Putting People First

Eric Schreimann, CEO, Club Fitness

Eric Schreimann took an unconventional path to his current role as CEO of Club Fitness, a St. Louis-area brand with 20 facilities in Illinois and Missouri. A former minor league baseball player for seven years in the Philadelphia Phillies system, Schreimann left the diamond behind to pursue a career in commercial banking in his hometown of St. Louis. There, he developed a close working relationship with John Crocker, the founder and owner of Club Fitness. Crocker had started Club Fitness in 1983, opening a single location in Florissant, Missouri.

In 2015, Crocker began making plans to retire and asked Schreimann to help with the transition. By the end of 2015, Crocker sold the company to an ESOP trust and Club Fitness became a 100% employee-owned company. In 2019, Schreimann became CEO, just before the worldwide pandemic. Under his leadership, Club Fitness has grown to a company with more than 700 employees who serve the 135,000-plus members.

It’s partly due to his experience during the pandemic that Schreimann became deeply involved with advocacy. He currently serves as vice chair of the National Health & Fitness Advisory (NHFA) council and is an active participant in many HFA advocacy events. Schreimann also maintains close ties to regional political leaders.

Schreimann has established Club Fitness as community leaders. For more on that, see below.

To learn more about Club Fitness, visit clubfitness.us.

CBI: You began your career in the finance sector. How did you become part of the fitness industry?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: I’ve been involved in fitness my entire life. Prior to my career in finance, I played minor league baseball for seven years. Staying fit was part of my entire life growing up. When I left baseball, I entered commercial banking. I was the banker assigned to Club Fitness and formed a close relationship with John Crocker, the founder and owner of Club Fitness. He was looking to retire, and I brought up the option of selling his company as an ESOP [Employee Stock Ownership Plan]. He needed help getting the company prepared, so I came on board in 2015 in the role of CFO to help with the transaction.

At the end of December 2015, he sold the company to an ESOP trust, and we became a 100% employee-owned company. From there, he stepped down, and I brought in a new leadership team, and the company has really evolved over the last nine years.

CBI: How has the ESOP worked out?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: We’re the only employee-owned health club that I’m aware of in the country, and so our employees also benefit from the success of the company. When the company is more successful, our share price increases, and the employees are given shares of stock every year. So, every year they can say that they are making an investment in their future with their hard work at Club Fitness. It’s very rewarding to give out stock certificates every year to our employee-owners.

CBI: Would you call Club Fitness an HVLP 2.0 model?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: I wouldn’t call it HVLP. We’re trying to go more upstream and get away from the HVLP model. The facilities that we build now are fairly large: 45,000 to 52,000 square feet. In addition to full cardio and weight rooms, we have studios within our clubs. We have a specialized stretch and recovery studio, with compression therapy, state-of-the-art stretching equipment from Technogym, and CryoLounge and HydroMassage units from WellnessSpace. We have other studios, including a women-only studio for those who don’t feel comfortable on the main floor and want a private, quiet area.

CBI: Is it all the same price point or are there tiers?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: Our typical price point is $39, which gives you 24-hour access to all our clubs, and if you want to use the stretch and recovery studio, it’s $29 in addition to that. Personal training is a separate price point as well, so the value is substantial. We have virtual tours for all of our clubs to let people know all that we have to offer. We don’t market based on price point— we market on the experience you’ll receive in our club.

We believe the value is unbelievable.

CBI: How do you handle sales?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: We have no salespeople. There’s no commission. A member will come in, sign a waiver, then we give them a nice tour. We talk about the features, the benefits, the membership tiers, and then we set them up at a kiosk. The member at that point decides what is the right membership for them. We don’t ask for referrals. We don’t make phone calls. It’s the experience that we want to provide to our members. Our hope is that they tell their friends what an awesome experience it was signing up. It’s a completely different approach and philosophy.

CBI: How long have you been doing things that way?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: We haven’t had salespeople for four years, and in 2022, we got rid of all the sales desks and installed self-service kiosks. We alsogive members the option to have a contract or no contract. If they want to cancel, we make it easy for a member to cancel. We don’t want to lock them down. If it's not the right fit, it's not the right fit, and that's okay.

CBI: You're a big supporter of the HFA’s advocacy mission, as well as being the vice chair of the National Health and Fitness Alliance (NHFA). Tell me why advocacy is so important to you?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: Our elected officials don’t know what they don’t know, so it’s very important to educate them about our industry. We’re here to help people become healthier. Our elected officials need to fully understand the value that we bring to their constituents and the communities that we serve as a whole.

CBI: If you were to encourage more operators to get involved in advocacy, what would be your message?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: There’s a massive amount of commonality between what we do as health club operators and what our elected officials do. We are both stewards in the communities that we serve, so we both have a vested interest in serving the public in the best possible way that we can. If you can collaborate with your elected officials, it’s a win-win. And it’s a win for the constituents as well.

Having a relationship with elected officials works both ways. Not only do you educate them about the industry, but they provide insight into how they work. You learn to speak the same language.

If there’s an opportunity to bring in an elected official and give them a tour of your club, they love it. It gives them an opportunity to share what they’re doing in the community for their constituents, whether it’s supporting small business or helping people live a healthy life.

CBI: Do you think that we’re getting to the place where the health and fitness industry is recognized as part of the healthcare continuum?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: I think we’re in the beginning stages. It’s important as gym operators that we promote the overall health and wellness aspects of fitness. It’s not just about treadmills and barbells anymore. It’s also about recovery, eating healthy, having an overall healthy body. It’s also important to talk about the benefits that exercise can provide for mental health. I think we’ve made strides, but we need to continue to get the word out and educate the public and our local elected officials about how important exercise is for everyday people.

CBI: Have you been able to engage local healthcare practitioners?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: Yes, 100%. We’re in the process of building out a health and wellness page on our website. We work closely with some doctors who prescribe GLP-1 medications. These patients are then encouraged to work with a personal trainer at Club Fitness to learn how to exercise effectively.

Once the medication stops, you have to continue to live a healthy lifestyle, so we give them the tools to make that sustainable.

We’ve had a lot of success with some gastric bypass surgeons in St. Louis as well. Gastric bypass patients also need to learn how to exercise and continue to live a healthy lifestyle. We’ve partnered with hormone therapy clinics to promote the message about the importance of exercise.

We’ve put a full-court press on partnering with experts who provide other services for healthy lifestyles. We have a good relationship with Metabolic Meals here in St. Louis, who provide healthy, grab-and-go meal options so our members have access to nutritional food. We’ve also worked with nutrition supplement companies as well. We all share the same consumers, the same membership base, if you will, so it makes a lot of sense to collaborate with doctors and other healthcare providers.

CBI: Do you find most physicians receptive to your message?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: Some are very receptive, and some are not. Some doctors understand that exercise is preventative care, but others are still stuck in the past. We will continue to try to increase the number of partnerships with physicians in the St. Louis community, but you have to earn their trust, so they feel comfortable referring patients to us. We have personal trainers that understand what they’re doing. I have faith and confidence in them. Those in the medical field need to have that level of comfort and confidence that their client is going to a health club that takes care of them.

CBI: You were recently named to the board of the Disabled Athlete Sports Association (DASA), and one of your members competed at the 2024 Paralympics. How did you get involved with increasing access for the disabled?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: We had a member who was in a wheelchair, and he sent me a LinkedIn message saying, "I'm in a wheelchair. I see you doing these things with DASA, but there’s not a lot of equipment at Club Fitness to help me with my cardiovascular health, because I can't use my legs."

So, I worked with this member to find upright rowers and other equipment that use upper-body movement for cardiovascular purposes. We bought some of these machines and put them in all of our clubs.

We’re always seeking feedback from either our employees or our members to see what we’re doing well and what we can improve upon and use that information to improve our business model and overall operations.

CBI: How do you create a community presence with your clubs?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: This connection with the community comes from the bottom up, from employee engagement and feedback, and also from our members. We’re very involved in the community. We just renovated the weight room at an inner-city high school [Jennings Senior High and College Prep Academy] after I visited the school to donate equipment. I saw that their facilities were dilapidated, so I called other business owners in the St. Louis area to come together and renovate their weight room. It was awesome. We just had the ribbon cutting a few weeks ago.

We also just rolled out the PRIME program for our first responders. Under this program, police officers and firefighters enrolled in the academy can work out at any Club Fitness location for free.

CBI: What has been the response from the community?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: To go to the high school where these kids now have this amazing weight room is unbelievably rewarding. It feels great. We also started a scholarship program for the school, where we award two seniors $5,000 scholarships.

The community is very appreciative. To me, it’s important that we not just provide great facilities for exercise but go beyond our four walls to engage with the communities where our health clubs are located. We try to give back to the community as much as we can.

CBI: Other people who enter the fitness industry from the financial sector get hooked on seeing people improve their lives. Has that been your experience?

ERIC SCHREIMANN: Oh, 100%. Believe it or not, there are a lot ofsimilarities in the banking industry and the health industry. You’re helping people achieve their dreams, whether it’s financing a house or new business construction, and it’s rewarding to see those folks succeed in their careers.

It’s the same in the fitness industry, where we improve the quality of life for our members and employees. It’s deeply rewarding.

GIVING BACK: How Club Fitness Serves Its Community

Club Fitness President and CEO Eric Schreimann has made community outreach a priority. With 20 locations in Missouri and Illinois, that’s a lot of space to cover, but Club Fitness has found several ways to give back.

Earlier this year, Schreimann enlisted several St. Louis-area business owners to support the renovation of training facilities for Jennings Senior High and College Prep Academy. The inner-city school now has a state-of-the-art weight room and celebrated its reopening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in early August (see photo). Schreimann also pledged $10,000 in scholarships to the school.

Schreimann also recently launched the PRIME program for first responders, allowing free access to Club Fitness facilities for recruits enrolled in the police and firefighting academies.

In addition, Schreimann was named to the board of directors of the Disabled Athlete Sports Association (DASA) and has made accessibility for the disabled a priority at his clubs. One member, Eric Newby, recently won his third silver medal in wheelchair rugby at the Paralympic Games in Paris.

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Club Business International. View the full digital version of the issue online.