CEO Corner: How Rich Nelsen Turned Vasa Fitness into a Fitness Giant

Under Nelsen, Vasa has become one of America’s top fitness brands, currently operating 61 locations in eight states.

Few gyms are as hot as Vasa Fitness, which has quickly emerged as a serious competitor to low-cost giants such as Planet Fitness, Crunch Fitness and the like.

Orem, Utah-based Vasa has taken the world of high-quality, low-cost fitness (HVLP) by storm since its founding in 2014, expanding to 61 locations in eight states across the Midwest and Mountain West, with strong plans for further expansion. .

The man behind that growth is Rich Nelsen, CEO of Vasa Fitness who took the position in 2018 after spending time at Starbucks and In-Shape Health Clubs (now In-Shape Family Fitness). .

Under Nelsen, Vasa has been certified multiple times as a Great Workplace, added Studio, a new fitness offering, and built its management team with leading talent. first in the industry.

Nelsen sat down with Athletech News to discuss his first six years running Vasa, give his thoughts on the future of the HVLP fitness industry and share more information about Vasa’s expansion plan in the coming years.

The following discussion has been slightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background and why you decided to join Vasa Fitness as its CEO in 2018?

Rich Nelson: I left Starbucks in 2016 after a very good career there. I raced most of the central US for a while, then Europe and the Middle East for two and a half years, then Latin and South America for the balance of my time. I basically learned the Starbucks business from the ground up, and then spread that knowledge and experience to many franchisees around the world, in 54 countries.

I said I wouldn’t leave Starbucks unless I became the CEO of a fitness brand. And it happened – I moved to California to be a part of (In-Shape Health Clubs). I was fortunate to have a lot of people around me who knew the industry well, and I was able to bring the Starbucks experience to life through a fitness machine.

Then I connected with Vasa and Silver Oak (Services Partners), our current private equity partner, who asked me if I would like to come back home to Denver, Colorado, to expand the brand. The rest is history.

ATN: What have you brought to the fitness industry since you were at Starbucks?

RN: Understanding the customer. One of the things that Starbucks is known for is a good understanding of consumer behavior. Managing two international markets, I learned that while customers are the same, they are also very different in terms of how they use the product, experience the product and customer service.

The fitness industry was very slow to change. Apart from the $9.99 price (monthly membership), nothing has come out in the past six or eight years. It is changing now as the consumer is demanding more and has higher expectations. We are here to solve some of those problems.

ATN: Take us back to 2018 when you started Vasa. What are your priorities for the brand?

RN: First of all, we are a company based in Utah and primarily based in Utah. We had ambitions to grow outside of Utah, so we had to understand the customer in Utah but also the customer in other nearby areas that we wanted to do business in, and learn to make a professional version so that it can be approached (there) .

Number two worked in a professional association. We were a small company with 23 locations, growing one (gym) at a time – we wanted to grow eight to 10 at a time, so we have to do everything professional from accounting to fitness to marketing. It was a combination of promoting strength within the organization – people who had been there for a long time – and bringing new thought leaders into the organization to improve their skills.

ATN: Vasa has expanded rapidly over the past few years, now counting 61 gyms. What separates Vasa from other HVLP gyms?

RN:I think we have built an employee culture that is second to none. It’s the third year we’ve been certified by Great Place to Work, and if you talk to people in the organization, we all believe we can be better than we are today. That energy translates to our members, and that’s why we treat our members better than anyone else. We believe we have the highest utilization rates in the industry. In an industry where not everyone wants you to come to the gym, our brand lives on the power of people who visit. We know that our success in saving money is largely due to the people who use the gym.

We also think our additional resources have added a lot of value. We founded the Studio almost seven years ago with the belief that we could create boutique fitness for HVLP within our own gym. We have over 1,000 members per club (using) our Studio product currently. So we’ve become a fitness mall, if you will. We’ve got your original Gap store, we’ve got your Abercrombie store, and we’ve got Tiffany’s – Tiffany’s probably a bit of a stretch, because we’re $44, but you get my point.

The third thing is that we do professional marketing, so we start talking to our customers in a different way about how this brand can change their daily life, instead of, “Hey, we here selling for $9.99 (personal).”

ATN: How has the gym been at Vasa during your six years as CEO, especially since the pandemic?

RN: We’ve already talked about the Studio, so I won’t keep beating that drum. You have a trend going on right now in strength (training) among men and women. You will see changes in our equipment, with lower body lifts and free weights instead of machines. Our new teams average eight to 10 Olympic platforms per team. We are the first to start that and now you see other people doing it. We learned where the trends were for college students seven years ago, and we started adding platforms during that time.

We (re)started taking racquetball out of the (add) Studio. And cycling has gone down a lot with the epidemic – people bought bikes at home or bought bikes to ride, so classes aren’t as popular as they used to be.

ATN: How do you think HVLP gyms will continue to evolve over the next few years?

RN: I think it will be more personal and specific. We will need to create spaces within the gym where you feel like you are part of something bigger. Studio is our way of making it clear that – you can be part of Studio, you have your friends in the Studio community, you can go to a (cultural) group and be part of that community, then you can be free- weight as part of that community.

ATN: Vasa is company-owned, which is a different model than most of your HVLP practice competitors who sell licenses. What led to this decision?

RN: I get this question all the time from people who want to franchise. I’m just saying, we’re on a brand journey where we want to control the results, and we’re building a brand, not opening gyms. Now, I don’t feel comfortable letting someone else control the execution after that.

(Franchising) is definitely something that can happen when we feel like we have implemented a brand and have the ability to share that with others. Today, we are not ready.

ATN: Vasa has expanded significantly throughout the Midwest and Mountain West, with gyms in eight states. What are your expansion goals for the next few years?

We can grow to 100 units in five years. We have a current production capacity of 20 units per year. I think you can look anywhere in the US where land doesn’t touch the ocean and you can see Vasa there. We will be mostly in the Mountain West to the Midwest, getting closer to the East Coast. We have LOIs in several places from here to there.

ATN: Why does Vasa choose to stay off shore now?

RN: We do very well in the Midwest. Our brand renews backward communities. We do not want to change our pricing policy so that they are not the same. One day, we can do that. Again, I don’t want to get into politics, but it’s very difficult to do business in those countries.