2007-05-22 - Stéphane Quintal travaillera pour le Canadien Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot La Presse Stéphane Quintal vient de signer un nouveau contrat avec le Canadien de Montréal. Non, le défenseur format géant n`enfilera pas le chandail tricolore la saison prochaine. Il a plutôt signé un bail avec son ancienne équipe afin d`exploiter le centre d`entraînement du nouveau complexe d`entraînement du Canadien dans le quartier DIX30, à Brossard. Le centre d`entraînement -qui se nommera Mansfield Rive-Sud- ouvrira ses portes en novembre prochain. Comme Saku Koivu, Alex Kovalev et les autres joueurs du Tricolore auront leur propre salle d`entraînement privée, Stéphane Quintal aura plutôt comme clients des sportifs du dimanche. Il tentera notamment d`attirer les participants des ligues récréatives de hockey qui disputeront leurs matchs sur les deux patinoires du complexe. «Dans les ligues de garage, les gens arrivent cinq minutes avant leur match, dit Stéphane Quintal. Ils s`habillent et ils sautent sur la glace sans s`échauffer. Nous voulons leur faire prendre conscience de l`importance d`un bon réchauffement.» «Il faut faire au moins 20 minutes de vélo avant un match de hockey afin que le corps soit bien réchauffé. Nous voulons habituer les gens à arriver 45 minutes à l`avance, à monter au gym avant le match afin de se réchauffer et à y retourner après le match afin de bien s`étirer.» Une autre clientèle ciblée par l`ancien joueur du Canadien: les parents qui assisteront aux matchs de leurs enfants au complexe du DIX30. Comme les patinoires seront munies de caméras, les matchs seront diffusés en circuit fermé sur les télévisions du centre d`entraînement Mansfield Rive-Sud. «Les parents pourront regarder jouer leurs enfants tout en s`entraînant, dit Stéphane Quintal. Ils n`auront plus besoin de manger des frites dans les gradins.» Comme lorsqu`il était défenseur dans la LNH, Stéphane Quintal a décidé d`avoir un partenaire dans sa nouvelle aventure: l`homme d`affaires montréalais Leonard Schlemm, déjà propriétaire du Club Atwater et du Club Mansfield à Montréal. Si Stéphane Quintal est une vedette du hockey québécois, Leonard Schlemm l`est tout autant dans son milieu: les centres d`entraînement. En 1983, l`homme d`affaires montréalais a fondé 24 Hour Fitness, l`un des plus grands réseaux de centres d`entraînement du monde. Propriétaire de 800 centres d`entraînement, dont 600 aux États-Unis, 24 Hour Fitness a gagné en notoriété en s`associant à des vedettes sportives comme Lance Armstrong au Texas, Shaquille O`Neal à Miami, Magic Johnson à Los Angeles, Steve Nash à Vancouver et Andre Agassi à Las Vegas. Leonard Schlemm et Stéphane Quintal comptent s`inspirer de cette stratégie à Montréal. «Je vais être souvent au gym -je m`entraîne encore quatre ou cinq fois par semaine - mais nous n`allons pas faire la promotion autour de moi comme Leonard le faisait avec les autres athlètes, dit Stéphane Quintal. Je n`ai tout simplement pas la notoriété de ces gars-là!» Deux autres centres en vue Les deux partenaires sont aussi associés dans un centre d`entraînement de l`Ouest-de-l`Île, qu`ils ont sauvé de la faillite l`an dernier. Après l`inauguration de Mansfield Rive-Sud, ils examinent la possibilité d`ouvrir deux autres centres dans la région montréalaise. En plus d`avoir accès à leur centre de l`Ouest-de-l`Île, les abonnés du Mansfield Rive-Sud pourront aussi profiter des installations du Club Mansfield, le centre d`entraînement de Leonard Schlemm au centre-ville de Montréal. «Il s`agit d`une formule idéale pour les gens qui restent sur la Rive-Sud et qui travaillent à Montréal», dit Stéphane Quintal. Premier choix des Bruins de Boston en 1988, Stéphane Quintal a joué 16 saisons dans la LNH, dont sept avec le Canadien. Depuis sa retraite après le lock-out, il fait des affaires dans le milieu sportif mais aussi dans le milieu artistique. Il est copropriétaire de l`agence B612 Communications, qui gère la carrière des animateurs Sébastien Benoit, Virginie Coossa et Anne-Marie Withenshaw. 2008-05-20 - A fortune in fitness Leonard Schlemm helps people stay in shape. It`s made him one Montreal`s richest men PAUL DELEAN, The Gazette Published: Saturday, May 10 Fitness clubs have done wonders for Leonard Schlemm. At 55, he`s a marathon runner and elite cyclist as well as one of Montreal`s most prosperous and well-connected businessmen. While hardly a household name, Schlemm is big - very big - in the global fitness business. He co-founded the California-based 24 Hour Fitness chain, which has more than 400 locations around the world and annual revenue in excess of $1 billion. But it was luck, not zeal or vision, that brought the McGill commerce graduate into the industry initially. Working for a corporate consulting firm in San Francisco after completing his MBA at Harvard, Schlemm often was asked by clients about his own business background. "I really didn`t have any at that point." Thinking a small business of his own might provide some useful practical experience, he began looking for something to buy. That led him to a small, 5,000-square-foot club near work called 24-Hour Nautilus, whose owner had decided he`d really rather be in southern California. Schlemm, who had a membership there, and one of the club`s five employees, Mark Mastrov, teamed up to take it over in 1983, each investing $17,000. "I was very lucky with my initial partner," Schlemm said. "He turned out to be one of the best operations persons in the fitness industry." Mastrov says the two just hit it off during occasional conversations at the club. "We had good chemistry. I didn`t have a strong financial background, so he was a perfect fit for me. He`s a very easygoing, bright guy, and from the time we spent together, it felt right (to become partners). He`s a phenomenal listener, a very clear communicator with an amazing ability to highlight what the objectives are and what you`re trying to achieve. "In all the years we`ve been partners, I don`t think we`ve ever raised our voices or hung up on each other. We`ve never really had a big disagreement in anything we`ve done." The pivotal change they made to the business was ditching the pay-up-front membership model in favour of monthly dues. "The biggest single obstacle to getting people to join fitness clubs is price," Schlemm said. "In those days, it was common practice to sell three-year memberships and collect the money up-front. With the money in-hand, there was no incentive to make for an ongoing, positive experience for clients. And people who didn`t go often felt cheated. "We instituted monthly dues. There was no contract. You quit when you wanted. And we focused on the details, which you have to do in the fitness business. Clients were happy, and we had the recurring revenue stream we needed to cover fixed costs." Soon, they were snapping up many of their San Francisco competitors, then expanding across the U.S. and internationally with the chain they renamed 24 Hour Fitness. In 2005, private-equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. acquired a controlling interest in a deal that valued the business at $1.6-billion (U.S.). Co-founder Schlemm no longer participates in the day-to-day decision-making at 24 Hour Fitness, but remains the third-largest shareholder. He`s as busy as ever, though, with a variety of other businesses including Montreal`s Atwater and Mansfield Clubs, a fitness club on the West Island and another planned for the Montreal Canadiens` new training centre in Brossard, a 56-club chain in Russia and Ukraine called Planet Fitness, a chain in Germany with tennis star Steffi Graf as a partner, and a burgeoning Vancouver operation called the Steve Nash Sports Club. Oh, and he also is a major shareholder of software company in Quebec City called Myca Health, the largest shareholder in an employment-law service in San Francisco called Lawroom.com, and an investor in the private-equity group that recently bought Medisys, a provider of health-care and medical-imaging services. A native Montrealer, Schlemm returned to the city from the U.S. in 1991, even though it meant years of commuting to California. "It was a quality-of-life decision," said Schlemm, who married his U.S.-born wife, Sandra, in the Laurentians and came back annually for vacations. "If more people lived elsewhere for a while, they`d appreciate what they have here. It`s an exceedingly livable city, safe, with easy access, good schools, two languages and a fascinating blend of cultures. And there`s not a better place to raise a family (they have four children, ages 15 to 20)." Schlemm`s first major local purchase, the Atwater Club, was more an emotional investment than a profit-driven one, he said. He`d spent much of his youth at the historic private club, formerly known as the Montreal Badminton and Squash Club, and his father Leonard Sr., a former Canadian badminton and squash champion, was its longest-standing member. When the club ran into financial difficulties and its future grew uncertain, Schlemm made a purchase offer that the members accepted in 2002. He`s since sunk more than $7 million into the operation. "My goal is not to earn a financial return, just that the club support itself and be enticing for members." The Mansfield Club, an upscale, 50,000-square-foot fitness centre that opened in 2004 in the former Club Med building on Mansfield St. near Ste. Catherine, was initially imagined as a small, downtown affiliate of the Atwater Club. But when Schlemm toured the vacant building that once housed the Loew`s Theatre, he was dazzled by the architecture and layout. "We`d done a similar renovation with an old movie theatre in Spain, so I knew it was possible," he said. "And I kind of liked the idea of going where Club Med failed. In France, I negotiated three years for a chain of clubs owned by Vivendi that I thought I had, but which got sold three weeks later to Club Med. This was a kind of payback." Schlemm spent more than $5 million setting up the Mansfield Club, which now has more than 2,000 members. He has a five-year lease on the building with a purchase option that he`ll exercise in 2009. Schlemm is in the process of winding down his involvement in the Russian chain, Planet Fitness, which is being sold to a management group led by longtime minority partner Irina Razumova. Schlemm, Razumova and Mastrov started it on their own in 1997 when 24 Hour Fitness took a pass, considering the country too risky. "This was a country of 145 million people that back then had a single fitness centre. Russians are, by nature, very into sports, so we saw enormous potential. They`re also incredibly dedicated and hard-working," Schlemm said. "But it was a tough place to do business, by far the toughest I`ve experienced. There was really no legal system in place for real-estate law. You could think you were dealing with a building owner and find out later he didn`t own a building at all. "We had five clubs up and running by 1998, when the ruble devalued. At that point, we were paying in U.S. dollars and getting paid in devalued rubles. I thought we`d lost everything. Fortunately, Irina was able to renegotiate our loans, and when (Russian president Vladimir) Putin came in, things improved dramatically." These days, much of Schlemm`s time and attention is going into the Steve Nash Sports clubs, a private venture of Schlemm, Mastrov and Nash. It`s a concept that`s worked well over the years for 24 Hour Fitness: affiliating famous athletes and fitness centres, with each side putting up half the capital and splitting the profits in a market they choose together, Canadian-born basketball star Nash seemed a natural for the market in Phoenix, where he plays for the Phoenix Suns. Except that when it was pitched to him, Nash suggested doing it in his native British Columbia. The first club opened last summer in downtown Vancouver, two others are in the works, and Schlemm expects there`s probably room for a half-dozen more. Locally, Schlemm partnered with former Montreal Canadien Stéphane Quintal and two others in the Mansfield West club on the West Island, and they`re also associates in the 20,000-square-foot fitness centre that will be part of the Habs` training complex in Brossard and is due to open in December. "There`ll be cameras inside that will allow people to watch the Canadiens practice, or watch their kids play on the adjacent ice rinks, while they`re on the treadmill," Schlemm said. Montreal Canadiens president Pierre Boivin, who first became aware of Schlemm while chief executive of Weider Corp. in the early `90s and got to know him personally in recent years through philanthropic activities, says that for all his admirable success, "what I respect most is how discreet and generous he is. He`s a very strong community man, a generous supporter of many causes." When he isn`t out of town on business, Schlemm can often be found dining at DNA, the stylish Old Montreal restaurant where Sandra is a partner, working out at the Mansfield Club or taking an active role in local charities and non-profit organizations. To get away from it all, he heads for his salmon-fishing retreat on the Gaspé`s Cascapedia river, where he once hooked a 43-pounder. Looking back, Schlemm counts his blessings. "Starting with a small 5,000-square-foot club in June, 1983, Mark and I never anticipated we would build the largest chain of fitness centres in the world," he said. "We were lucky to be based in California, which was at the cutting edge of the fitness industry, and we were lucky to be in what has proven to be a fast-growing industry for the past 25 years. And I was particularly blessed to have Mark as a partner, as without a doubt, he is the most capable operator of fitness centres in the world." pdelean@thegazette.canwest.com © The Gazette (Montreal) 2008