Mission Street, once distinguished by taquerias is increasingly a workout corridor – at least nine businesses line the corridor from 14th to 24th streets promising more svelte silhouettes. Unlike many of them, BodyFi, having just celebrated its seventh year in the Financial District and four years on Mission Street, is not a gym. It’s a fitness studio.
In fact, owner John Nguyen sees a having gyms nearby an asset.
“For a specialty studio, you want the foot traffic nearby already thinking about fitness,” he said.
Unlike dozens of retail businesses hit hard in the era of one-click-ordering, this explanation on fitness can’t be delivered direct to a doorstep – at least to most. According to this site, between one and three percent of his business comes from house calls. In fact, one woman he first began working with via house calls is one of his success stories. She lost 20 pounds and improved her physical fitness specifically to prepare for pregnancy.
Another “biggest winner,” as Nguyen calls his successful clients, had a bit of a rough start. During the first, most basic exercise Nguyen tried with her – stepping up onto a stool – she stumbled and fell (though she was uninjured). Today she is 80 pounds lighter, and Nguyen says they still joke about that first tumble.
It’s that kind of long-term, individualized attention that Nguyen claims as his recipe for success. Knowing your neighborhood and your clientele also helps. BodyFi has two locations currently, at 2310 Mission St. and at 735 Montgomery St. in the financial district.
In the Mission, Nguyen said, he had expected to develop a more Latino clientele, but instead found classes filling with techies. And being a studio on Mission Street hasn’t been without incident. One passerby, possibly under the influence of drugs, once head-butted the glass front door so hard the pane cracked and had to be replaced.
In the financial district, clients’ jobs are a mixture of law, finance, and other office work. Almost everyone there is female.
One of his staff instructors, Nguyen said, feared teaching classes there, fearing “these ladies seem uptight.” Luckily, they turned out to be more relaxed than advertised.
That’s generally the atmosphere Nguyen has going at BodyFi. His dog Juno hangs out quietly behind a discreet gate in the corner. One of the upstairs rooms is softly lit with paper-veiled floor lamps, and different pop tunes play in each room.
Yes, the service is high end, offering individual training sessions and ready-made health foods packaged and ready to grab from fridge by the door (“so you don’t erase all the hard work you did in the gym,” says Nguyen). But there’s no dress code or expectation of competition.
“People are here for general fitness, they’re not really into the heavy grunting, powerlifting type thing,” he said. “It’s a very supportive environment.”
The main focus is results, and his clients are ready for them. “The people who come to use have already determined they can’t do it themselves,” he explained.
That’s why Nguyen, who previously worked in tech, does this job.
“I enjoy training clients,” he said. “You make a difference in someone’s life, you can see it in their face and how they move around.”