Walking into ANIMO’s three gyms in Brussels, you could be anywhere from a trendy café to a concept store to a millionaire’s apartment. And they have all the hipster mainstays necessary to draw a younger crowd — after sweating it out with a contact, you can share an oat milk flat white or a protein smoothie with added collagen or artisanal nut butter.
Founders Alexandre de Vaucleroy and Antoine Derom, both 31, are expecting to take this to the next level when they open their new gym near Parc du Cinquantenaire, in the heart of Brussels’ European quarter, in early 2025. As well as an exercise space the new gym will have a spa, restaurant, café and a meeting room which can be rented out for corporate events.
De Vaucleroy described the future gym’s vibe as a “hybrid between a hotel lobby and a co-working space.” An imaginary future member could be “going to the gym at 7 a.m., working out for an hour and then maybe meeting someone for breakfast over an acai bowl in the social space and then doing his emails for an hour before heading to the office,” Derom said.
The founders wanted the space to be social — even down to gym-goers taking ice baths together to recover after a workout.
“We have three ice baths and you’re sitting next to one another. We want people to do it together and again, make it into a social experience,” de Vaucleroy said.
Getting them hooked
Sanne Pieters, a PhD researcher at KU Leuven investigating the link between beauty and inequality, thinks the reason “sweatworking” is so effective is because “people assume that, by going to high-end gyms, they would meet like-minded people.”
