Team
IRINA S. RAZUMOVA, President of Planet Fitness Company
President of the Planet Fitness Company Irina S. Razumova is the pioneer of the Russian fitness industry and of the rise of fitness culture in this country. Under her guidance in 1990 the first fitness club in the territory of the former USSR was opened in St. Petersburg. She was capable of not only adapting Western standards of the “health” business to the Russian market, but also managed to create a chain of democratic and affordable fitness clubs “from scratch”.
Irina S. Razumova was born in Moscow to a family of circus performers. She graduated from the department of Romance and Germanic languages of the philological faculty of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1974 she immigrated to Sweden.
In 1988 Irina S. Razumova presented her business plan on the opening of the first commercial club to the President of World Class International Ulf Bengston, founder of a chain of fitness clubs in Scandinavia. In 1989 the negotiations began on the creation of the joint enterprise “World Class – Leningrad”, the result of which was the partnership with the cooperative society “Tonus” (its General Director is the business partner of Razumova, Olympic champion Eugene Kulikov). The joint venture realized the construction project and in November 1990 opened the first Russian fitness club, which was World Class on Kamennoostrovsky Avenue.
After opening the club in St. Petersburg, Moscow projects followed. In 1992 World Class International concluded a license agreement with Moscow Company CJSC “Biocrat”, and the result of that collaboration was the first fitness club in the capital city – World Class on Zhitnaya Street. The business was intended for an audience with lots of disposable income. However, the orientation exclusively for the premium segment of fitness market did not seem a perspective one to Irina S. Razumova. She saw the future of the industry in mass fitness services affordable for various groups of the population. “The health is not a privilege of people with high incomes, but the right of everyone,” – that was her vision of the future of the fitness industry. The new business partner in the realization of that idea was the American company Fitness Holding Worldwide possessing the world sports chain of 24 Hour Fitness. In 1997 in St. Petersburg the re-branding of World Class clubs (Grand Hotel Europe, Ozerki, Nevsky Palace) was carried out: projects started functioning under the Planet Fitness brand. In Moscow there appeared some clubs of the chain – on Malaya Dmitrovka Street in the building of the Lenkom Theatre, on Sokolniki in Korolenko Street and in Minskaya Street in the residential complex “Golden Keys”.
Today the head of the largest chain of sports and recreational clubs lives simultaneously in two cities and in two countries by making regular trips to her homes in Moscow Region and in Stockholm. She likes traveling and in her leisure time she writes books.
Marianna Maslennikova, Vice President of Planet Fitness Company
When she left competitive sports, Marianna Maslennikova started her career as a manager of the first USSR fitness club. For a long time, she was the author and presenter of many programs on main TV channels, and she also was a health and fitness columnist in several leading media.
Marianna Maslennikova holds office as Vice President of the fitness club network Planet Fitness since 1997 when the company was founded. At the same time, she has been President of the All-Russian Federation of Sports and Health Aerobics, accredited by the Russian Federal Agency for Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism, since 2001.
In her position, Marianna Yevgenievna takes an active part in the popularization of such kinds of sports as sports aerobics, by organizing International Championships in this kind of sport at the highest international level.
