What is the most undignified goodbye in 2024?
It was a boutique gym that suddenly closed down, causing countless middle-class people in the north to fall into the pain of "cliff-like breakup".
On the evening of April 30, the boutique gym SPACE issued a "Notice" to members and property owners, announcing:
All stores in Beijing and Shanghai will cease operations from May 1.
A few hours ago, SPACE's offline gym was still holding classes normally;
A few hours later, he was suddenly notified that Happy Hometown had closed down overnight.
At this point, SPACE has a clear character on the Internet - a boutique scumbag:
During the marriage, he ran away with money overnight, leaving only an electronic breakup letter.
Xiaohongshu user @ Universe Correspondence Bureau
However, the strange thing is that in the past, when the gym suddenly ran away, users would always crusade against the whole network.
But this time, the middle-class who were broken up were unusual, and on the Internet, they were all sorry.
One of the most popular and highly praised comments was:
"The love and time of those years were paid by mistake after all."
I'm curious, when people reach middle age, will they still fall out of love?
SPACE runs away, and the middle-class girl falls out of love
The farewell of the middle class to SPACE is definitely the most sincere love letter in 2024.
is so sincere that it makes people have the illusion of returning to "the carriage and horse are slow, and there is only enough to love one person in a lifetime".
"Leave a page and never see it again";
"It seems that he was cheated of money by a scumbag, and he can't get out";
"Do all good beginnings end in an undignified way?"
In the middle class, the collapse of SPACE caused them to lose their "happy hometown":
"Heartache and emptiness, what we sigh about is not the school bag, but the irreplaceable happiness......"
If there were no media and self-media interviews, just looking at the posts made by the middle class on social media, people would not have imagined how bad the plot of SPACE is.
In an interview with the official account "Lazy Bear Sports", as of the day SPACE announced its closure, some members still had more than 10,000 yuan of class bags left to finish.
Nearly 800 people in the rights protection group organized by the members reported the amount of losses. As little as a few thousand yuan, as much as 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, according to the rough estimate of "Lazy Bear Sports", the total amount of unsold courses exceeds 4.4 million yuan.
A member received a notice of class cancellation on the 30th, and I thought it was a regular cancellation due to insufficient reservations, but I didn't expect it to be a precursor to a complete breakup.
Soon, the mini program for making an appointment couldn't find any courses, and the phone number of the store couldn't get through.
"It wasn't until the morning of the 1st that I saw the teacher in the group informing me that I could go to Taikoo Hui Property to register and defend my rights."
Some coaches reported that they could not take out their personal belongings;
There are also some students whose clothes and shoes are still locked in the store.
The closure notice of the SPACE Beijing Guomao store was even posted in the China World Mall.
But just a day ago, SPACE was an iconic gym in high-end office buildings and business districts in Beijing and Shanghai.
The loss of five-figure fees, a large group of members who suffered losses, and 4.4 million yuan of unsold classes.
If other chain brands go bankrupt hand in hand, most of the user reactions are to defend their rights, call the police, and run on social platforms to complain.
And the sadness of this group of SPACERS does not seem to come from the loss of money, but more from the reluctance to leave the original community, and the heartbreak of not being able to find a replacement.
Some users even went to Dianping to give it a five-star review after knowing that SPACE had collapsed, as a response to these years:
"All I can think of now is beauty and gratitude......"
How mixed are the emotions of the middle class towards SPACE?
There is not only love for the past time, but also resentment for the "cliff-like breakup".
But love is greater than resentment.
LIKE A GRAND CLIFF-LIKE BREAKUP, SPACERS WILL MOST LIKELY TRY TO MEET NEWCOMERS, BUT THEY STILL FEEL THAT SCUMBAGS ARE BETTER.
Xiaohongshu user @Yici
When a gym closes, why do consumers feel more uncomfortable than investors?
And, why are all women speaking out?
SPACE, by what sniping middle-class girls?
In the memories of the members, there is a place where SPACE creates a typical middle-class ideal lifestyle——
SPACE is always located in the high-end business district of the city center, and favors the top floor of the mall.
The decoration prefers the setting of large floor-to-ceiling windows with a wide view.
Each venue is designed by a foreign art technology company, and the lighting, music, and even the smell of the gym are carefully designed.
洗浴区提供干净的毛巾、香喷喷的洗发水沐浴露,lululemon的瑜伽垫。
Previously, customers were also provided with dirty laundry bags to pack their workout clothes in before taking a shower. Although it is a giveaway, the quality is so good that people can use it again and again.
Every detail here is hidden in the bit, holding the heart of the middle class.
In terms of site selection, each SPACE venue has large windows with excellent light, and the venues have been designed by foreign art companies.
It's hard not to take a selfie in the mirror when you come to the gym – but almost everyone who comes to SPACE to exercise also has a selfie with a faint view of the bustling CBD skyscrapers through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Because the light is good, it seems that my skin is very translucent, with a little bit of redness from just exercising."
It also has ulterior motives in the design of the curriculum.
Unlike most gyms on the market that focus on machine exercise, the equipment in SPACE Gym is almost exclusively bicycles, and group classes are mainly focused on yoga, ballet and dance.
Not only does it not focus on strength training, but it also uses music as a selling point to play the business card of "sports socialization".
Such a two-way screening makes the rate of straight men in the SPACE gym very low.
For female users, this greatly reduces the probability of being "daddy everywhere" in the gym, and instead has more space to write women's stories.
In the stories of SPACE members collected by Xiaohongshu blogger @Universe Letters, some netizens have made like-minded friends in SPACE.
They "made appointments to go shopping together and snapped up Lululemon together."
Even if you are in love, you choose to go to SPACE to talk.
Xiaohongshu user @ Universe Correspondence Bureau
Some people regret it in the "breakup letter":
"During class, the sisters flew up on bicycles, and after class, the rest area sounded the sound of various foreign language conference phones, so I couldn't bear to let go of this group of excellent young ladies and sisters."
On the other hand, SPACE fitness trainers are more like music performers and community leaders than traditional trainers.
SPACE has a dedicated music curation department, which provides music materials to the coaches, and the addition of music makes it easy for members who take fitness classes to be emotionally aroused and feel happy.
What's more, the resumes of these coaches are also rolled up -
Some are brand ambassadors of lululemon, some are brand friends of Groow and ELECTRO, and there are many KOLs with tens of thousands of fans of Xiao's book.
SPACE has teachers of different nationalities, and some classes are even taught in English.
Having a fitness trainer is the same as having a Lululemon brand ambassador fitness trainer, but the essence is different.
Especially for the middle class who are looking for quality of life.
Originally, fitness is the cocoon of self-shaping, self-identification, and self-promotion, and sweating in such an environment will give everyone an illusion of life:
Exercising here really makes me look better.
After all, from the moment he stepped into Chinese mainland, SPACE began to establish its own rich and handsome personality.
In 2016, when LuluLemon did not have a formal retail store in Chinese mainland, SPACE opened in Beijing's Sanlitun North District, covering an area of 900 square meters.
On the day the store opened, it played with the celebrity effect.
Celebrities including Taylor Swift and Jessica Alba's personal trainers were invited to help;
Zheng Kai, Ji Ke Junyi and other stars came forward to stand on the platform, and Wu Yanzu was also one of the investors in this gym.
When others were still trying to gain popularity, SPACER was already a descendant of Wu Yanzu's disciples, do you say there is a row of faces.
More than a year after the opening of the first store, it quickly expanded to 6 stores in Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei, and more than 10 stores at its peak.
In 2018, it also received a Series B financing of 100 million yuan led by Alibaba Fund.
Backed by capital, SPACE once became a "rich second generation" in the true sense.
What makes the middle class even more excited is that the almost "perfect" SPACE also has a perfect price.
SPACE is positioned as a mid-to-high-end fitness, and the consumer target is mostly middle-income people between the ages of 25 and 45. Most courses are 45 minutes to 1 hour, and the cost of a single lesson is 100-288 yuan, and the monthly payment model is the mainstay.
If you apply for the highest-end monthly payment card, you can get 59 yuan per class.
Compared with the unit price of 80-100 yuan for the super orangutan group class, although SPACE is positioned in the middle and high-end, it is not "unattainable".
On the contrary, it is a cost-effective choice.
You must know that even Leke, which is nicknamed "Poor Ghost Gym" by migrant workers, costs 79 yuan for a group class alone.
Although you can make an appointment for free if you open a membership, the monthly membership fee is generally about 299 yuan.
Under the backdrop of its peers, SPACE at its peak broke out of the encirclement with its comprehensive strength, and was called the ceiling of group classes by the middle class.
Someone once said that the secret of the middle class is to exchange some small money for a good feeling that is not enough for outsiders.
In this respect, the acceptable price, coupled with the services available, is for the middle class who are immersed in the grief of a "cliff-like breakup":
After SPACE ran away, the lifestyle it created was cut off.
So after the SPACE bucket ran away, the victim middle class had to sigh:
SPACE, there is no substitution.
The collapse of boutique gyms
Is it the collapse of the middle-class lifestyle?
The relationship between the middle class and SPACE is not only the relationship between dumping and being dumped, but also the sigh of "seeing him rise from a tall building and seeing his building collapse".
Dirty clothes bags are gradually disappearing, lockers that have been broken for a long time in some stores, broken bicycles with screens that don't light up...... Everything is slowly sliding into some abyss.
If you look at it from a macro perspective, the situation is actually not good for a long time:
Starting from 2022, the stores of Shanghai Ganghui Henglong Store, Hangzhou Hubin Yintai Store, and Shanghai Xintiandi will be closed one after another.
However, at that time, there were many people who thought that it was just a matter of a single store, and "I hope that SPACE will open a new store".
Until SPACE ran away this time, people in the fitness-related industry woke up like a dream: "Even SPACE has closed down?" ”
After all, in the middle-class fitness track, SPACE used to be a leader in the industry.
In the past few years, members have had to scramble to book classes at SPACE, and there are even dozens of people waiting in line behind popular courses.
It has extremely high user stickiness and high-end brand recognition, firmly occupying the ecological niche of the middle class.
The high land rent in the city center, the copyright cost of buying group music, the renovation of the gym, and the quality toiletries......
In all the details to attract the middle class, money needs to be carved.
These much-talked about details are also its life-threatening talismans.
In the past 8 years, the 100 million invested by Ali has long been burned out, and the "rich second generation" of SPACE, has become tighter and tighter.
In the past few years, in order to improve the online course industry chain, Space has acquired home fitness company My shape (a brand that mainly promotes AI smart personal trainer families, including Ai fitness TVs and fitness mirrors), but it has not brought more effective return on investment for its brand.
Although the revenue of SPACE stores is not low, it is obviously unable to fill the holes burned in the past.
The identity of the rich second generation has long begun to become invalid, but the users who are spoiled cannot become new mothers in an instant.
Before closing, SPACE tried to "save itself" several times:
Launched more diversified membership cards, closed some strategic stores to reduce operating costs, cross-border cooperation with sports brands such as lululemon, invited yoga masters to hold classes, and established an online fitness section.
Even a few days before the closure, an unprecedented annual pass discount campaign was launched.
However, these efforts had little effect, and eventually SPACE came to an end.
Prior to this, domestic mid-to-high-end yoga and fitness stores such as Fanyin and One Trillion Wade had experienced a store closure turmoil.
The data for the industry as a whole is also not encouraging. According to the 2023 China Fitness and Healthy Lifestyle Industry Report, more than 20% of gym closures in China will occur in 2023.
The gym industry is already in a cold winter, and boutique gyms are still trying to maintain rich and handsome personalities;
Other gyms that don't have the "middle-class baggage" have long been flexible to find other ways.
The more affordable Leke Gym has opened a small gym between 200 and 300 square meters, with low rent and low burden.
It has implemented a monthly membership card and a 24-hour gym to attract workers and students who have more fragmented time, less money and are unstable.
It's not that SPACE doesn't know about these tricks, it's just that it can't.
Behind every bit of quality that attracts the middle class, it needs a huge amount of money to decorate the façade.
When money is stretched, a man will become a scumbag in seconds.
Middle-class life, in the final analysis, is still a business.
The business failed, leaving the middle class who fell out of love overnight to miss the happy times in the past 8 years.
While the breakup essay they wrote detailed the various benefits of exercise to themselves, they also fell into deep confusion:
Is it some kind of boutique gym that has closed down?
Or is your own lifestyle collapsing?