Visiting the headquarters of "Super Monkey": Initiating the Management Trainee Program for the first time, expanding 260 stores, and insisting on the no-sales-promotion model | Autumn Recruitment Report
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
In 2024, "finding a reliable job" and "recruiting reliable people" remain mutually challenging issues. We firmly believe that, apart from traditional large companies, there are still a large number of employer companies in the market that are in line with the dividends of the next era, waiting to be discovered. The potential of the track, business logic, personnel situation... Mastery and insight into this information determine the job seeker's perspective in choosing a company, as well as the quality and depth of the interview communication.
Anonymous company gossip may be helpful for job seekers to avoid pitfalls - but those career opportunities with scarcity and growth potential should not be missed because of an unsubstantiated comment on the Internet. During the spring and autumn seasons when recruitment is high, 36Kr @Workplace Bonus uses a professional scoring model to screen a batch of "dividend companies" that are recruiting for on-site factory visits. Combining multiple perspectives from investors and headhunters, we ask questions to the employers to bring you a "one-article understanding" of the recruitment reports of dividend companies.
The huge "energy field" ╱ 01
No dividend in the fitness industry? ╱ 02
About 「Super Monkey」, you can also learn these ahead of other job seekers ╱ 03
Workplace Bonus has learned that the 2024 autumn recruitment of the healthy lifestyle brand 「Super Monkey」 is in progress. The recruitment positions are divided into social recruitment, interns, and management trainees, involving multiple departments and functions, such as 「Regional Operations Management Trainee, Product Intern, Community Operations, HRBP, Business Location Expert, Store Operations Standard Expert, Regional Operations Manager」. Academic qualifications are an important reference indicator. For non-professional technical positions, work ability and growth potential are more important.
For fitness enthusiasts, 「Super Monkey」 is not unfamiliar. Founded in 2014, 「Super Monkey」 changed the traditional "membership card consumption" in the fitness industry and chose "pay per session". The company opened offline stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen in the early stage and achieved great success, verifying the feasibility of the business model. Nowadays, Super Monkey has opened more than 260 classrooms in 「Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Fuzhou, Xiamen」, providing multiple sports mode options such as 「group classes, personal training, and self-training」.
The founder, Liu Shuting, grew up at the foot of Helan Mountain in Ningxia. She was active and loved running since childhood and gave herself the nickname "Tiaotiao". When she first started her business, she also experienced several setbacks: for example, she once encountered an investor who signed the contract but did not make the payment on time, and the company almost faced a broken capital chain.
Luckily, around her, there is a group of employees and partners willing to tide over the difficulties together. After obtaining angel investment in 2014, Super Monkey was able to get through the most difficult period. Since 2015, Super Monkey's business model has been verified by the market and has developed rapidly. Up to now, with 「260 stores nationwide and more than 1,000 coaches」, it is committed to influencing more people to exercise and becoming a super brand like Nike.
In Tiaotiao's view, 「Super Monkey」 is a company that "sells hormones", selling dopamine and endorphins. These two hormones are essentially happiness and confidence. She believes that 「people who truly develop a fitness habit are not driven by perseverance, but gain happiness and confidence in the process of fitness」. This may also be the embodiment of the company's mission, as the words on the company wall say - influencing more people to live a healthy life and shine.
After experiencing the rapid expansion period and business maturity period in the previous few years, 「Super Monkey」 describes its own business in 2024 as the "steady progress period". In addition, Workplace Bonus has learned that this year 「Super Monkey」 officially launched the management trainee program to lay the foundation for the company's long-term iterative talent strategy for three years.
"The grassroots management personnel of store/regional operations can be selected and trained from fresh graduates, while for specialized functional positions, such as store construction management, space design management, and standardized operation management, we will be more inclined to look for existing professional talents in the industry." Zhou Ye, the head of human resources, told Workplace Bonus that Super Monkey prefers job seekers who have clear and consistent actions and goals, a resilient and inclusive mindset to adapt to changes, and relevant experience in offline chain retail brands.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
The huge "energy field"
Whether for Super Monkey or CEO Tiaotiao, the word that interviewee employees mention the most is "energy" - coincidentally, Tiaotiao herself describes herself as "loving life and full of energy". For example, in the early days of the company's entrepreneurship, despite facing many cumbersome matters and the pressure of profit goals, Tiaotiao never complained and did not put pressure on employees.
"Tiaotiao is a very optimistic and positive person, and the feeling of being with her is always relaxed and comfortable." Wang He, the training and development director of the Super Monkey Group, is a burly northeastern big brother with cyberpunk-style sunglasses on his forehead and a strong voice that can also invigorate the listener. After graduating from the sports school, he has been engaged in fitness-related work and met Tiaotiao in 2014. At that time, Super Monkey had just been established, and he was invited to be a coach trainer. After two years of independent entrepreneurship, Wang He decided to officially join Super Monkey and become a partner in 2016.
"In the past, although I had entrepreneurial experience and had to do everything myself, the overall affairs involved were relatively few; after coming to Super Monkey, many things need to be further understood, and this company has shown a state of rapid development from the beginning."
Compared with some business leaders who like a sense of control, Tiaotiao more often plays the role of providing "emotional value". "She is a very energetic person who does not give practical guidance on work. More often, she shares her examples and feelings to convey energy to everyone, and most decisions will be left to each department to make." In the eyes of Cheng Yuanfeng, the head of the Innovation Business Center, the company is a huge energy field, and everyone injects energy into it. To a large extent, Tiaotiao's personal characteristics affect the style of the entire energy field.
Cheng Yuanfeng just graduated from school in 2018. Because a friend around him recommended this company, he went to the Super Monkey interview with a try-it-out mentality. Recalling the scene of the first interview at the company, Cheng Yuanfeng still remembers it vividly, "I felt 「this is very different from other gyms. There are no salespeople, no membership cards, and the working atmosphere of the employees is also very happy and easygoing」."
Looking back, Cheng Yuanfeng just caught up with the period of rapid store expansion.
Shortly after joining the company, he was successively sent to Chengdu, Chongqing, Hangzhou and other places as the person in charge, leading the team to open offline stores in major cities. "The company has a flat management structure, a lively atmosphere, and colleagues are very warm." Cheng Yuanfeng told Workplace Bonus that thanks to the energy transmitted by the "energy field", he quickly got on the right track of the business.
"At the beginning, everyone did not have much operational experience, but they were full of energy and enthusiasm," Cheng Yuanfeng recalled the days when the store in Chengdu was first opened. The partners around him were valuable for their pure original intention: "On the Lantern Festival of one year, our store spontaneously held some small activities, cooked hot glutinous rice balls for every user who came to the store that day, and invited them to write couplets together - no one at the headquarters told us to do this."
This kind of sincerity that is without skill but full of affection and dares to be cost-free when facing users has accelerated the word-of-mouth spread of Super Monkey among users. "Previously, for an event called 'Black or White', just because a few users were dissatisfied, the company decided to refund all the course fees and give away cultural shirts for free." Cheng Yuanfeng disclosed to Workplace Bonus that 「although this matter caused a certain loss in profits, the company internally agreed that this is in line with the company's values」.
Zhou Ye, the head of human resources who joined in 2020, was also attracted by the company culture. She told Workplace Bonus that the reason why she decided to join Super Monkey was that she was infected by a speech video of Tiaotiao at Hundun University. She still remembers a detail in a video: "In an voting activity organized before the New Year, users scrambled to vote and even confronted each other. As the initiator of this activity, the company decided to send an Apple Watch to every affected user, 「even though it was the last fund in the company's account at that time, it also hoped to maintain the principle of fairness.」"
Workplace Bonus found that several interviewees have experienced a similar core of values, especially employees like Wang He and Cheng Yuanfeng who entered the company earlier - the early team was full of energy, and the starting point of doing things was often very simple, and they rarely asked why, 「they just did it first」. We believe that this value will extend in reverse from the attitude of the company's employees towards users, and in turn affect the office environment in which the employees are located.
Cheng Yuanfeng agrees with this statement, and "warmth" is indeed concretized within the workplace of Super Monkey: "During the epidemic, after Chongqing closed the city, the company 'packed up' all employees. In addition to coaches, even the cleaning aunt was transferred to Chengdu together, thus ensuring everyone's safety and work."
When visiting the Super Monkey office, we saw that the early company's value slogan was still posted on the wall: Warmth, Vitality, Tenacity, Fairness, Justice, Honesty.
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
No dividend in the fitness industry?
In China, fitness, which is known as "anti-human nature", is a business with slow and difficult development. The penetration rate of the fitness population in the United States is close to 30%, while in China it is only 3% [1]. Cheng Yuanfeng admits, "There is no dividend in the fitness industry."
Since 2020, affected by the epidemic, the traditional fitness industry has suffered a severe impact, and many offline gyms have closed down. In 2023, the market size of gyms in China is about 67.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.02%, and 20% of gyms have disappeared. The fitness brand Space, known as the "ceiling of group classes", closed its stores and liquidated in May, and Keep's offline sports space Keepland has also been significantly reduced. The industry as a whole shows a contracting trend.
In the difficult environment, how to find a way to survive is a problem that every fitness brand needs to think about, and Super Monkey is no exception. When talking about the competitive barrier of Super Monkey, Wang He said, "The richness of the courses, the quality of the courses, and the quality of the coaching team are the barriers at this stage."
Whether or not they understand the operating model of Super Monkey, most people have heard the saying that "coaches are the core assets".
Even in the face of the relatively negative discussion about the "fandomization" of coaches and trainees, 「Super Monkey never avoids emphasizing the importance of coaches」. "The classrooms where coaches teach are finely decorated, unlike most fitness stores that put the fitness classrooms in the corner, we arrange them in the center of the store, so that they can really be seen and have a stronger sense of value identity." Wang He disclosed to Workplace Bonus that in the future, they will continue to invest to help coaches grow.
"At Super Monkey, the class fee is closely linked to the ability. If the coach teaches well, more people are willing to take his classes, and consequently is a higher salary level and grade." Wang He told Workplace Bonus that the ability mentioned here not only refers to professional ability, but also includes the ability to communicate with users.
"We insist on putting the user first, 「all coaches must take the user experience and feedback as the assessment indicators.」" As the head of coach training, Wang He attaches great importance to the quality of the coaching team, "「focus on cultivating the quality, speech, and temperament of coaches to enhance their personal charm」", and this is also one of the core advantages he believes Super Monkey has.
"We will also require coaches to communicate more with users to bring users a better physical sensation." Wang He said that he hopes that the coaches of Super Monkey can have more connections with users and form their own communities.
In recent years, the news of "star coaches leaving" has once caused a heated discussion, and many people are worried about it. After all, the loss of core assets is a major blow to any enterprise. In this regard, Wang He analyzed to Workplace Bonus: The departure of star coaches currently has little overall impact on Super Monkey. Although users feel regret in the short term, in the long term, 「it is still the cultural atmosphere and energy field of Super Monkey that can retain users.」 "I also hope that coaches will adhere to professional ethics and be able to do a good job for a long time, rather than just treating this job as a dispensable part-time job." Wang He added.
[1] Zhiyanzhan: "2024-2030 China Fitness Equipment Industry Market Outlook and Investment Planning Analysis Report"
About 「Super Monkey」, you can also learn these ahead of other job seekers
● Workplace Bonus Factory Visit to 「Super Monkey」
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)
