The COVID-19 pandemic was just the last straw for these gym chains.

The pre-paid model adopted by these gyms itself lacks strong supervision, is prone to misappropriation of funds, and business performance is likely to deteriorate due to lower consumer renewal rates, high labor and rental costs, which requires continuous customer acquisition.

During the epidemic, gyms cannot continue to attract new paying users, and cash flow is likely to break.

In this context, large health clubs are also beginning to introduce more flexible payment options, with the goal of attracting users to pay continuously.

At the end of 2020, Wilshi introduced a monthly payment mechanism "monthly payment", which is only limited to single stores and cannot be used across stores.

In September, Wilshire launched a nationwide monthly card that covers almost all of its stores. In July this year, after the Zheshang consortium took over, one trillion Wade began to transform, stop selling long-term cards, and change to monthly cards, season cards, 1-year cards and 2-year cards.

It seems that the flexible payment mechanism represented by monthly payment and single payment has the opportunity to become mainstream. Before this, the promotion of flexible payment mechanism is super gorilla, music and other small and medium-sized chain gyms. But at the same time that large chain gyms are in crisis, for consumers, super gorilla and music are less risky choices.

This is because the revenue settlement method used by Super Gorilla and music is different from the prepaid model. Liu Shuting, CEO of Super Gorilla, said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald in August 2022 that the funds that consumers pre-recharge but do not consume do not belong to the enterprise, and Super gorilla confirms its income after consumer sales, "making money from users who really come to fitness."

Letke takes a similar approach. Tang Xin, partner of Letke Movement and general manager of City Division, introduced the fund compliance mechanism designed by Letke to YiMagazine of First Business News.

When the consumer consumes the class, the corresponding class fee will be shared with the franchisee and the coach.

Loco also works with banks to take charge of fund management and performance protection, in order to avoid the misappropriation of funds in the prepaid model. At present, Letke has achieved continuous profit for many years.

However, the fitness industry was generally cautious at the beginning of this year, slowing down the pace of new stores, Super gorilla, the chain of private training studio DP Fitness said that it had temporarily stopped store expansion.

However, the fitness market soon improved, and the average store revenue in the second quarter of this year returned to the same period in 2021.

At the same time, the decline of large health clubs may leave more room for musicians to grow. In the past, commercial real estate tended to cooperate with large fitness clubs, the store area can often reach thousands of square meters, enjoy rent concessions, commercial real estate access to these gyms corresponding to high consumer groups.

However, the recent negative news of large health clubs has also indirectly affected the brand image of commercial real estate, leading to more motivation for commercial real estate to find new partners.

Tang Xin said that since 2021, he has found more commercial real estate projects seeking cooperation with Letke, mainly because Letke's customer base is young and high.

Letke is mainly divided into 300 square meters of Letke comprehensive hall and 180 square meters of Letke private education hall, so it may be a relatively flexible choice for commercial real estate. Compared with the traditional large health club set up on the top of commercial real estate, Letke usually chooses to open a shop on the B1 and 4 floors of commercial real estate.

At present, about 20% of the more than 1,000 Letke stores are stationed in commercial real estate projects such as Longfor and Vanke.

In addition to Super gorilla and Rockers, commercial real estate is also looking for possibilities in niche sports, such as rock climbing. In 2021, Shenzhen Longgang Wanda, rebuilt from the building materials market, opened, emphasizing experience formats, including rock climbing, surfing, diving, and go-karting.

Among them, the climbing brand Banana Rock climbing is the first time to enter commercial real estate, and it has also attracted the attention of other commercial real estate investment departments through this project. Previously, the rock climbing hall was mainly located in the industrial park.

Qian Xiaolei, founder of Banana Rock climbing, analyzed that the change of commercial real estate for climbing pavilions may be related to the decline of the original main business.

In the commercial real estate industry, the original three main formats are gyms, theaters and supermarkets, which cover a large area and can bring the target customer flow of commercial real estate, but these formats have been greatly impacted during the novel coronavirus epidemic.

"The mall needs a new anchor store to attract traffic. "We can't bring in as many customers as cinemas and supermarkets, but the customer base is stable, the customer base is good, and the stay time is long." Qian Xiaolei said. In September this year, Banana Rock Climbing entered Shanghai, opening a new store in the newly reopened Kerry Collection after renovation.

In 2020, China's camping market has ushered in more than expected growth and has become the most concerned outdoor sports project. According to the "2022 Tmall Taobao Camping Industry Trend White Paper", there are 8,800 new camping-related enterprises in 2020, an increase of 228% year-on-year, achieving the largest growth rate in nearly five years.

The most typical case is the listed company Mu Gaodi (38.850, 0.10, 0.26%), whose market value has grown rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of 2019, the market value of Mu Gaodi was less than 2 billion yuan, and it was more than 7 billion yuan in 2022. At the beginning of this year, Mu Gaodi ended the high growth period, the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies in the first half of the year decreased by 14%, and the market value fell to 2.7 billion yuan.