Premium fitness is easy to promise. It is very hard to deliver consistently, across locations, over time, to members whose expectations are set by the best experiences in the world. Colin Waggett has built his career on figuring out exactly how to do that.
As CEO of Third Space, one of London's most recognised names in luxury fitness, Colin has developed a sharp instinct for when to expand, what to offer, and how to read a customer base with precision. He joins Matthew Januszek on Escape Your Limits to share the thinking behind the Third Space model — and what premium fitness actually demands of the people who build it.
About Colin Waggett
Third Space occupies a distinctive position in the London fitness market: genuinely premium, consistently experiential, and deliberately tailored to a customer base that knows the difference between good and exceptional. Colin Waggett, as CEO, is the architect of much of that positioning.
His approach to growth is characterised by a quality of timing that is difficult to teach. Rather than pursuing expansion for its own sake, Waggett has demonstrated a capacity to identify the ideal moment to bring new offerings to market — a discipline that separates sustainable premium brands from those that grow beyond their ability to deliver.
Third Space under his leadership reflects a deep understanding that luxury fitness members are not just buying access to equipment; they are buying an environment, a community, and a standard of experience that justifies the investment they are making. That understanding shapes every decision, from facility design to programming to the people hired to deliver it.
What Colin Waggett and Matthew Januszek Talked About
- Premium positioning only holds if the delivery consistently matches the promise — in luxury fitness, a single underperforming touchpoint can undermine the member's entire perception of the brand.
- Timing is a strategic skill: knowing when to introduce new offerings to a premium customer base is as important as knowing what to offer, and rushing growth destroys the very quality that justifies the premium.
- Tailoring your offering to a specific customer base — and resisting the temptation to broaden it prematurely — is one of the most powerful disciplines a fitness operator can practise.
- London's luxury fitness market is both highly sophisticated and highly competitive; the operators who win long-term are those who build real insight into what their members value, not just what their members say they want.
- Great CEO leadership in fitness combines commercial acumen with genuine product instinct — the ability to see both the business model and the member experience with equal clarity.
- New offerings should feel like natural extensions of an existing brand identity, not departures from it; members of a premium club are the most sensitive audience in the industry to anything that feels inconsistent.
- Growth in premium fitness is not measured purely in new locations — it is measured in whether each new location delivers the same standard of experience that made the brand worth replicating.
Why This Conversation Matters
Matthew Januszek's work across Escape Fitness USA has always been grounded in the belief that fitness experiences should be genuinely excellent — not just functional, but transformative. Colin Waggett's approach at Third Space is a masterclass in what that looks like when applied at the premium end of the market, with all the operational complexity that entails. The principles translate whether you are running one location or planning your tenth.
For listeners of the LIFTS Podcast and the Escape Fitness USA community, this conversation sits at the intersection of business strategy and member experience design — two things that Matthew thinks about every day. Colin's perspective on premium fitness is a calibration point for anyone who wants to understand what the best in the industry are actually building.
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube
Related Episodes & Interviews
About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
About The Author
