Pfitzenmeier (company)

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Pfitzenmeier
legal form Group of companies
founding 1978
Seat Schwetzingen
management Werner Pfitzenmeier
Number of employees 1,200 (2009)
sales 60 million euros (2016)
Branch Fitness company
Website pfitzenmeier-unternehmensgruppe.de

Pfitzenmeier is a German fitness company from Schwetzingen .

Studio in Schwetzingen

history

The company was founded in 1978 by Werner Pfitzenmeier (born November 12, 1959). He comes from a family of gymnasts who had their origins in Oftersheim , where his great-grandfather Jakob Pfitzenmeier, master butcher and host of the “Zum Adler” inn provided the village youth with an adjoining room for gymnastics . His great-uncle Hermann Pfitzenmeier, father of the famous gymnast Werner Pfitzenmeier († 1944), and his grandfather Kurt Pfitzenmeier, were also active as gymnasts in the village. The same applied to his father Uli Pfitzenmeier, who now lives in Philippsburg , who did gymnastics for TV Schwetzingen in 1864 , and was fifth in the 1959/60 winner of the Baden youth championships and the German gymnastics championships in Ravensburg .

Werner Pfitzenmeier, which began in old family tradition as a child with the exercise, began as a teenager with martial arts and enthusiastic about shortly afterwards with a friend for weight training . In 1977 he began to train with friends in his parents' garage, outdoors and then in the laundry room with makeshift barbells made from building materials and fitness equipment made from scrap parts .

Since the number of his fellow trainers had increased to 80 after a year and money was required for more training equipment, the 16-year-old pastry apprentice decided to charge membership fees and opened his first in the roughly 60 m² basement of his parents' house in the autumn of 1978 Gym. As a freshly baked pastry chef, the 17-year-old Pfitzenmeier traveled with a group to the United States , where he met Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time in California . With the aim of becoming a German bodybuilding master and developing the best fitness studio in Germany, he quit his job as a pastry chef on his return. In 1976, at the age of 17, he also took part in the "Best Build Athlete" event organized by the Association of German Dumbbell Athletes (VDH) in Essen , where he was penultimate among 14 participants. In the following years he was able to improve continuously by intensifying his training and in 1980 he became the German DBFV junior champion in bodybuilding in class I and overall winner ("Mr. Germany jr.") In Munich . In the junior class he also became vice world champion in South Africa and together with Anja Langer IFBB vice world champion in 1984 in Madrid .

At the age of 24, he left active performance training and devoted himself to further building up his company. As early as 1979 he had relocated 200 m² of space with his studio in Schwetzinger Kronenstrasse and then moved again to Scheffelstrasse in 1981 , where an area of ​​1,000 m² was available for his main business. In 1983 he also founded the International Fitness and Aerobic Academy (IFAA) for training courses, education and specialist events. At the age of 24 he already had a total of seven systems and registered several thousand members. He constantly expanded the training offer for other target groups. In 1986 he opened a 2000 m² fitness park in Schwetzingen on Essener Strasse . Further facilities of the corporate group (easy Fit GmbH, Venice Beach Schwetzingen GmbH, Fit Base Heidelberg GmbH etc.) followed, including the MediFit health center opened in 2006 at the new measuring station in Schwetzingen.

In 2009 the group of companies had around 20 plants in the Rhine-Neckar region and 1,200 employees. On December 2nd, 2011 Werner Pfitzenmeier was awarded the “body LIFE Lifetime Award 2011” for his life's work by the body LIFE magazine ; The laudator was the national soccer coach Jogi Löw .

In 2015 Pfitzenmeier had 34 branches and 105,000 members. In 2016, the company was ranked sixth among the ten largest fitness chains in Germany and generated sales of 60 million euros. In 2018, Pfitzenmeier had 44 branches in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, the Vorderpfalz and Bergstrasse and 150,000 members. On August 1, 2018, Pfitzenmeier also took over the Mannheim studios Sportomed Fitness and HFC from Marcus Kuhl .

Other well-known company employees

Stephan Pfitzenmeier (born April 28, 1969), a cousin of the company's founder, heads the company's expansion and business networking department. He is a trained physiotherapist and studied manager, was also branch manager at SV Waldhof Mannheim until 2016 and has also been CEO and managing director of the Migros subsidiary INLINE Unternehmensberatung für Fitness- und Wellnessanlagen GmbH since November 2017 , which also became Injoy Quality Cooperation GmbH in the mid-2010s take over.

literature

  • Olaf Streng: Personnel development in the fitness and wellness industry. An operational pedagogical consideration using the example of the Pfitzenmeier group of companies , Hamburg 2009. ISBN 978-3-8366-7329-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Round birthday: Big party for Fitness Pope Pfitzenmeier Fifty - and full of ideas. Schwetzinger Zeitung, November 18, 2009.
  2. ↑ a b Schwetzingen: Pfitzenmeier among the ten largest fitness studios in Germany , rheinpfalz.de, April 5, 2017
  3. ↑ a b Andreas Lin: The gymnasium in the "Adler" was the cradle. Schwetzinger Zeitung, April 27, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b Heinz-Dieter Schmidt: Once a stronghold of bodybuilders. Schwetzinger Zeitung, May 12, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b c d e 40 years of Pfitzenmeier. Delta squared, May 1, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b Werner Pfitzenmeier. About Arnold Schwarzenegger, asparagus and life as a fitness luminary. bodLIFE 11/2009, pp. 40-41.
  7. ↑ German bodybuilding masters DBKV / DBFV e. V. - Junior class winner. In: Honor plaques class winners. DBFV e. V.
  8. ↑ Mr.Germany Jr. German champion. In: Panels of honor overall winner. DBFV e. V.
  9. ↑ a b c company history. pfitzenmeier.de; accessed on September 5, 2018.
  10. ↑ body LIFE Awards 2011. body LIFE, December 5, 2011.
  11. ↑ More and more Germans are training at Pfitzenmeier & Co. Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, February 24, 2015.
  12. ↑ Business life - meeting of medium-sized companies at Pfitzenmeier. "It takes trust and courage in your own strengths" . Schwetzinger Zeitung, June 9, 2017.
  13. ↑ Office as branch manager resigned SV Waldhof - Pfitzenmeier resigns. Mannheimer Morgen, June 14, 2016.
  14. ↑ Stephan Pfitzenmeier becomes the new CEO and Managing Director. INLINE Management Consulting, November 2, 2017.