Spotlight: Ministry does Fitness
How Ministry of Sound Group turned its former booze vault into an immersive fitness studio driven by nightclub music.
The ultimate immersive fitness experience — Ministry of Sound Group brings clubbing and exercise together.
Ministry of Sound Group is the renowned multimedia entertainment group based in London, where its flagship club has been running since 1991.
Ministry does Fitness is a purpose built functional training studio located in the club’s former hidden booze vault— about a 3-minute walk from Elephant & Castle tube. We spoke to Olivia Brafman, MdF’s Head of Business to find out more about how the venture started, what happens day to day and where they are heading.
What is MdF about and what makes it unique?
The core of MdF is a functional training studio in an immersive nightclub environment. Everything from the sound system, production, lighting, atmosphere and even our disco ball is the same you will see in a nightclub, but it is a purpose built, dedicated fitness environment.
Music is a big part of MoS heritage and totally drives the tempo of our classes. Music has a way of setting pace — different genres, different BPM will cause you to behave and move in a different way so, if the music is really fast you move faster; if the music is slower, ‘bassier’, you will tend to move slower. For example, we will put slow music in a strength class — strength is not about how many times you can do something within 30 seconds. It is about technique, performance, it is about lifting heavy. We use music to help direct what we want to happen in the class.
Our playlists are mainly curated by our instructors, but we help them and lists get vetted by Ministry of Sound — it is all music that we would advocate as a brand.
How does MdF fit in the group?
The idea was born when a new type of fitness industry emerged, about 6 or 7 years ago, where gyms started to emulate nightclubs with music at the heart of their experience.
Ministry of Sound, as a brand, has a big heritage in music and nightclub experience for almost 30 years, so that was a great opportunity to match Ministry’s core proposition and values with a new venture; keeping the brand feeling and quality but bringing a new experience to a new audience. It was the perfect moment for us to something interesting in this space.
MdF is a separate venture but it blends very nicely within the group. We use a lot of the historical playlists for classes, we use the nightclub for our big fitness events, we work with the same central creative and marketing teams to produce a lot of our content.
How does technology interacts with fitness, music and your brand?
Technology is fast becoming almost a necessity with your workout. A lot of customers use wearable fitness devices to track heart rate, resting heart rate, calories.
But, for now we don’t allow them to advertise their data live within the studio and that is purely because some people come here for escapism, they don’t want to feel like they have to compete with others in class. So, at the moment, people just track themselves but we don’t track it for them.
I think in the future we will start introducing more technology but, as it is a very personal thing, it will always be up to people to opt in or opt out — because not everyone wants to be so scientific.
We also have had the privilege to work with, and often have done the press launches for a lot of wearable fitness devices — Under Armour and JBL launched a pair of headphones that tracks heart rate in your ear; we launched the new Fitbit watch in the studio. We have been talking to Myzone, which are a big heart rate monitor.
Our instructors will generally put us in touch with people or introduce us to new things. But, a lot of what is happening at the moment in studio is them being taken into people’s homes and people wanting to pair up a great workout in a gym studio with a great workout online at home, having the convenience of both.
How do people find you?
Word of mouth. We do a lot of Instagram, Facebook, we have done flyers, we have done all of these things and when we track results, most new customers hear about us from other people.
It definitely helps to have a presence online and a strong identity, we work really hard at that so our personality comes across, but mostly it is by recommendation. So a lot of our effort goes to people having a really positive experience in the studio rather than other marketing activities.
Who are your customers? Are they club goers?
Our customer are majority women, generally late 20s/early 30s with a little bit more disposable income — we are a premium offering. They still seek and love that immersive, social fitness experience that for other groups might feel a bit crazy — working out in that environment at 6 am?
A lot of them work locally but we are getting more and more local people joining as the landscape in Elephant & Castle is changing quite drastically at the moment. Many customers are also commuting through us so, they may live south of the river but work centrally so they hop off the tube, do a work out and then go to work. We track where customers live and a lot of them live along the northern line, which is quite interesting.
But they tend to be quite a different audience from the club. It is almost like the people that go to the club, go for escapism but for ours, they get a similar kind of escapism whilst working out — it is like a different kind of brain that seeks one or the other.
What is your most popular class?
Strength is the most popular class now. A few years ago it was all about cardio and HIIT classes and burning fat — we do those classes and they are probably our second most popular.
But what is very on trend at the moment, particularly for women, is lifting and getting strong. We recently cancelled some of our other classes and introduced more strength because we have so much demand for it.
What do you expect to be the biggest business challenge in the next year?
A couple of things:
There are a lot of new studios opening so you always have to make sure you are at the top of the game in terms of the product you are putting out and the experience you are delivering. That is a healthy challenge every business has because it means you have to be brilliant at what you do.
Also, we are not on a busy high street with lots of foot fall or loads of residents around us, although we are very close to the station — so a challenge has always been how do we tell people we are here, as they don’t walk past us. Every studio’s location will always be a big factor in how busy it gets.
What is your day like?
It changes all the time. I am based in head office but today, for example, we are focusing in getting our new equipment in. Often I am working with the team, we have a team of 20 now. I do all of their rotas, programming, operational issues, ordering, stock levels.
I also look after brand partnerships (brands will approach us to curate fitness content for them) and new business opportunities or private hires.
But a big chunk of the day is spent with ‘whatever seems to happen that day’ — we open at 5:45 am, sometimes I start at 6am, sometimes at 8 or 9am, everyday changes but that makes it interesting. I generally try to get a class in each day either in the morning or evening.
How do you use Shopwave within MdF?
People can rent out our space for birthday parties, anniversaries or whatever celebration they are planning. Shopwave allows us to operate flexibly, at scale while doing really quick, easy trade. It’s very portable and easy to move around which is important for events.
It is super easy to use and it speeds up the whole process. When we have a small team working on the front desk it means they can work faster and do more. Whereas our previous system had seven steps to put something through the till, it took forever and it didn’t work for us.
Also, we have pictures of every single product on the screen, there is no need to try to find something, you recognize the label or bottle and select it. It feels like using an iPhone, the way you can transition though the different screens. It is so easy that you don’t need to sit down and spend hours training staff. It is very ‘self explanatory’!
And finally, any exciting business plans you can share with us?
Ministry of Sound has recently opened The Ministry, an incredible private members club and co working business. It is a stones’ throw from the studio so it is an amazing opportunity to expand our fitness business.
Everyone is super excited about it — it will bring a new bust of creative energy and businesses into the local area and it allows us to interact with those people, keep them fit and healthy. So a big focus for the rest of the year its going to be our alignment with that — for example, we can go into the building and run extra classes there.
Ministry does Fitness -Arches 80–81
Newington Court
London, SE1 6DD