Fitness industry attract more investment in China

Laurel joined Mintel in 2013 after five years work at Nielsen. Her areas of expertise include consumer research, product innovations and data analytics. She now focuses on identifying changing consumer behaviour, industry trends, and innovations in the leisure, travel, health and wellbeing sectors in China.

March 14th, 2022March 16th, 2022

During the COVID-19 outbreak period, consumers got used to working out at home.Smart interactive fitness equipment that allows consumers to practice at home is on the rise in the global market. This is led by Mirror by Lululemon and VAHA X, who have created mirrors that double as interactive training screens. JAXJOX is a buildable home fitness equipment provider. The core part is a touchscreen TV. Consumers can buy separate training tools (eg smart dumbbells) according to their personal training goals. Fiture is an active brand of fitness mirrors in China. Fitness brands such as Codoon (fitness app) and Lefit (gym) in China have also released smart training mirrors.

When urban Chinese consumers are surveyed how do they plan to shift their leisure priorities after COVID-19, sports and fitness activities are among the top three mentions, both in the in-home and out-of-home scenarios.

From Mintel monthly survey to track consumers’ fitness behaviours. About 20% of the consumers claim they have the habit of working out at home. Those who go to gyms (eg those who take group class) are relatively fewer. but the number has been growing very quickly in the past year, almost doubling the size.

Actually, there are a lot of business opportunities in the market, especially with the great home exercise population and their growing need for elevated home exercise experiences. That’s why we have seen the rise of so many new brands in the market over the past few years, and many of them are continuously attracting investment. 

What we think

Besides fitness apps and smart home fitness equipment such as the Mirrors, there are other white spaces waiting for brands to tap into. Consumers are embracing active lifestyles. They believe doing fitness can help improve self-confidence. Their fitness habits and spending preferences introduce opportunities in various business areas. Fitness beauty and sports nutrition are areas with great potential for product innovations and premiumisation.

For example, in overseas markets, we have seen home design brands developing creative furniture collections which can be turned into training equipment; and some beauty brands launching fragrances inspired by fitness activities such as Yoga. There are also laundry brands developing special formulas to take care of the smells generated from sweat in fitness clothes. I think these are the types of opportunity areas in the domestic market that the brands may want to look into.