Pip Black On Harnessing Community And Putting Fitness In The Frame

It’s hard to believe, but the London wellness scene hasn’t always consisted of matcha lattes, sweatworking events and clean eating hashtags. The now burgeoning industry has evolved dramatically and visionary fitness studio Frame has been riding the wave since it was, well, more of a ripple.

Now with three thriving locations, an epic collaboration with clothing giant Whistles and a soon to be launched e-commerce site set to stock some of the globe’s best activewear labels. We sat down with co-founder Pip Black to find out how blagging, bonding and branding have been the key to Frame’s longevity.

“I’ve been on holiday with people who I know because they were customers at Frame,” Black reveals as the Rocky theme tune blasts out of the speakers at the brand new studio at Kings Cross. “Is that weird?,” she asks.

On the contrary, it seems like a natural transition when you take into account that along with co-founder Joan Murphy, the pair have actively worked towards cultivating a strong connection with their customers since day one.

“I feel like we have such a big community at all of the Frame studios and we were able to instill that feeling from the very beginning by working front of house and getting to know people. We would create conversations with people and they would tell us their issues; if they’d split up with their boyfriends etc. and that’s just stayed.” In fact, building that kind of bond with their consumers is so important to the duo that they made a point of being at the Kings Cross studio for the whole opening weekend earlier this month.

“We saw people who used to go to the Shoreditch studio when it first launched in 2009 and it was like seeing people who are your best friends.”

But while the customers may have remained loyal, little else has stayed the same throughout the last six years. Back then fitness consisted of going to the gym and running on the treadmill and unlike guys who would go and play football with their mates as a cool social thing women didn’t really have the equivalent, Black recalls.

“We basically said, imagine if there was this place that wasn’t too expensive where you could just drop in and do different things and it was somewhere you could go with your friends and it was an ok thing to do that wasn’t seen as dowdy or naff or negative.

“It didn’t exist, so we thought – why don’t we create it?”… And that’s exactly what they did.

Fitness studio Frame has been riding the wave since it was, well, more of a ripple.
Image: Frame

Spending their evenings carrying out focus groups with friends they bribed with promises of wine, they carved out a business plan and secured a bank loan. Black quit her job and moved in with Murphy and while her business partner continued her day job, she spent her time trawling the streets of London looking for potential properties.

“It was still back in the days when Shoreditch wasn’t Shoreditch so there were lots of derelict houses and warehouse that weren’t being used,” but it still wasn’t easy. “Properties fell through which caused a lot of stress and pain at the time, but it all worked out well in the end and I guess things happen for a reason.”

And that wasn’t the only hurdle. According to Black “Everything was challenging because we had no idea what we were doing. Apart from property being hard there was no software out there that allowed customers to try all these different classes or have a Frame card and we had no budget when it came to the building work.

“We also found that because there weren’t as many people into fitness back then, if you were an instructor you were a gym instructor and worked in the gym, which didn’t always fit. Getting enough good quality instructors took a lot of time and effort. And so to solve many of our challenges we had to look very much outside of our industry because it wasn’t up to date.”

Today, Frame has a great team of people with 15 full time back-office staff as well as a crew of high calibre instructors. “People are quitting their jobs in banks in the city to come and work for a company like Frame, which is great,” enthuses Black.

“It’s so different today, the industry is much more professional now. Before we could blag a lot of things but now people have much higher standards and it’s a much slicker environment. There are a lot of levels you have to reach in building control and developers want to see more, so a lot of money is required.”

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“With social media you can get carried away with thinking people are doing well, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how well they’re doing as a business.”

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This time around with the Kings Cross studio the pair secured private investment and even worked with a PR agency in the run up to the launch, which was new terrain for the duo who had previously ploughed their own money back into the business and kept everything in-house to retain their strong voice.

“Our brand is really important to us, when we launched we launched as a brand and we’ve always tried to stay true to that. We’ve had a bit of a refresh this time around and updated everything like the branded cups and website. We’re trying to be a bit more slick across all the studios now that we have a bit more budget, but our brand is still very much our tone of voice.

Fitness studio Frame has been riding the wave since it was, well, more of a ripple.
Image: Frame

“I write everything and it’s how I would talk to my friends. It’s conversational and approachable but also aspirational and fashionable. We’ve always had a clear idea of what we didn’t want to be, i.e talking about weight loss or making things competitive or negative, and because of the brand’s strength we’ve found it easy to maintain throughout our expansion. Actually, now we’ve grown up as a brand it’s much easier to have something that works across all three studios.”

And when it comes to the changing role of social media and branding within the fitness industry, Black keeps a level-headed approach. Of course it plays its role she admits of the arena that’s become so important to those within the fitness scene, many now equate a business’s success to the amount of followers it attracts on its Instagram account.

“With social media you can get carried away with thinking people are doing well, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how well they’re doing as a business. I would say that Joan and I both have business degrees and are running a business. A business that has grown year on year significantly and that to me is doing well.”

And not only have the pair managed to grow their presence physically, but their business acumen means they’ve searched for new ways to grow outside of property investment to avoid the associated financial outlays and challenges.

“E-commerce is something we’ve been wanting to do since the beginning and now we have a team that’s big enough we can. We’ve always wanted to be a lifestyle brand – it’s not just about coming and doing exercise. It’s about looking and feeling good, so if wearing good clothes is going to make you feel better about yourself when you’re working out that’s awesome.

“The plan ongoing is to produce our own ranges and really expand on that, but we definitely have plans to open more properties too.

And no matter how much the industry continues to change or grow Black is confident in Frame’s position and the role of their staff, which she acknowledges as being a key factor in their continual growth.

“Joan and I are so involved. We know our business from the inside out as we’ve done everything from an operational point of view – from working on reception to the finance side of things. I don’t think many other studios are that involved and I think that understanding will help us grow a lot bigger.

“That’s why we’ve always been involved and we still are. We’ve both had kids in the last two years but we haven’t gone off and forgotten about Frame, we’re still here late at night working every day and we hope our team can see our passion. We hope that will inspire them to want to help make the business grow too because they help create our assets and they’re awesome.”