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Good morning! It's Friday, February 2nd. Today’s post takes a look at SuperMonkey, a startup that’s popularized fitness culture in China with its pay-as-you-go business model.

THE FEATURE

Supermonkey: China’s Billion-Dollar Fitness Startup

As China rapidly modernizes, more Chinese consumers are finding value in personal health and fitness.

In 2016, 360M Chinese citizens were classified as “athletically engaged,” a figure on track to increase by 39% to 500M in 2025. 

At the center of this Chinese fitness boom is Supermonkey, a health club startup that achieved unicorn status in 2021 with a $1B valuation!

So, What's the Business?

Supermonkey was founded by Chinese architect and marathon enthusiast Tiao Tiao, who was fed up with traditional gyms and their annual fees. Her idea was to create a 24/7 self-service gym that operated on a pay-as-you-go basis. 

From its launch in 2014 to 2021, SuperMoneky expanded to 150+ sites that dot China’s main urban areas, like Shanghai and Beijing. Even crazier, Tiao claims that each Supermonkey location is profitable. 

In 2021, Supermonkey secured a $15.5M funding round led by SoftBank that valued the health and fitness chain at ~$1B. All that funding was directed towards opening new locations as the company struggled to meet the increase in consumer demand— a good problem to have. Before the funding round, many Supermonkey gyms had waitlists twice as large as their customer bases. 

How They Win: A Modern Gym Model for a New Age of Gym-Goers

In the previous section, we described Supermonkey as a pay-as-you-go gym, but that doesn’t fully encapsulate their unique business model.

Every Supermonkey location is set up in a way that requires no staff to be there. That means no one checking you in or cleaning the showers (which is easy since they don’t have shower facilities). It’s essentially a bare-bones operation that relies heavily on its mobile app and WeChat booking system.

Supermonkey locations vary quite a bit. They are usually designed around a specific theme, such as cycling, boxing, or their “Supermonkey mini” gyms, weight lifting facilities made from refurbished shipping containers.

However, Supermonkey’s primary revenue driver is their coaching gyms, which offer hundreds of class types. On the Supermonkey app, users can view available classes, instructors, and time slots. After paying ~$15 for a booking, consumers receive a WeChat message close to the appointment time with a one-time password to enter the building.

$15 per workout isn’t cheap, but it isn’t meant to be. Aside from having no workers other than fitness instructors, Supermonkey has state-of-the-art facilities designed specifically for Chinese white-collar workers. The fitness brand has leaned into this through its latest funding round, opening gyms on the ground floor of China’s most prominent office buildings.

Key Observation: Leveraging a Rise in Fitness Culture

Historically, the Chinese upper class has shied away from physical fitness due to a pervasive stereotype that those with strong bodies must be mentally deficient and that physical exertion is for lower-class laborers.

Supermonkey has been leading the charge in encouraging Chinese citizens to discard these views, and their motto, “Super Life, Super Me,” has become ubiquitous among white-collar workers.

Social media has also significantly contributed to the rise in Chinese fitness culture, and Supermonkey is leveraging that too. In addition to turning their top fitness trainers into quasi-influencers, each class ends with a group photo. With white-collar workers posting their post-workout pictures, Supermonkey has flipped the physical fitness stereotype on its head and turned it into a status symbol.

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