McFit Brand Guidelines: A Würzburg Fitness Hall, a Yellow Bow and RSG Group

A converted industrial hall in Würzburg.

McFit was founded by Rainer Schaller. German Wikipedia dates the company to 1996 and the first studio to 1997, in a converted industrial hall of about 700 square metres in Würzburg, the Franconian university town. WirtschaftsWoche reported in February 2019 that the first studio opened under the slogan “Die Fitnesshalle für alle” — the fitness hall for everyone — and that more “fitness halls” followed, often on the edge of town in former factory buildings, with a plain, functional offer; members at first even paid separately to use the showers.

The idea was a low monthly fee and a hall full of machines. German Wikipedia says McFit left out classes, pools and saunas, and calls opening around the clock, every day of the year, a novelty in Germany at the time; it says most clubs in Germany and Austria still open 24 hours a day. Over the years the offer widened to include women’s areas, class rooms and zones for functional training.

Growth came quickly. German Wikipedia says McFit became Germany’s largest gym chain by membership in 2006, with almost half a million members; set up a second head office in Berlin in 2007 alongside its registered seat in Schlüsselfeld, in Bavaria; bought its rival Fit24 the same year; and opened its 100th German studio, in Munich, in 2008. The boxers Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko promoted the chain for five years from 2008. McFit entered Austria, Italy and Spain from 2009; the head of its Spanish business later said in a company release that the first Spanish studio opened in Palma de Mallorca that year.

From yellow-on-blue to a yellow bow.

The logo has changed with the image. WirtschaftsWoche described the original mark as simple yellow lettering on a blue band, and German Wikipedia adds that the first studio’s logo carried a banana as a mascot. The claim “Einfach gut aussehen” — “simply look good” — was added under the name in 2006, German Wikipedia says. In 2013 the whole design was revised: the banana came back in abstract form as a curved yellow bow on an anthracite background, with the McFit name in white beneath it, and the slogan stayed.

Campaign lines tracked the move away from the budget-hall image. WirtschaftsWoche listed “Home of Fitness” and, from 2017, “Proud to be McFit.” For the “Home of Fitness” studios the Berlin fashion designer Michael Michalsky created an interior concept meant to feel like home. sports-insider.de reported on 1 February 2014 that the first had opened in Hamburg and the second was opening in Vienna, styled like a converted loft, with the lounge as an open living area, the changing rooms as dressing rooms and the training modules laid out like adjoining rooms. German Wikipedia says the concept was not continued but laid the groundwork for later changes.

The group also built its own image-making arm. McFit Models, a sports-model agency that recruits largely from the chain’s own members and supplies faces for sports photo and video campaigns, belongs to the group, German Wikipedia says, with Michalsky as its art director.

The latest refit drops the old colours. In a release dated 22 July 2024, RSG Group described a modernisation programme under the concept “McFIT – The Original,” begun in Heilbronn and Vienna, with steel, concrete and wood, a bright, uniform look, a larger women’s area and a table-tennis table. Visiting the refitted Munich-Laim studio, the Münchner Merkur wrote on 25 October 2024 that green was “the new black”: the new colour scheme replaced the old black and yellow.

Clubs, tiers and owners.

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.

The core brand of RSG Group.

The company has changed its corporate name more than its brand. In 2016 McFit GmbH became the McFit Global Group, an umbrella for brands including High5 and John Reed Fitness, German Wikipedia says; on 28 February 2019 the company announced that it was becoming RSG Group GmbH, short for Rainer Schaller Global Group, with McFit as the parent brand among 12. RSG Group bought Gold’s Gym in 2020, English Wikipedia says. Since December 2022 the group, which says it remains family-owned, has been led by co-chief executives Hagen Wingertszahn and Jobst Müller-Trimbusch.

The map has narrowed. RSG Group said on 17 May 2022 that Medicover had completed the purchase of McFit’s 14 Polish clubs; the first had opened in Warsaw in 2014. In Spain, RSG agreed in December 2023 to sell its 47 studios — 42 McFit and five Holmes Place clubs — to Basic-Fit, and Basic-Fit announced on 27 March 2024 that the purchase was complete. RSG Group said in January 2026 that McFit had more than 230 company-owned gyms in Germany, Austria and Italy, and that it had begun offering the brand as an international franchise in countries without company-owned McFit studios.

In 2024 a court ruled against one of the chain’s practices. Der Spiegel reported on 20 April 2024 that the regional court in Bamberg had barred RSG Group from treating members’ passage through the entrance turnstile as consent to a 2022 fee rise, classing it as an aggressive business practice, in a case brought by the federation of German consumer organisations; the ruling was not final at the time of the report.

For a design guide, McFit shows a budget chain using colour, interiors and campaign lines to change how it is seen — from a yellow-on-blue hall sign to an anthracite bow and, most recently, green interiors. Compare FitX, another German studio chain, and Basic-Fit, which took over its Spanish clubs. For this guide we use anthracite, a warm yellow and a muted green with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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