Business Spotlight: Fashionably Fit

Darby Brownfield had no long-held dreams to become a fitness instructor, let alone a business owner.

But a year into running Physique Fitness LLC at 326 N. Boonville Ave., the former ironworker says she is in her element. Brownfield worked for six years in her dad’s Springfield-based company, Links Steel Erectors LLC, before the recession prompted a move in an unexpected direction.

“August is the beginning of my fourth year,” she says of her fitness-training career, which started after she joined a gym as ironwork construction became scarce.  

She trained at the now-defunct Balance Fitness Studio LLC, where she earned a teaching certification through the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America.

Brownfield managed the studio for a time and parlayed that experience into Physique Fitness, which offers six group classes set to music: Barre Physique, The Jam, Hot Barre, Pound, Thighs & Assets and Physique TRX – shorthand for total body resistance exercise. She says the barre classes, in a heated room, are the most popular and represent a blend of ballet, yoga and Pilates.

Designed to burn calories in a low-impact way, Brownfield says classes stray from more aggressive approaches at popular fitness options, such as CrossFit. Local competitors include The BodySmith and Spark Barre. Brownfield says 90 percent of her roughly 280 clients are female. About 130 monthly members pay $80 for an annual commitment or $95 for a three-month sign-up. Single classes range from a $6.50 happy hour evening session to a 10-class pass for $105.

“I don’t want anyone to say, ‘Oh, this is too fancy. I can’t come here,’” she says, noting 150 clients buy the 10-class passes.

Brownfield, the wife of Dapper barber club owner Sean Brownfield, has 11 employees – nine instructors, a director and a child care provider. She declined to disclose first-year revenue, but says she is projecting 20 percent growth in her second year.

About 10 percent of revenue comes from merchandise sales: leggings, T-shirts and water bottles. New York-based apparel company Pheel is a top seller, and Pheel co-owner Lainie Goldstein says Physique Fitness spent about $4,000 on wholesale purchases in the past year.  

“Somebody walked into her fitness studio with Pheel on, and she raved about it, so Darby contacted us through email and wanted to order,” Goldstein says.

With fabric from Brazil and apparel made in the U.S., the co-owner of the 3-year-old company says Physique Fitness is its only retail seller in the Ozarks.

“Our clothing is fashionable to wear to the gym or to the studio and after – throughout your day,” she says. “If you sweat, it dries up relatively quickly – very technical fabrics.”

Retired physician Robert Carrolla owns the 125-year-old Gottfried Furniture Co. building north of Park Central Square, and he says Brownfield has helped bring life to the block since leasing the roughly 5,000-square-foot first floor and basement. He says the first three months were free, but she pays $2,000 a month now.

“The original plan was to have a restaurant in there. It’s the perfect space for that, but it never happened,” Carrolla says of the three-story, six-loft building renovated in 2006.

Though a restaurant tenant nearly signed a couple of times, it sat empty two years before Sean Brownfield expressed an interest for his downtown barbershop concept.

“He saw it and said, ‘This is exactly what I want. I want to take it,’” Carrolla says. “But then, I think he was running into some funding issues for his venture because the Dapper was brand new. In the end, he said he just couldn’t swing it, but his wife said, ‘I want the space.’”

Carrolla says the Brownfields have made their own investments in the property, for new flooring and a second studio in the basement. Darby Brownfield says she started with a $50,000 small-business loan.

“That parking lot usually had junk cars and abandoned vehicles, and then suddenly, it had Mercedes, Audis, BMWs,” Carrolla says. “She has a knack of attracting the upwardly mobile wife, who wants to stay in shape.”

Now, franchising Physique Fitness is on Brownfield’s mind.

“She told me she’d been franchising this in four years,” Carrolla says. “And everything she’s told me, she’s done.”