The self-made millionaire Rainer Schaller, who died in a plane crash, was a master of marketing. He moved out of Würzburg and created the largest fitness chain in the world. But his name also remains associated with the Love Parade disaster in 2010.
A life for business and sport: McFit founder Rainer Schaller poses in May 2020 in a Cologne gym belonging to his own chain.
Rainer Schaller was never at a loss for a good marketing idea: he once hired Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, who are very popular in Germany, as testimonials for his sports studio chain McFit, hired the star designer Michael Michalsky to design home-of-fitness studios with loft character or bought a McFit All-Stars football match against FC Bayern for one million euros in aid of the “Ein Herz für Kinder” campaign. Around 50,000 spectators came to the arena at Schalke for the event. The effort has usually paid off – in just over twenty years, Schaller created a global fitness studio empire.
Discount gyms without wellness
When he founded his first studio in 1997, the native Franconian started with the clever slogan “Now also in Würzburg” – and thus suggested that it was the new branch of a possibly large American chain. The sports fan had previously built a small gym for himself, in which he also had buddies train for a few marks. The idea was born. His later business concept of a 24-hour discount fitness studio without wellness worked brilliantly. The “Handelsblatt” once wrote disrespectfully of “cheap studios for bouncers and H&M saleswomen”.
Soon, Schaller opened more branches with the banana as a mascot in the logo. In 2000, with a studio each in Bochum and Oberhausen, the leap from Bavaria to the Ruhr area, Germany’s proll stronghold, so to speak, took place. In 2002, the 1.92 meter man opened four studios at once in Berlin. In 2006, McFit already had over 400,000 members. “Simply founding successfully” could be said of Schaller, based on the McFit advertising slogan of the time “Simply look good”.
Schaller died in a plane crash on Saturday at the age of 53. He was on a private plane with his girlfriend, their two children and one other person that took off from Palenque, Mexico and was bound for Limón Airport in Costa Rica. The machine of the rather rare type Piaggio P.180 Avanti had disappeared from the radar on Friday evening (local time) around 25 miles from Limón. At that time the weather conditions were bad.
The pilot of the plane was Swiss
Debris, luggage and the bodies of an adult and a child have since been recovered by the authorities. The Minister for Public Security of Costa Rica also confirmed at the weekend that the passengers were German citizens. The pilot of the plane was Swiss.
Born in Bamberg, he was always an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word. After dropping out of school, he completed an apprenticeship as a retail salesman and took over his parents’ Edeka branches in his Franconian homeland. Of the four branches at the time, the parent company in Schlüsselfeld was still in his possession. The self-made millionaire showed that with a lot of enthusiasm, drive and good ideas, you can become rich and create an empire without a university degree. His company not only grew organically, but also through acquisitions, such as Fit 24 in 2007. Three years ago, Rainer Schaller’s fortune was estimated in the media at 250 million euros.
In 2019 he renamed the McFit Global Group to RSG Group (Rainer Schaller Global Group) and opened studios in Switzerland under the premium brand John Reed. A year later, the self-confessed Arnold Schwarzenegger fan acquired the American fitness chain Gold’s Gym, which was currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, for $100 million. This was founded in 1965 in Venice Beach, California, which had developed into the center of the global bodybuilder scene for a certain time.
Stampede at the Love Parade
Around 41,000 employees in 1,000 studios currently look after around 6.4 million members in 48 countries on all continents. The 21 brands also include two modeling agencies and a dietary supplement company. McFit is thus also the story of a small German company that has risen to become a global champion. The RSG is the largest fitness chain in the world.
But like every entrepreneur, Schaller also had to deal with setbacks. The flagship project “The Mirai”, with which he wanted to build the largest fitness temple in the world in Oberhausen and call it his own, failed, but this was mainly due to the corona pandemic, which hit all gym operators badly.
His most painful defeat is related to the Love Parade, which was modeled on the Zurich Street Parade. Schaller brought the buzzing techno event from Berlin to the Ruhr area in the mid-nineties, took over the management and invested several millions in the parade every year. He wanted to achieve a high profile with a small budget, Schaller later said. McFit immediately advertised being the main sponsor of the biggest party in the world. But in 2010 the party came to an abrupt end.
At the event in Duisburg, mass panic killed 21 people and injured over 650. As organizer and sponsor, Schaller was caught in the crossfire of the media, but was never prosecuted himself. In the same year he announced the end of the Love Parade. The catastrophe apparently did not harm the McFit brand and the further commercial success of Schaller. As far as is known, Schaller leaves behind a brother, the conductor Gerd Schaller.
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