After experiencing a turn-over of over £100,000 and 13,000 customers in its first year, Studio Tarw, Wales’ first luxury class-only studio announces its plans for expansion to a second site in Wales.
The Cardiff city-centre based studio, which was established in late July 2024 by founder Alex Bull, is not only planning to expand into Wales’ second biggest city Swansea, but it is also launching a round of investor funding to help support its growth plans.
Studio Tarw will formally invite investor funding on the anniversary of its launch on the 27th of July, and the investor strategy will mirror that of its first business in Cardiff, seeking funding from individual investors and crowd funding.
In its first 12 months, Studio Tarw has welcomed over 1,400 individuals and achieved a 71% repeat customer rate—outperforming the boutique fitness industry average of 60% —despite being a brand-new concept in a previously untouched area. This means that the studio has accommodated over 13,000 customers in just 12 months.
Studio Tarw offers a mix of spin, bootcamp, weights, triathlon and hot yoga or pilates classes and more than 1000 of its customers returned to the gym more than once.
Studio Tarw founder Alex Bull,35, said: “We’ve built Studio Tarw for longevity. In year one, we invested in building a brand-new concept from scratch in an untouched market with an intentionally lean launch, reinvesting everything back into growth.
“Now we’re looking at expansion to our second site, which was always the plan, we’ve modelled conservatively to prioritise long-term sustainability over short-term hype — and it’s working. This is a solid, data-driven, community-rooted studio with clear profitability, high retention, and strong future margins. And there’s nowhere like us in Cardiff or Swansea.”
The UK fitness industry is rapidly growing and last year was valued at approximately £2.8 billion, with that figure set to climb by another 1.5% by the end of the financial year. With boutique studios like Studio Tarw thriving in cities like London where there are over 300 boutique luxury gyms.
Studio Tarw’s roster of instructors include some of Cardiff and surrounds’ most elite trainers. The founder, Alex Bull’s career began in luxury gyms and studios in London, where she established and led teams at Third Space and Orange Theory. Other trainers have held previous positions at London’s celebrity favourite spin studio Psycle, have placed tenth in the World IronMan championships and a coach from Cariff City FC.
For
Moving from London in 2020, Alex Bull began the process of setting up Studio Tarw, (Tarw means bull in Welsh), initially as an online venture with personal training, running plans and a triathlon club. In August of 2023, and just three weeks before her first baby was due, Alex found the perfect city-centre venue on Windsor Street, in reaching distance of Cardiff University and its students – one of its key demographics. Studio Tarw was launched 11 months later, with Alex’s first child on her hip on 27th July.
A recent poll by UK Active shows that a record 11.5m people now have gym memberships, up 1.6m on 2022, but the boom is down to younger people, with Gen-Z audiences trading in nights out for early mornings at the gym. The central location, near students and city centre workers, the studio’s second key target customers was too good to turn down. Despite being eight months pregnant at the time, Alex decided to take the leap. Alex opened the doors to Studio Tarw ten months later with a 10-month-old on her hip, putting the final touches to the studio’s logo with seconds to go.
“Tarw’s motto is ‘You can do hard things’ and I knew it would be hard, and it was, but it was also 100% worth it. The community we’ve built is something special, we’re inclusive and supportive and the community reflect that right back at us. That’s why we’re choosing now to launch our new funding round for the second site. It’s the right time for us as a business and a community. So, despite being pregnant again, we’re all guns blazing for the second site and looking forward to speaking with investors over the next few months. Plus, we are SEIS registered so any business that invests get 50% of their initial investment off their tax bill.”
