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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT. Matthew Januszek 0:10 Welcome to this week's escape your limits podcast and this week's guest is a 26 year veteran in the Asia health and fitness industry. Now the CEO of evolution wellness, created from a $500 million merger of the fitness first Asia and celebrity fitness brands. Evolution wellness is a leading player in the category with a six brand portfolio across 175 sites in six countries with 7000 employees and over 300 million in revenue. Please enjoy this week's escape your limits podcast with Mr. Simon Flint. Simon, thank you for joining us today on the escape your limits podcast and where in the world are you today Simon? Simon Flint 0:58 I'm in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which Which is my home? Matthew Januszek 1:02 How long have you been out in Kuala Lumpur? Simon Flint 1:05 Ah, you know, every time someone asked me that question I say it's it's a, it's about 10 years, but I've been saying that for a number of years. So it's probably more like 13 I think now, don't keep a track but I've been in Southeast Asia since 1994. And I was very fortunate enough to spend some time in my first job on the beautiful island of Phuket in Thailand and then move to Bangkok for some time. And then came to Kuala lumper. When we started to get a little bit bigger, which is where we we have a support office, which supports our regional operations. Matthew Januszek 1:40 Right. And so what as a as an expert, then I guess, you know, doing business in Asia is pretty interesting and exciting. But what what's it like when you when you're going through what we are at the moment, you know, how do things change? Is it sort of better, easier, worse, what's it like Simon Flint 2:06 So, you know, I when I, you know, of course, I am still in touch with the UK, which is where I'm from. So I watch, I watch what happens on the news. And I have friends and contacts in the industry. So I can, you know, compare and contrast. And we have six markets over here. So some of our markets are similar to the UK, others are a little bit different. So it's really a mixed bag at the moment. So for evolution, wellness, we have we have operations in six countries. We have Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. And as we speak at the moment, we are we're in mid August as we as we speak now, we are open in sort of three and a half markets, if you like and the half is Indonesia, where Jakarta still got some serious restrictions. So and we have been open and somewhat closed again, that would be Come Case in point. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we were due to open on a Monday in the Philippines. And in the middle of the night, we had notification that the decision was to be reversed from the government level, from the ministerial level, and it was it was all off again. So it's been a very touching go a few months, a few weeks. And, you know, I can look at it from two angles when I have, you know, to be very honest, I vacillate from optimism and pessimism in a very short space of time. And that depends on the news we get, right? You know, to be optimistic, I can say that, you know, we fundamentally underneath all of this, our industry has to be more important than it ever has been. And I get the sense from some some early evidence that there's some pent up demand from people who are saying, I've dodged a bullet this time around. I don't want to be in a comorbidity category. I don't want to be You know, not not being as healthy as I perhaps should be if this kind of stuff is going to repeat itself, and see that in in, you know, a good performance in Thailand, for example, where we were, we're open again. And there's a, there's a clear correlation between what's happening in the market with respect to the pandemic, and what's happening in, in our business performance wise. So we were open in, in all of our clubs, we have 34 clubs over there. And the check in rates are commensurate with precoated. More or less, even though we have restrictions in place. We see people spread out coming at different times of the day. We're fortunate that we've got reasonably big footprint clubs in Thailand. So we've got the space to accommodate people in a, you know, personal kind of bubble with the social distancing, that's that's required. We are a little bit under capacity in the group concept in the group format. But again, we're layering on it additional classes, were able to provide a pretty good service. So we feel we feel pretty optimistic that when the environment allows itself to, for us to reopen and be anything like normal, the demand is clearly there. Despite the you know, the the economic impact that's happened so far. It's yet to be seen what's going to happen in the other markets. It's a very mixed bag. If I can give you some some feedback from the Malaysian market, perhaps we see a higher number of people who are remaining on freeze. So circa 12% of our membership remains on on freeze it started at 30%, I should say. So it's kind of winding down. But you get segments of the population who are still in the I'm going to wait and see category or perhaps the amount of elderly family members at home or kids at home. And there's this this little fear factor that's still there, that they may not wish to go back and potentially become ill pass it on to other members in the family. So it's a really mixed bag and our focus has been to, to have our staff understand and play a part in feeling super confident about the measures we're taking. We want our clubs to be as clean and as safe as as anywhere people can possibly be. And then that confidence projected on the members who come and try it out. You know, they then convey that to their friends and other members. And that sort of perpetuates the the increase in check ins and the reduction of the free statistics. So, you know, there's, there are good science, but at the same time, you know, when we open in a country and then we were instructed to close again very quickly, that's when I put a pessimistic hat on for a moment. And, you know, I think generally in life, I'm an optimist, but but I will be, I will be kidding if but if I said there are some sort of dark moments when you think you know, when is this going to end because when we're when we're close with zero revenue, and that that's not a business. Matthew Januszek 6:59 You I'm sure you keep up to date with the situation in in the UK. How do you how do you see some of the government's in, you know, being spread across six different countries? See, do you see a lot of similarities between the way that the government's are working with businesses like, like in the fitness sector? Or are you seeing some that are doing things differently in any way in general terms? And there's some sort of specific details, but generally, are they sort of approaching things in a similar way? Would you say? Simon Flint 7:30 Well, the government's response tends to be very much a product of their financial capability and their organizational capability to respond. So if I were to take the Hong Kong and Singapore governments, for example, they appear to be very well organized very well. very communicative and erring on the side of caution, perhaps more than more than others, very involved in protocols. standard operating procedures and you know, broadly speaking on the front foot with a we think this is what we should do. Other countries have been a little bit more, there is no SRP, we don't have a position. So we have been more, let's say proactive and and thankfully we've had access at the ministerial level, sometimes independently as one of our brands or in coalition with, with industry, peers, and we've managed to to get audience time with them. In fact, Malaysia team literally visited one of the ministries with with many present there are several who were involved in the decisions to open and to as to what SRP will be in place. And thankfully, a lot of hard work done by the Malaysia team meant that the SOPs were created and then adopted and sort of signed off endorsed by the government and then implemented as, as the To practice for the industry. So we thankfully we've had that level of access to be able to, to help move things along.