Holmes Place Brand Guidelines: A Chelsea Health Club That Became a European Chain

One London club, 1979 or 1980.

Holmes Place started as a single health club in Chelsea, London. The company dates it to 1980 and describes a club set in a cul-de-sac off the Fulham Road; Hebrew Wikipedia gives January 1980, while German Wikipedia dates the opening to 1979 and says the club occupied a converted plumbing business. Hebrew Wikipedia says the name came from the street on which the first club stood.

Accounts of the founding differ in emphasis. German Wikipedia calls Allan Fisher the founder of the chain; the company calls him “one of the original founders” and says that from 1982 he and Lawrence Alkin developed the club and its concept. Hebrew Wikipedia says the club was set up by a group of investors, that Fisher was brought in part-time in 1982, and that he and Alkin ran it full-time from 1988. The company says the club positioned itself in the high-end health club market over its first decade, and that Fisher set out to turn fitness into a lifestyle that “combined health and glamour.”

The 1990s brought fast growth. German Wikipedia says the group had three London clubs and about 8,000 members in 1992. The company says it had seven operating clubs when it floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1997, as Holmes Place PLC, and Hebrew Wikipedia says it ran 31 clubs by the end of 1998 and 56 in 1999. The first club outside Britain opened in Portugal in 1996: the company names the Quinta da Fonte business park, and German Wikipedia places it at Oeiras, near Lisbon. A first German club followed in Berlin in 2001, according to German Wikipedia.

Private equity, Virgin Active and a family buy-back.

In 2000, the company says, Jonathan Fisher, Allan Fisher’s son, led a consortium that bought the franchise rights to develop Holmes Place in central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. By 2002 it counted 50 clubs in Britain and 26 elsewhere. In 2003 the listed company was taken private by the private equity firms Bridgepoint and Permira, according to German and Hebrew Wikipedia.

The British business went first. English Wikipedia says Virgin Active took over the UK-based Holmes Place operation on 1 November 2006, taking its own UK chain from 24 to 72 clubs; German Wikipedia puts the number of British clubs sold at 46 and says the Holmes Place name then disappeared from the UK market. The international business went back to the founding family. The company says that the year after the UK sale the Fisher and Kirsch families partnered to buy back Holmes Place Europe, excluding Iberia; German Wikipedia also gives 2007, while Hebrew Wikipedia gives 2008.

Iberia followed its own path. German Wikipedia says the 29 clubs on the Iberian peninsula were sold to Spanish institutional investors in 2005 and bought back in 2012; the company says it bought the remaining 30 clubs not under its ownership in 2012, and that in 2017 Jonathan and Allan Fisher bought Virgin Active’s clubs in Iberia.

The chain also changed shape elsewhere. German Wikipedia says it took over several clubs of the insolvent upmarket chain Elixia in Germany and Austria in 2010, opened Holmes Place Spa sites in Switzerland, Berlin and Warsaw, often attached to hotels, and sold its single club in Chicago in 2007 to its joint-venture partner, Bally. In Israel, where Hebrew Wikipedia says Jonathan Fisher set up the business in 1998 with a first club in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli mall, Holmes Place Israel listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange; the company dates the listing to December 2017.

How gym chains present themselves.

Gym and health-club chains sell a place, so much of their visual identity lives in photographs of the clubs themselves: the equipment floor, the class studios, the changing areas and, increasingly, the details of a refit. The companies publish this imagery in their own press rooms and on club pages, and when a chain modernises, the new interior often becomes the story; RSG Group’s 2024 release on McFit described steel, concrete and wood rather than a new logo.

Many chains split one name into tiers and sub-brands. A club brand may run a premium line and a value line under separate colours, give its class formats their own names, or sell a training programme through its member app. Fitness First’s German owner, for example, separates BLACK and RED clubs, and the UK business launched a training service called “able” inside its app in 2025.

Campaign identities change faster than logos. Slogans, ambassadors and sports sponsorships give a chain public visibility for a few years, while a wordmark and its colours may last a decade or more. Where a rebrand is documented, it is usually in trade or marketing press at the time of the launch, and that is where the guides in this set look for it.

Ownership is often the least visible layer. Corporate websites, press releases and trade magazines record which investor owns a chain, how many clubs it counts and in which countries, and those figures change with each purchase or sale. The guides in this set give club, member and country counts only as a dated source states them, and name the owner as of that source.

A hand-drawn HP monogram and “Enjoy the Journey.”

The company presents Holmes Place as a premium club. Its pages describe training floors and studios for group classes, pools, saunas and Turkish baths, shops, bars and lounges, family classes and, in some clubs, a hairdresser run as an outsourced service. German Wikipedia says the clubs usually combine wellness areas with training space in central city locations, and that the chain holds licences for Les Mills programmes in Germany and Austria.

The identity was redrawn in 2016. The company says the rebrand introduced a round monogram resembling a hand-drawn “HP,” inspired by the infinity symbol and reminiscent of yin and yang; German Wikipedia likewise describes the logo as a yin-yang-like H on a white ground. The motto “Enjoy the Journey” appears on advertising and club glass fronts, German Wikipedia says, and the company uses it across its website.

The footprint keeps changing. German Wikipedia listed clubs for 2025 in Germany (14), Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Israel, with the Hungarian club sold in 2019 and the Czech business also sold; the company’s international website now names clubs in Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Portugal. German Wikipedia says the chain belongs to the family of Allan Fisher, and the company names Jonathan Fisher as chief executive. On 9 November 2026, Athletech News reported that Virgin Active had agreed to buy Holmes Place Germany — 13 clubs in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne, Essen and Lübeck — from a joint venture between Holmes Place Europe and funds controlled by Auctus Capital Partners: agreed in November 2026; not completed at the time of writing. The same report said the German management team would stay in place.

For a design guide, Holmes Place shows how a London club name built a second life on the continent after leaving the British market, carried by a monogram and a short motto. Compare David Lloyd Clubs, another British premium club operator, and Fitness First, another club chain in this series. For this guide we use ink blue, sand and a soft teal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Holmes Place’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.