location, marketing strategies, equipment selection, and membership sales. The first franchise location opened in Cambridge, Minnesota later that year. They chose the site because of the lack of other fitness clubs in the immediate area and a population large enough to support a fitness club. Shortly after, two more locations were opened by former Southview athletic club employees in Duluth and Albert Lea, Minnesota. Runyon, Mortensen and Klinger sold 29 franchises before they opened their own corporate-owned location in Bemidji, Minnesota.
In February 2005, Anytime Fitness opened its 77th club, the first location outside of the United States, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. By 2012, the franchise had opened locations in Australia, Canada, Grand Cayman, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, New Zealand, Qatar, and the United Kingdom.