O pai trouxe a Reebok. O filho quer ganhar o Brasil

José Marfará, a fitness pioneer in Brazil, is akin to Jane Fonda's influence on the American fitness market during the 1980s. While Fonda's aerobics tapes popularized the concept, Marfará brought American gym concepts and aerobics to Brazil. Now, his son Raffael leads the expansion of Reebok, a brand owned by Authentic Brands Group, which Marfará introduced to Brazil in the early 2000s.

Raffael, who previously worked at Axenya healthtech, had initially planned to launch a premium fitness club but shifted focus to expand Reebok. José Marfará's journey into fitness began at 18, when he moved to the U.S. to pursue a career in piloting but fell in love with fitness after attending an aerobics class. Upon returning to Brazil, he opened his first gym, Runner dos Jardins.

Despite lacking trained instructors in Brazil, he initially taught aerobics himself. This passion for fitness led him to sell his stake in Runner to partners and later sign a 20-year deal with Reebok in 2000. Reebok currently operates two large clubs in São Paulo, but José believes a boutique gym would be more scalable and affordable.

Raffael's proposed solution is the Reebok Gym, a premium yet more accessible fitness club with a smaller footprint (between 1.3 and 1.6 thousand square meters) and a monthly fee between R$400 and R$550. The Marfarás aim to capture 1% of Brazil's 14.7 million gym users, equating to around 147,000 customers. Expansion will be through licensing, not franchising, with minority stakes and veto rights given to José and Raffael.

The first ten gyms will be spread across different regions of Brazil, with José hoping to reach various parts of the country, from the interior to the beaches and the Northeast. Each gym is expected to have around 250 students at launch and 1,400 in maturity, with an estimated investment of R$7.5 million per location and a payback period of 24 to 36 months.