Keep, a Chinese fitness brand, started online but with increasing focus offline recently.
Keep was founded in 2014. At that time, it defines itself as a mobile personal trainer for beginners as it provides standardized training instructions and plans to users and its primary goal was to deliver professional fitness knowledge and training plans in an understandable and simplified manner. With the rapid growth of its users, reaching 60 million in October 2016 and 100 million in August 2017 according to its website, Keep seems realized by only providing standardize online instruction that may not be sufficient to meet users’ diversified needs. Therefore, Keep tapped into offline markets.
The first offline attempt was establishing KeepLand, an offline fitness center. Now, it has 6 branches in Beijing only offering group fitness classes whose prices ranging from RMB 79 to 99, while RMB 49, promotion price for a new course. LI JinYi (李金一), the vice-president of Keep suggested that in the future, the number of offline fitness center located at key commercial areas will increase to roughly 20 in order to better serve users.
Later, it starts to create a range of smart hardware, known as KeepKit, which currently includes K1 smart treadmill, S1 smart scale, C1 Smart Exercise Bike and B1 Smart Bracelet. Keepkit will focus more on the domestic use scenarios. Its treadmill received more than 10 thousand pre-orders on the first day launched. Its features of smaller in size, easy to install and less noisy while using made it more suitable for home compared to traditional treadmills.
Notably, Keep debuted KeepLink at CSE 2019, a smart chip can digitalize and connect traditional sports machine which will enable users access Keep online courses seamlessly.
Moreover, according to Keep, it expects to launch light healthy meals in 2019 featuring being able to be heated, larger portions and delicious. If Keep expands its covering scope from “fitness” to greater health and wellbeing, there might be more room for it to grow and innovate.