1. Tell us about 5% fitness, its history and how it come about.
I started with a very small gym in San Chaung. Within a short time, the customers built up and I realized I needed to expand to a bigger place. That’s how I set up the Dagon Centre II venue.
2. How do you get into Body Building in the first place?
I started doing BB when I was around 13 years old out of interest. Prior to that, I was a in Myanmar national swimming team. So I was quite into sport since young. When I graduated from University of Economics, I started doing my own business and has not joined any BB competition. I got back into more serious mode of BB, joined competitions and decided to set up the gym since the business side of things that I was doing no longer kept me that busy. That was three four years ago.
3. How common is BB as a form of sports in MM?
There are gyms almost everywhere across the country. People now know that going to gym and exercising is good for health. So its pretty well known now-a-days.
4. How do you attract customers?
I try to run the gyms professionally. Hence, I got a steady clientele of artists and celebrities. Normally once they got a movie contract, they would join a 3 – 6 months program with me to shape up. I myself is into BB and competitions and I studied the transformation of the body in detail through certain repetitive actions and exercises. Clients knew that and they come because of that.
5. What is your target market segment? Describe your typical customer.
As mentioned above, most of my regular customers are from artists (actor, actresses, models) and celebrities segment. I also got support from people who has known me since childhood times.
6. How is the competition scene in the gym business?
I guess every gym has its own clientele. As long as you have commitment to serve your customers well, I am sure everyone can survive in the market.
7. How do you stand out among the crowd?
Being professional and being responsible for customers who have chosen to come to you.
8. How has the COVID and the change of government affected your business so far?
The baseline is that we cannot have crowds during COVID times. So every single session, we are limited to having four to five customers only. Compared to pre-COVID times, the number of customers has gone down. Obviously, we all have to struggle to survive, while following COVID preventative measures at the same time. Compared to 2019, the business has gone down quite a fair bit.
9. What are your future plans?
My dream has always been to open a chain of 10 – 20 gyms all over the country.
10. What would made people come back to the gyms?
I don’t know about other gyms, but for mine, first is the quality of the trainers. The trainers themselves join the competition and they won prizes. Next is the customer care. We provide full customer care for all our clients.
11. What is the thing that you are most proud of in your business?
The fact that customers keep on coming back to us. They have many places to go. But because of our service, they choose to come back to us.
