BARRY'S

Barry Jay was a personal trainer in West Hollywood who had developed a high-intensity interval training format combining treadmill sprints and floor-based strength work. In 1998 he opened the first Barry's Bootcamp in a small space in West Hollywood with a handful of treadmills and a lot of attitude.

The class format was fixed: half the time on the treadmill running intervals, half the time on the floor doing weights. The instructor shouted.

The music was loud. The workout was genuinely difficult.

Word spread fast in the fitness-obsessed culture of Los Angeles, and studios opened in New York and Boston within a few years. The brand built its identity around a single concept: The Best Workout in the World.

It was a bold claim and one the clientele was willing to repeat. By the mid-2010s, Barry's had become a global boutique fitness brand with studios in London, Dubai, Oslo, Singapore, and beyond.

Joey Gonzalez joined as co-CEO in 2012 and became sole CEO around 2017, driving international expansion.

Pay-per-class or membership model for premium group fitness. Individual classes are priced at approximately $38 to $50 per session depending on location and market.

Members can purchase class packs or monthly membership plans. Barry's sells branded apparel and merchandise in-studio and online, which generates significant additional revenue.

The studio model is real estate intensive — the Red Room setup requires significant investment per location — but the revenue per square foot is very high compared to traditional gyms. Corporate wellness partnerships with large employers provide another revenue stream.

The Red Room (signature 60-minute HIIT class combining treadmill intervals and strength training, in the signature red-lit studio). Barry's x (at-home digital platform offering live and on-demand workouts).

Barry's Fuel Bar (protein shakes, nutrition products sold in-studio). Branded apparel collection sold at studios and online.

Corporate wellness programming for enterprise clients.

Word of mouth and community first. Barry's did not spend heavily on mass advertising in its early years — the intensity of the experience generated social sharing before Instagram existed.

When Instagram launched, the red-lit Red Room became one of the most photographed gym environments on social media, and the visual identity became a growth engine. Barry's expanded into new cities by entering premium markets — London, Dubai, New York Midtown — where the target customer was already spending heavily on fitness.

They built heat through exclusivity before scaling. International licensing partnerships allowed faster geographic growth without full capital deployment in every market.

COVID-19 was an existential threat. Barry's studios are premium, densely packed physical spaces — the exact format that could not operate under social distancing rules.

All locations closed globally in March 2020. The company launched Barry's x (an at-home workout platform) to retain subscribers but the product never matched the in-studio intensity that drove the brand's identity.

Studios began reopening in late 2020, but recovery was slow and uneven across markets with different restriction timelines. The pandemic also accelerated the at-home fitness category, making consumer re-engagement with premium in-person fitness harder even after studios reopened fully.

North Castle Partners (majority investment, 2019, reportedly at ~$300M valuation). General Atlantic (growth investment, 2021, reportedly at ~$375M valuation).