Chapter 505 - It’s About Time to Open Branches!

April 30th, Saturday…

Pei Qian had lunch and left for Deposit Fitness.

He had told Zhang Yuan before that he would find a coach for the club. However, where should he look for the coach…? Pei Qian really had no idea.

A professional esports coach would definitely not do.

That was because GOG was a relatively new game. Pei Qian had heard that some famous teams were planning for GOG, but generally, there was still not enough popularity for it to be formalized.

In other words, everyone’s standards were still rather low at this initial stage.

Clubs would definitely do their due diligence on whether this game would be able to continue its popularity or not whenever they want to open a subdivision for it.

Would it not be wasted money and effort if they opened a subdivision and plonked money into training only for the subdivision to be dissolved?

GOG was having a war with IOI now. Many clubs had the same thinking: choose from the winner. They only needed to cultivate one team for these two MOBA games.

Therefore, even if they had GOG subdivisions currently, they were not much of a force. At such a time, a professional coach-even one that was not outstandingly-would be able to bring transformational changes to the team.

Zhang Yuan might not know esports very well, but he was not dumb. The coaches he sought would definitely not be half-baked. If he were to add on the mysterious luck that Boss Pei had and promoted an SSR player or coach from the team…

The results would be very undesirable.

Therefore, Pei Qian had to find a coach that he was satisfied with, and that same person had to make Zhang Yuan shut up.

Hmm…

That was too difficult!

It was such a headache for Pei Qian. However, luckily, he told Zhang Yuan that he would let him know in two weeks so it was not too urgent.

Pei Qian walked into Deposit Fitness. It was a weekend as well, but there were obviously fewer people than there were previously. Pei Qian was taken back for a short while before realizing what happened. He could not help but be delighted

Many clients from last week had been successfully dissuaded!

The payment method of Deposit Fitness left no room for hesitation to join their membership. It could be fully refunded anyway.

However, not everyone could strictly follow and persevere with the plans.

Once they could not persevere, they would be persuaded to ‘be refunded’ and would not be able to join again in the short term.

Therefore, that had successfully dissuaded many clients!

That announcement did attract some clients, and some of them did join the memberships based on that. However, what was the point if they could not persevere?

Pei Qian could not help but feel proud of his intelligence. Other than that, there were some slight changes to the Deposit Fitness as compared to the previous week. There were now three service personnel in the gym. That was only one person responsible for distributing the wristband, attending to the front desk previously. The personal trainers would also do a bit of introduction and bring the clients around.

There were more of such personnel now; three of them were permanent staff and were on shifts.

One was in charge of the front desk, responsible for welcoming the guests like recording the clients’ information, distributing towels, wristbands, water, etc.

One of them was in charge of administration, daily office work like personal trainers’ schedules, and linking up with Fish-Catching Take-Out.

The last one was a planner who was responsible for arranging daily schedules, creating custom-made training plans, analyzing current client information, etc. Of course, the demarcation between these three roles was not that well-defined, they would help each other out at times.

“Boss Pei.” The front desk was the first to notice Pei Qian.

“Good day, Boss Pei.” The administrative executive was arranging the fitness meals with two personal trainers at noon.

“Boss Pei.” The planner stood up and nodded politely from his work on the computer.

Pei Qian smiled lightly and nodded. He gave these planners a little more notice because… the true identity of this planner was a spy, one of the 18 Manage Loss Trainees!

The Manage Loss Trainees address Pei Qian as ‘senior’ privately. However, they would still address him as ‘Boss Pei’ in the public.

Wouldn’t it reveal that there was a mysterious department otherwise…?

The positions in the gym were all based on shifts. This Manage Loss Trainee might be a student, but he did not have many classes. Moreover, the Deposit Fitness was just a few steps away from Handong University, which made him confident that he could take on this job.

The planner from Deposit Fitness was a position that the other gyms did not have. That was because the setting of Deposit Fitness was different from the other gyms.

Guo Licheng suggested to Pei Qian that they should create an app to let their clients book appointments so that they could control the number of people in the gym at once. It would also be able to optimize the arrangement of scheduling.

For example, if there were more clients on Thursday, then they would not entertain other clients who want to come on Thursdays. They would urge them to choose another day. It seemed like they were still quite some time away from completing the app. It was currently done by the planner.

However, there were lesser people in the gym now, a lot less than the maximum load the gym could take. Therefore, it did not really matter now.

The current position of the planner could only do preliminary planning. There was no need to go down to the day and time. Pei Qian arranged for this Manage Loss Trainee to be a planner so that he would be able to know the more accurate information about the gym, so that he would know how far away the gym was from becoming profitable.

Next Saturday would be the first-ever Manage Loss Trainee meeting. Pei Qian could not wait. He acted as though it was nothing and greeted everyone before sitting down beside this manage loss trainee.

There were too many Manage Loss Trainees so Pei Qian could not recall his name. No problem though. He only needed to remember he was the spy of which department.

“How far away is the gym from profitability?” Pei Qian asked nonchalantly.

This Manage Loss Trainee replied seriously. “Boss Pei, the gym needs about 200 daily clients for us to break even. That is not considering the profits of Fish-Catching Take-Out.

“It would be better to take it as 300 people per day if we consider depreciation, maintenance, and a certain amount of profits so that we can break even faster.”

“Our current number of clients today is… 29. It could be a high peak, but it was less than 25% utilization rate for the gym.”

Pei Qian was thoroughly satisfied with that answer.

See, as expected of the Manage Loss Trainee that I trained myself. His reporting is concise, without any unnecessary information.

Pei Qian nodded in approval. “Not bad, continue doing your best.”

They were currently still very far from making profits. That was rather good news. Pei Qian pondered; it was about time to consider a branch.

He continued to walk around and saw Guo Licheng lifting weights like crazy at the strength training area. He did not know if it was just his imagination but it seemed like Guo Licheng’s muscles were larger than when he saw him last week.

Pei Qian was happy to hear this.

This Guo Licheng was really obedient!

He got him to train his body so that his muscles could be better than the personal trainers. He would not have the time or energy to do all the fanciful promotions. The gym would also not be able to make money.

Guo Licheng was indeed training hard. Muscles wouldn’t lie.

Guo Licheng quickly kept the dumbbells away and stood up seeing Boss Pei arrive. “Boss Pei! I’m…”

Guo Licheng tried to explain, but Pei Qian had already raised his hand to stop him.

“You are doing very well. As the branch manager and icon of the gym, your shape must be the best so that you can attract more customers! Therefore, you cannot relax; you have to continue on!

“I’m here today to ask you if you know of any other similarly well-renovated but bigger gyms. Especially near Fish-Catching Internet Cafe or Tengda offices. “Oh, yes, near Ming Yun Villas as well.” Guo Licheng was a little taken aback. “Boss Pei, you want to do due diligence or…”

Pei Qian smiled. “Of course, to open branches!”

Guo Licheng was shocked.

What?

There were not even a few members for this gym, they were making so many losses that they could not even cover any expenses, and yet he wanted to open branches?”

Moreover, it seemed like Boss Pei did not only want to stop at one branch?

Guo Licheng hurriedly urged. “Boss Pei, you have to think carefully!”

Pei Qian raised his hand to stop his objection. “I’ve thought it through. You only have to give me places suitable for a gym. I’ll get some people there to negotiate to see how many of them were willing to transfer over.”

“Then, I’ll trouble you to arrange for equipment, hiring, and the like.”

Guo Licheng opened his mouth, thinking of discussing him. However, he nodded seeing how resolute Boss Pei was. “Okay, Boss Pei. I understand now. Eh… Boss Pei, what did you say were the criteria for selection?”

“We’ll open three to five branches this time. Some gyms will definitely not be willing to transfer to us so you select about ten sites. One of them has to be near Ming Yun Villas; the rest have to be near Fish-Catching Internet Cafe or Tengda’s offices.” Pei Qian repeated.

This site selection was to better ensure the supply of the fitness meal; another point was to provide benefits to the employees.

Pei Qian did not forget that both Deposit Fitness and Sloth Apartments were to lose money and to provide more benefits to his employees. It would be double happiness if he could lose money and allow his employees to make further losses by giving them more benefits.

The observation period of this flagship store had reached a certain point. From the looks of it, the situation was more optimistic than not. It might have some takers, but it was very far away from making profits.

If that was the case, then he could bring his own employees in slowly as well.

As to why he was doing it in batches?

That was because the system had restrictions in this regard. Employee benefits had to be within a certain range no matter whether it was the Sloth Apartments or the gym.

For example, if there were 100 rooms in the Sloth Apartments, only 30 of them could be used as a staff dormitory.

It was the same logic for the restaurant and the gym. They could be used as an employee benefit, but the precondition was that it had to be usable by other consumers. It should not only be for employees. Moreover, there was a stricter restriction on this.

Therefore, Pei Qian had to open a lot more batches if he wanted to let all of his staff follow a strict fitness plan.

Boss Pei had more than enough motivation as long as it could lose money!