INDEPENDENT fitness equipment supplier Anytime Leisure has secured a £4 million contract to fit out 18 publicly owned gyms as it gears up to grow turnover by more than 60%.
The programme of upgrades across North Lanarkshire will take place over the next five years and includes facilities at Ravenscraig Sports Centre and Broadwood Stadium.
Director Jonny Curley said it was a "fantastic" win for the privately owned Scottish company.
Anytime moved into a new 9000 square feet headquarters at Newbridge, near Edinburgh, in the autumn with the building formally opened by Judy Murray in December.
At the same time the business, which also provides gym design and equipment maintenance services, took on an adjacent 27,000 square feet distribution and warehouse facility as it believes sales are likely to grow rapidly from around £6m in its current financial year to £10m in the next one.
Mr Curley said: "This year has been more of a year for investing to get all the blocks in place to take the growth forward in next year.
"We will have about 20% growth this year but it will be a massive growth starting in the financial year [beginning] April 2014 with the contracts we have secured, the distribution space and the progress we have made online.
"I can see us turning over £10m comfortably by the end of the next [financial] year."
Mr Curley said each strand of the business is growing. He pointed out how the showroom at the new headquarters has been set up to allow individual consumers to come in to try equipment and receive advice on which machines might be best suited to their needs.
He said: "That retail market has been there but it has been probably dragged into an online model by Amazon and [similar places] where it loses its speciality. We are trying to create more of a niche.
"If someone wants to buy a fitness product then they can research it and come and try it out.
"We are also doing a load of online videos and tutorials so people can visualise what they are getting if they can't come to the store."
Mr Curley said the company recently sold almost £100,000 of equipment to one gym in London solely through online interaction.
The anticipated growth in online is likely to see more people being added to the 32 employees the business currently has.
Mr Curley, a former tennis coach, said: "We will be taking on another couple of staff on the online side of things and looking at offshoot websites for specific brands and niches.
"So it could be things like fitness flooring which we think is going to be massive for us."
Anytime has recently signed a UK distribution deal with an as yet unnamed flooring company based in Kuala Lumpur and is seeking further deals with brands.
Mr Curley said the business - which has fitted out gyms for Royal Bank of Scotland, Google and the X-Factor house as well as Queens Park Football Club - is seeing more of its brand partners wanting to do more with them and as a result is increasing its sales around the UK and Europe.
One trend Mr Curley has seen in recent months is more mid-size companies investing in gyms rather than it just being something large corporate spend money on.
He cited one example of a firm which has around 250 staff around the UK but only 50 at its head office in South Lanarkshire yet still spent £20,000 on a facility for its workers.
Directors Paul Bodger and Josh Bicknell set up Anytime in 2009 with Mr Curley joining in January 2010.
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