North of England Entrepreneur of the Year and founder of Pure Gym was the guest speaker at Raworths’ recent Breakfast Club event which was held at Bettys in Harrogate.
Peter Roberts was voted North of England Entrepreneur of the Year earlier in 2015 having founded PureGym in 2008 and it is now one of the top 20 UK’s fastest growing businesses. His concept of developing a low-cost, 24-hour, no contract gym had been growing in other European countries and Peter’s plan to bring this to the UK quickly became a success story which has expanded across the country and now looks abroad for further expansion.
Peter’s career has spanned many years in the leisure industry and other businesses included Lazards Leisure Venture Capital Fund, Dragons Health Club, Luminar plc, Countrystyle Inns and Golden Tulip Hotels. Starting with just two gyms in Manchester and Leeds, Pure Gym now has over 130 gyms nationally, either already operating or opening in the next few months. Amongst the latter is the Harrogate PureGym which will be open on Tower Street before Christmas. PureGym has over 520,000 members. Since the Raworths event, Peter Roberts has been named as one of EY’s Entrepreneurs of the Year nationally.
Simon Morris, partner at Raworths said:
Peter’s speech was inspirational in that it shone a spotlight on the entrepreneurial spirit of this area and demonstrated how his vision for the fitness sector could be translated into a successful model for a rapidly-expanding business. We were delighted he was able to join us.
Also speaking at the event was Madeline Mannakee, commercial property solicitor at Raworths. She addressed the audience on the technical issues relating to leasehold heads of terms and the basics of property-related tax. Madeline is one of five lawyers in the Commercial Property unit at Raworths headed by Alasdair Inglis.
