New Liverpool fitness venture – Chipper – offers online training classes designed for homes, offices and gyms with blue chip clients already signed up. Tony McDonough reports

In January 2022 fitness entrepreneur Connor O’Brien opened a private gym in Liverpool city centre and now he has launched a new workplace wellness venture.

Chipper is starting with a six-figure investment and will offer exercise classes, nutrition plans, guided meditation and educational webinars. Connor says it is a business model designed to cater to a hybrid work environment.

It will provide businesses with a full suite of online training classes designed for home, office and commercial gym workouts, training programmes, nutrition plans and webinars, as well as yoga, pilates and meditation.

Connor decided to launch the venture after seeing clients at his Absolute Body Solutions (ABS) gyms in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds report feeling stressed out at work, and managers at businesses feeling concerned as to how to improve staff wellness.

He opened his latest ABS facility in Castle Street in Liverpool city centre in a £200,000 investment last year.

“Wellness begins at work,” said Connor. “Our work environment and the behaviour we exhibit at work has a huge effect on our daily lives and the version of ourselves we bring home to our families.

“The new hybrid work environment we’ve seen emerge in offices can mean that many of the ways companies would traditionally seek to foster team togetherness – and the wellness-related work perks they would normally offer to staff – are now redundant.”

“We’re offering companies a simple way to look after their employees and ensure they’re healthy, well and motivated.”

Companies pay Chipper a fee starting at £349 per month, and increasing depending on the size of the company. This allows all their firm’s employees access to Chipper’s online hub, full of classes and webinars.

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The classes and guidance come in follow-along videos and written articles.  Connor added: “The recruitment landscape is more competitive than it has ever been. Firms know that to retain staff, they need to offer solid benefits and a good working environment.”