Meet the football friends duo taking their Scottish fitness training firm global with Dubai expansion

It has become a priority for millions of people post-pandemic, amid the push for a healthier lifestyle. Now, a Glasgow-founded venture that provides training courses for personal fitness instructors is limbering up for expansion in the UK, and beyond, after closing in on £3 million in annual revenues.

The Fitness Group was launched in 2018 by Steven Dick and Scott Agnew who met playing football at school and have remained friends ever since. The pair began the bootstrapped business while Agnew was playing football for Stranraer FC, as an attacking midfielder. Dick, meanwhile, was running Citypark Fitness in Glasgow - a gym that he had opened with his childhood friend in 2015. Dick graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University with a BA in accounting and business management, before deciding to pursue his ambition to become a qualified personal trainer.

Having recognised a gap in the market to enhance the standards of education of future personal trainers across the UK, and potentially overseas, Agnew and Dick took the plunge six years ago with the creation of The Fitness Group. After launching the venture with little in the way of savings or backing, they now offer courses globally through an online platform, as well as in-person courses across the UK.

The Fitness Group was launched in 2018 by Steven Dick and Scott Agnew who met playing football at school and have remained friends ever since.

The business aims to equip aspiring personal trainers with a “robust foundation” encompassing health, nutrition, fitness, pre- and post-natal.

Agnew says the Covid pandemic in 2020 acted as a catalyst for expansion, pushing the fledgling business to look globally and focus on the online learning platform and student support. While other training providers stopped operating to “wait on government direction”, The Fitness Group carried on and ramped up its advertising spend ten-fold.

“We managed to pivot from in-person to online really quickly,” reflects Agnew. “At that time we had several courses running at different locations in the UK. When we went into lockdown we quickly got a robust online platform built which turned out to be a good thing for us.

“I also think that people are a lot more health conscious now than they were before the pandemic. But we still speak about the people who are fitter as the minority, when we need to try and reach the majority - get them into good, healthy habits.”

Scott Agnew providing some hands-on personal fitness training.

Agnew was speaking after returning from Dubai, where the firm is looking to grab a slice of a rapidly-growing Middle Eastern market, leaving his business partner on an extended visit to finalise some of the financial and regulatory details.

“We have built up the business in the UK over the last few years and in the past couple of months we have really put the foot down,” notes Agnew. “We see a gap in the market with Dubai. There are providers that do what we do there but I don’t think they are of the same scale or offer the same quality. We are trying to raise the standards of the industry over there.

“Dubai will be very much face to face training but we will still use the same qualifying body which is internationally recognised.”

The business has also gained approval to operate in Europe, where it aims to establish a number of partnerships and build on the success of the UK model. “We already have a tutor living in Romania who was someone who worked for us in Glasgow and has done a soft launch there. He has done a lot of online work but he is also great face to face,” adds the co-founder and director.

Consistent year-on-year growth has seen the fitness training group rack up some £1.3m in turnover. It is now on track to generate as much as £3m in revenue for the coming financial year following its current growth spurt. That expansion has also led to the need for additional bodies with the business identifying five or six key roles that need to be added by February including new areas of marketing.

“We are up to 15 members of staff and will have about 20 early in the new year,” says Agnew. “There is a lot of investment going in just now and I have a good feeling about it all. We have always been self funded but we are trying to go at a fair speed and investment is something that we might have to look at.

“It’s a competitive market for sure,” he concedes. “Our USP is our staff. They are full-time members which is a bit out of the ordinary within this industry where people tend to use consultants.

“I do believe that within the UK we can certainly double in size. Dubai is a bit of an unknown but we have some great partnerships and I’m really excited about that side of the business.”

Agnew has mixed views on the recent UK Budget, which saw Chancellor Rachel Reeves announce a £25 billion raid on employers’ national insurance (NI) contributions, with the rate rising by 1.2 percentage points to 15 per cent from next April, and with payments starting when an employee earns £5,000, down from the current £9,100. There were also hikes in the national living wage and minimum wage.

“NI will have an impact on our payroll, especially during a period of planned growth but there’s not a huge amount we can do,” says Agnew. “On the positive side, the increase in tax thresholds and the increase in the minimum wage could mean people will have more disposable income and spend it on things like fitness.”

- Steven Dick and Scott Agnew are co-founders of Glasgow-born business The Fitness Group, now one of the UK’s fastest-growing providers of personal trainer courses