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Former Hong Kong rugby star Ricky Cheuk to run new fitness chain in vacated California Fitness premises
Local consortium obtained significant rent discounts on seven premises including one in Hung Hom, which is set to open next month
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A newly established gym chain has quietly rented seven premises previously occupied by the shuttered California Fitness, with the first to open in Hung Hom next month.
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Goji Studios, owned by a local consortium led by financial services firm Opus, was offered significant rent discounts after the seven prime locations had been left vacant for 10 months, the Post has learned.
Unlike California Fitness, whose members paid multiple years of membership fees in advance, Goji charges on a monthly basis to reassure customers who were left in limbo by the former chain’s sudden collapse.
About 64,000 members and 700 employees were hit last July as the operator of California Fitness, mYoga and Leap closed all its 12 outlets across the city amid unpaid debts amounting to more than HK$100 million. The gym chain had earlier been criticised by the Consumer Council for using intimidatory and misleading sales practices.
“We are not California Fitness,” Ricky Cheuk Ming-yin, chief operating officer of Goji Studios told the Post in an email.
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