About East Durham Fitness

East Durham Fitness is a local gym founded in 2015. The gym has a fantastic reputation as one of the fastest growing, unique fitness facilities in the North East.

Aim

East Durham Fitness were looking to identify their skills gaps and areas for improvement. They were also planning to grow their business and extend their premises as well as their offer.

Actions

North East Ambition met with the business owners of East Durham Fitness to develop a Training Plan. This was a great opportunity to assess their areas of business and current operations and identify areas for improvement. The purpose was to highlight any skills gaps in their business and how they could get the most out of the support offered by the programme. Business owners, Lauren and Steven, shared their plans for growth such as potentially moving premises or staying and extending their premises for their gym members. Completing a Training Plan gave Lauren and Steven insight into their business and the support that is available for small to medium businesses in the North East.

Impact

Lauren and Steven were particularly interested in the development of their staff and maintaining their CPD. It was identified that all stafff would benefit from First Aid Training, whilst Lauren herself also expressed interest in Mental Health Training. Lauren and Steven are currently covering many roles within the business such as marketing, HR, sales, IT and Admin. They were signposted to a relevant consultancy where they can outsource Digital Marketing. The business was looking for advice about available grants and funding in line with their expansion plans and were referred to the North East LEP to access appropriate funding. Lauren and Steven have been able to find out about the range of business support initiatives in the region as well as bring new people and introduce new income streams to secure their position amongst new competitors arriving in the area.

“The support we received by Lauren has been incredible. I am so grateful that she was able to point us in the direction of business support that we were able to access. If it wasn’t for Lauren’s advice and support we would never have known about the funding options and support available. A number of competitor businesses have recently opened up which was very threatening to our small business. The support received allowed us to develop different parts of the business to bring in new members and income streams. We wouldn’t be running today if it wasn’t for the invaluable support received from Lauren.”