Althea’s new Ottawa facility, with nine boutique studios all housed in one luxury gym, could change the face of Canada’s fitness landscape.
Althea Active has bold plans to take over Canada’s premium fitness market. It includes boutique studios, economies of scale, and a huge new club in Ottawa.
Scheduled to open later this year, Althea Ottawa will feature 129,000 square feet of top-of-the-line facilities and amenities, including a boutique fitness studio, pickleball court, aquatic center, recovery lounge, women-only fitness suite, childcare services, and sports performance training. will be provided. center.
“This is going to change the way people look at premium fitness and wellness,” Altea Active CEO Jeff York tells Athletech News. “This will be the best facility in Canada.”
Rendering of the upcoming Altea Ottawa facility (Credit: Altea Active)
Founded by fitness industry veterans David Wu and Michael Nolan, Althea Active currently operates three locations in Winnipeg, Toronto and Vancouver, with locations ranging from 43,000 square feet to 89,000 square feet. Masu.
The soon-to-open facility in Ottawa will be Althea’s largest club to date. This could also serve as a model for the brand’s future expansion plans.
Boutique fitness like you’ve never seen before
Althea Ottawa offers all the familiar amenities of a large, upscale gym, but its calling card is boutique-style group fitness. The Ottawa facility will be home to nine state-of-the-art boutique fitness studios, including everything from innovative Pilates to hot yoga to LF3, small group functional strength training with Althea.
The idea is to “create multiple boutique experiences within a large gym environment,” which should save consumers money in the long run, York said.
Yorke has previously built Canadian grocery brand Farm Boy into a household name by offering lower prices than upscale supermarket chains such as Whole Foods, but he is concerned about the inefficiencies of North America’s boutique fitness market. , so they think there’s a similar opportunity to fix a problem that they think is too expensive.
According to data from StudioGrowth, the average price for a boutique fitness class is between $35 and $50 USD ($49 and $69 Canadian). Altea Ottawa memberships start at $150 CAD per month. This means members only need to take one class per week at Altea, saving them money compared to attending multiple classes per month at different studios.
“The boutique experience should exist, but it should exist in a big box. That way you can have multiple boutiques in a big box and provide real value to your customers.” , said York, who became Altea’s CEO earlier this year after originally investing in the company. brand.
Boutique studio at Altea in Vancouver (Credit: Altea Active)
Additionally, Altea members can also enjoy all the benefits of a traditional upscale gym once they finish their yoga, cycling, Pilates, or HIIT classes.
“People get value by using the studio four times a month, and then they get everything on top of that,” York says. “You go to a yoga class, you go to a Pilates class, you do some fitness, and then you go into a steam room or a sauna. It’s in addition to the classes, you get all the classes, you get everything else. Masu.”
But when it comes to quality, can big-box gyms compete with highly specialized boutique fitness studios? York believes so.
“Our cycle studio will be the best cycle studio I’ve ever seen in Canada,” he says, echoing similar sentiments about Altea’s hot yoga studio and other offerings.
“We are putting money into our facilities to wow our customers,” he added.
Cycling Studio at Liberty Village in Altea, Toronto (Credit: Altea Active)
Expanding across Canada
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If Yorke’s large-scale boutique fitness hypothesis proves out, Althea could change the face of Canada’s luxury fitness world.
“In Canada, we can easily open 50 locations,” York said, adding that he would not rule out Althea expanding in the U.S. in the future.
But for now, Althea is focused on Canada, a market that York believes is underserved by luxury fitness brands.
Lifetime has three stores in Toronto, but no other locations in the Great White North. Equinox, on the other hand, has two clubs in Toronto and one in Vancouver. Neither brand has a presence in Canada’s hidden capital, Ottawa, which York sees as a gateway to the broader Canadian market.
“Ottawa is the best test market in Canada for any product,” he says. “If it works in Ottawa, it will work everywhere, because we have a stable middle-income customer who wants a premium experience but doesn’t want to pay a higher price.”
Lifting platform at Altea’s Liberty Village, Toronto location (Credit: Altea Active)
If the Ottawa test goes well, Althea sees a huge opportunity to expand its luxury large-format gym concept to cities across Canada, taking advantage of real estate vacant lots abandoned by shuttered retailers and home improvement stores. There is.
Following this blueprint, Althea plans to open its fifth store, a luxury spin-off concept called Avant by Althea, in an old Nordstrom Rack store in Toronto’s Yorkville neighborhood early next year.
“Let’s beat Canada first and then show everyone how to do it,” York says of his expansion philosophy. “And fitness will travel. Brands will travel.”
