Creating a community to build client loyalty
Most businesses face plenty of competition, so finding a meaningful point of difference is essential. For Asset Fitness, a coach-led fitness studio based at Greenway Business Centre in Harlow, that difference isn’t just exercise programmes or equipment. It’s the community that owner Andrea Seidita has built: a supportive environment that inspired members not only to stay loyal through a difficult relocation, but to help physically move the business into its new studio home.
Health: our greatest Asset
For Andrea Seidita, the philosophy behind Asset Fitness starts with its name. Before building a successful fitness studio, he spent years considering what really matters when it comes to wellbeing and long-term quality of life: “The word ’Asset’ rings out for me because your health is your greatest asset so it should be one of your greatest investments. I think we’re so good at spending money on other things and sometimes things that maybe don’t aid our health. Yet fundamentally, in a nutshell, your health is your greatest asset.”
That philosophy underpins everything Asset Fitness does. The business operates a coach-led fitness studio model rather than a traditional gym. Members attend structured, professionally-led sessions rather than simply paying for access to equipment: “We have a coach-led group training facility. We offer about 21 different classes on the timetable, and all the classes are led by myself or my two other coaches.”
The classes include strength training, conditioning work, cardiovascular fitness sessions and HYROX-focused training: “We don’t have what we call an open gym where people can pay and just use the facility. It’s very much classes or personal training.”
Today, people travel from across the Harlow area and beyond to train with Asset Fitness, with some members regularly making journeys of up to 30 minutes because they value the coaching style and community atmosphere.
Andrea’s early career
Although fitness is now central to Andrea’s life, he never originally intended to work in the industry: “When I left school I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do. I went to college and then managed to get an office junior position within private solicitors that dealt with patents and trademarks and I kind of worked my way up through there.”
That path eventually led him to a role at AstraZeneca, where he spent six years working within the organisation’s intellectual property department. Yet despite building a successful corporate career, something wasn’t quite right: “I basically wasn’t that happy in terms of what I was doing and where I was going in my career. So I decided to take up the option of a three-month unpaid sabbatical.”
Travelling through Australia and Thailand gave him time to reflect on what he wanted from life. During that journey he realised that fitness, which had already become an important part of his personal life, offered a more authentic future: “When I went travelling, I basically said to myself, what do I actually like to do? Fitness was a big part of my life at that point, so I decided to go into it.”
Transitioning from IP to PT
Changing careers was not an overnight decision. Andrea approached it methodically, retraining while still working full-time and working towards his Personal Trainer qualification at the weekends, which took a year.
Andrea’s early experiences have shaped his coaching philosophy: “I didn’t really start training properly until I was about 21. I struggled with my weight when I was younger. It took me a while to build the confidence to walk into the gym environment. Once I did start training, I made all the mistakes that newbies tend to make. I think it’s probably aided me on this journey in terms of helping others.”
After qualifying, Andrea initially balanced two careers, working in London during the day while coaching clients during evenings. Eventually he took the leap into fitness full-time, joining Virgin Active before moving into a more personalised boutique studio environment that better matched his coaching approach.
Transitioning to become a business owner 
Andrea’s route into business ownership developed naturally from years of coaching experience. After moving to Harlow, he managed a gym facility before being offered the chance to take ownership and reshape it according to his own vision: “The opportunity came up for me to take it on as my own so I could rebrand it, restructure it, redo the gym floor in a way that I thought was how I wanted it.”
That was the moment Asset Fitness was reborn as a standalone brand: “I always loved Asset when I created it for a boot camp I had previously run. I felt like it was a little bit different. When I came to start the gym as my own business, I did loads of research into potential names, ploughing through the thesaurus. In the end I thought, ‘Our health is our greatest asset – I’m going to bring the name back’.”
The existing gym already had members, but Andrea had played a significant role in building that customer base over the years: “I take pride in the fact that I helped build that client base. There was only myself and another coach there, so the growth in membership was very much down to building the gym on my principles and my coaching background and experience.”
The result was a fitness studio built around personal attention, structured coaching and member relationships, rather than simply selling gym memberships.
Eviction notice prompts the hunt for suitable studio space
Three years after launching Asset Fitness, Andrea faced a challenge that would test both his resilience and the loyalty of his members. The football club where the gym operated entered administration and was eventually sold. The new owners had different plans for the premises, leaving Andrea with little time to find a new home for the business.
Thankfully, Greenway Business Centre proved to be the ideal solution – made even easier because the new studio was just three minutes away from the original site: “What attracted me was how convenient it was. It was basically around the corner, so that really helped in terms of not creating too much unrest between members and some of the corporate clients that I had. I couldn’t really get any closer, so I was really happy about that.”
Andrea was also attracted by the character of the studio space in Greenway Business Centre itself: “It’s a really cool space. It’s kind of like a warehouse space with high ceilings, and it works really well for what we do in terms of functional fitness classes.”
The flexible licence arrangement available through Capital Space was another major benefit: “Capital Space offer licences on a month-by-month basis and, with the stress of having to move my business in a short space of time, I didn’t have to go through all the paperwork that would probably be there with traditional leases.”
Moving twice in four weeks
Securing the perfect space came with one unexpected complication: it wasn’t immediately available: “We ended up moving twice in the space of four weeks because the unit that I wanted wasn’t available. But the Greenway Business Centre team helped find a temporary solution, meaning we could continue operating while our preferred studio was prepared.
“They were very kind. I rented one unit temporarily for three weeks while this one was getting ready, and then we moved over here and created the gym that we want.”
Moving a fully equipped fitness studio is never easy, particularly for what Andrea describes as a “one-man band”. Yet the strength of the community he had built became clear during the transition: “Some of the members chipped in with me. I was quite humbled at the amount of help that I got from people associated with the gym. I couldn’t really have made it happen without them.”
For Andrea, moments like that demonstrate exactly what makes Asset Fitness different: “I think the main thing is really the community and the environment that we try to create. People are very welcoming. People love to see each other win and encourage each other to be the best they can be.”
Consolidating the business to ensure sustainable success
Talking to Andrea during the school summer holiday, he explains how this traditionally quiet period is giving him the opportunity to ensure Asset Fitness is properly settled in to its new home in Greenway Business Centre to provide the foundations for further development in the autumn: “When everyone is back from spending the summer with their families, we’ll have a big push connecting with the local community around us.”
But for Andrea, success is not necessarily measured in the size of his business: “I’m not one of these people that needs multiple gyms. I just really want a very healthy, functioning gym with a friendly atmosphere, a healthy membership base and obviously a profitable business.”
Instead, success is measured by the achievements of the people he helps: “A lot of the highlights are people achieving stuff that they didn’t think they could achieve. I’ve taken members from not being able to run 5k to completing a whole HYROX event. Building people’s confidence and helping them believe they can do these things is a massive thing for us.”
Andrea’s top business tips
Having successfully navigated a career change, built a thriving fitness studio and overcome the challenge of relocating an established business, Andrea has straightforward advice for other entrepreneurs:
“My top business tip is perseverance and don’t give up. When you’re in your own business and sometimes you’re sitting there by yourself wondering if you’re doing the right things, it’s very easy to think maybe I should walk away. But the key is perseverance and not giving up. Understand that the whole thing is a journey and nothing happens overnight.”
For Asset Fitness, community has been the foundation of success: helping members achieve more than they thought possible while creating the loyalty, trust and support that every growing business needs.
