‘We’ve been fighting for our lives every day’: Ritual Gym founder, following abrupt closure of Singapore branches

THE founder of home-grown boutique gym Ritual, which abruptly shut on Thursday (Feb 29), has spoken to The Business Times about his decision to voluntarily pull the plug on his business, after a critical investor backed out of a deal that would have otherwise kept it afloat.

The gym had been banking on this source of funding, said chief executive Brad Robinson, following struggles with securing investors during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Thursday afternoon, members were informed via e-mail that all four branches of Ritual in Singapore would be shut down. Cheat Day Pte Ltd, the company which owns and operates Ritual Gym, will enter provisional liquidation. 

Robinson told BT in an interview that the gym’s 35 full-time employees – including coaches and receptionists – “either have been, or will be” compensated. “Our staff and consumers are our No 1 priority. That’s why we went into voluntary liquidation to handle this as transparently as possible,” he explained. “It was just the right business decision to make at the time.”

With Singapore’s gym industry facing a slow post-Covid recovery, Ritual’s membership numbers have remained soft, he noted, without elaborating. His business has also been hit by “crippling” rents and mounting debt carried over from the pandemic.

Robinson added: “Since Covid-19, we’ve had millions in arrears to clear from landlords mostly. It’s just been tough – from our balance sheet getting turned upside down during Covid-19, to really slow response (from consumers) towards gyms.”

He declined to reveal the total sum Ritual owes its provisional creditors. BT understands these include landlords, suppliers and members with unused credits from packages.

The company has appointed Cameron Duncan and David Kim of KordaMentha as its provisional liquidators. In response to BT’s queries on Thursday night, Kim said that the team was unable to “fully quantify” the sum of Ritual’s liabilities yet, as they had been appointed only a few hours before.

Cheat Day posted a net loss of S$1.4 million for its full year ended Sep 31, 2021, according to the latest financial results retrieved by BT. It had earlier posted four consecutive years of net losses between 2017 and 2020. The company’s revenue stood at S$1.6 million for FY2021, nearly half its revenue of S$2.8 million the year before.

Robinson said that the gym has taken steps to minimise the impact of its closure on customers. For instance, as auto-billing was paused, none of Ritual’s members on fixed-term contracts with recurring monthly payments were billed for the month of March.

More than half of its members are on this monthly membership model, he noted, with the rest having bought packages that include a certain number of sessions. Those who have claims or unused sessions can reach out to the appointed provisional liquidators.

“For almost four years now, we’ve been fighting for our lives every day,” he said. “In 2020, 2021, 2022, no one would fund a gym in Singapore,” said Robinson, a Singapore-based American and former mixed martial arts competitor. “We didn’t see this coming… we were really close to turning this whole thing around.”

Ritual is the latest player in the fitness industry to shutter in Singapore. Last year, UFC Gym, the franchise of US-based Ultimate Fighting Championship, shut down, as did boutique studios Haus Athletics and Fenix Fitness – both of which owed millions of dollars to creditors. Big-box gym chain Pure also closed its Pure Fitness and Pure Yoga branches in Suntec City.

Earlier warning signs

Established in 2013, Ritual Gym was one of the earlier entrants into the emerging high-intensity interval training (HIIT) space in Singapore’s fitness industry. The studio was known for its signature 20-minute HIIT workouts, with classes offered every 30 minutes throughout the day.

Ritual also has franchisees in Brazil, Spain and China. These are not affected and will continue operating independently of the company’s Singapore operations, noted Robinson. The gym previously had franchisees in the United States, Switzerland and South Africa, but these shuttered for good during the pandemic.

While the company has been placed into provisional liquidation, it said in its e-mail to members that it is also “exploring ways to get the Ritual experience back up and running as soon as possible”. Asked by BT to elaborate, Robinson would only say: “I will get Ritual back up and running in some capacity at some point. We just need to let the dust settle first.”

There were earlier warning signs, however, that not all was well.

In May 2023, Ritual shut its flagship Raffles Place outlet as it had the weakest revenue performance among its branches, with office crowds yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Its other branches were in East Coast, Tiong Bahru, Holland Village and Orchard Road.

Members whom BT spoke to noted that Ritual had been dangling heavy promotion offers in recent months. This included 14-day unlimited access trials for as low as S$18, as well as discounted packages.

A member of Ritual’s East Coast branch, who declined to be named, said that the gym’s weekday daytime slots were usually empty. “Sometimes I’m the only one attending the class,” added the 35-year-old, who paid S$1,256 for a package of 50 sessions late last year. She still has 39 unclaimed sessions.