From a single gym in Melton, Victoria, to Australia's fastest-growing boxing fitness franchise — Hitfit's story is one of vision, discipline, and knowing when to bring in the right partners to carry a brand further than any one person can.
New Hitfit locations are now reporting over 500 members on launch. The flagship in Melton has surpassed 1,000 members. The first franchise location in Hoppers Crossing hit over 750. Both generate seven-figure annual revenues. And the network keeps growing.
For fitness business owners thinking about their next location — or wondering how to make their current one run better — there's a lot to learn from how Darcy Ellis built this.
The Brand Behind the Gloves
Hitfit didn't start as a franchise concept. It started as a mission. Darcy Ellis, son of five-time world boxing champion Lester Ellis, opened the first Hitfit gym in Melton, Victoria in May 2019 with a straightforward belief: boxing is for everyone. Not just fighters. Not just athletes. Everyone.
"Hitfit effectively is the boxing gym for everyone," Darcy explains.
"We exist to transform as many lives as possible through the vehicle of boxing and help people awaken their inner fighter. It doesn't matter your level of experience, doesn't matter your shape or your size — you come here, you feel a part of the family, and you get to improve yourself a little bit every single day."
That positioning — inclusive, community-first, transformation-focused — struck a chord quickly. Within 18 months of franchising, Hitfit had expanded to six locations across Victoria and Queensland, with franchisees generating seven-figure revenues and new sites launching with pre-built communities that most gym owners spend years trying to grow.
With results like these, territories are moving fast — Hitfit is on track to have ten or more locations open by the end of the year.
But getting there required more than a great product and a compelling story.
It required a system. And it required the right partners to build it.
The Wall Every Growing Gym Hits
Ask any fitness business owner what it felt like to run their first location and the answer is almost always the same: exhausting, but manageable. You're everywhere. You know every coach, every member, every session. Problems get solved on the fly because you're on the floor.
Then you start thinking about a second location. And everything changes.
Darcy knows this feeling well.
"Initially in the business, I was the person doing everything and wearing a lot of hats. And then, yeah, obviously the business grows and you get to a point where you realize you can't be doing everything."
One of those responsibilities was running classes. And when Darcy was doing it himself, there was no formal structure in place. Workouts were whatever felt right that day. That's fine when you're the only one delivering them. The moment you step back — or want to open a new location — it becomes a problem.
"Up until that point, there was no real structure in place. It was just me doing whatever I felt like on that particular day."
This is the wall that stops most fitness businesses from scaling. It's not capital. It's not demand. It's the absence of repeatable systems.
The Real Cost of Trying to Build It Yourself
When fitness operators hit this wall, the tempting answer is to build something custom. A proprietary system, a bespoke platform, a tech solution tailored exactly to how you run your sessions. After all, no one knows your brand better than you do.
But here's what that path actually looks like: diverted capital. Diverted attention. Months — sometimes years — spent managing developers, testing builds, and troubleshooting features while your competitors are opening their third location. And at the end of it, you've built a product that solves one gym's problems, not a platform that has been tested and refined across hundreds of fitness businesses around the world.
The smartest operators in the fitness industry have worked this out. They're not trying to become software companies. They're partnering with platforms that do one thing exceptionally well, so they can stay focused on what they do exceptionally well — building communities, developing coaches, and growing their brand.
Darcy understood this. As Hitfit scaled, the question wasn't can we build something ourselves? It was who is already doing this better than anyone in the world, and how do we get them on our team?
That's the mindset that separates a gym owner from a franchise founder.
How CloudFit Became a Key Tech Partner in Hitfit's Growth
Hitfit's relationship with CloudFit didn't come from a sales pitch. It came from necessity.
"Our relationship with CloudFit pretty much came out of necessity," Darcy says. "As we started to grow in scale, we realized it was critical to find the right tech partners."
CloudFit is a workout display and workout management platform built specifically for group fitness businesses. At its core, it turns your programming into a fully digital, fully branded experience that runs on screens across your gym floor — removing any chance of a session being left to chance, a trainer's memory, or the energy of whoever happens to be coaching that day. Every workout is structured, visible, and delivered consistently.
For Hitfit, the impact was immediate.
"The biggest problem CloudFit solves for us is that systemization across the board and the consistency of our sessions."
That word — consistency — is worth sitting with. In a single-location gym, consistency is something you can manage through presence. In a multi-location franchise, consistency is the product. It's what members pay for when they trust that any Hitfit gym, in any suburb, will deliver the same quality session. It's what franchise partners buy into when they invest in your brand. And it's what makes a new location credible from week one — before it's built its own reputation, it's already backed by a system that works.
CloudFit handles the workout infrastructure so Darcy's team can handle everything else. That's what a good tech partnership looks like — not a tool you manage, but a platform that runs reliably in the background while your business grows in the foreground.
Freeing Your Coaches to Actually Coach
There's a benefit to getting your session delivery right that most gym owners don't fully anticipate until they experience it — and it might be the most commercially important one.
When your coaches aren't carrying the mental load of the session — holding the structure in their head, running through the sequence, managing timing while also trying to connect with members — they're free to do what they actually signed up for.
Build relationships. Correct form. Celebrate progress. Push people harder than they'd push themselves.
Darcy speaks directly to this shift.
"The biggest thing for us, because our sessions are trainer-led, it allows our trainers to spend more time with the actual members and support them as opposed to being bogged down with demonstration."
This is where retention lives. Members don't keep their memberships because the session ran to time. They keep them because a coach remembered their name, noticed their improvement, and cared enough to push them. That kind of coaching is only possible when the platform handles the structure and the coach handles the people.
CloudFit takes the operational weight off the coach's shoulders. What's left is the human work — and the human work is what builds loyalty.
Loyalty is retention. Retention is revenue. Revenue is what funds the next location.
The Franchise Vision: Same Experience, Every Location
When Darcy talks about where Hitfit is going, the ambition is clear.
"When we first opened, the goal was just to have one gym, and at that time I just wanted to make a living doing something that I loved. And then, about five or six months in, I'm like — you know what, I really, really like this, and it'd be pretty cool to be able to have this boxing gym in communities all over Australia."
That vision is now being realised across Victoria and Queensland — with more locations on the way. But the only way that vision holds together is if the experience travels.
"Effectively what we want is our members to experience the same session no matter what location they go to."
CloudFit is a key part of what makes that possible. Workouts built centrally. Programming distributed across all locations. The same branded visuals, the same movement cues, the same session structure — whether a member walks into the Melton flagship or a franchise gym in Queensland.
For any fitness business operator thinking seriously about franchising, this is the core challenge: you can't franchise a personality. You can't bottle the energy of a single great coach and send it to five cities. What you can do is build the systems, processes, and technology stack that let your brand perform consistently regardless of which location, which coach, or which day of the week.
"Effectively, our business couldn't run without CloudFit."
That's a founder who has built something real — speaking plainly about the role a trusted tech partner plays in keeping it running.
What This Means for Your Fitness Business
Hitfit's story is specific to boxing. But the lesson it carries applies to every gym format — functional training, HIIT, strength and conditioning, Pilates, martial arts.
The fitness businesses that are growing right now — adding locations, attracting franchise partners, retaining members at a high level — aren't trying to solve every problem themselves. They're building a network of trusted partners, suppliers, and platforms that each do their part exceptionally well. CloudFit is one piece of that picture. But it's a piece that removes an enormous amount of operational friction and puts you back in control of the thing that actually matters: the experience your members have every single day.
If you're at that inflection point — running one location well and wanting to know how to grow without it falling apart — the question Darcy asked is the right place to start.
Who are the right tech partners for where we want to go?
Watch Darcy Tell His Story
What's Next?
Ready to bring CloudFit into your gym's growth stack?
Whether you're running one location or laying the groundwork for many, CloudFit gives you the tools to digitize your workouts, standardize your sessions, reduce the operational load on your coaches, and deliver a consistent premium experience to every member — every class, every location.
Interested in owning a Hitfit franchise?
Hitfit is Australia's fastest-growing boxing fitness franchise — with a proven model, a passionate community, and the operational infrastructure to back you up from day one. New locations are opening with 500+ members and a tech stack already in place. If you're a fitness enthusiast with a business mindset and a drive to build something meaningful in your community, the Hitfit franchise opportunity is worth a serious look.
👉 Learn more about the Hitfit franchise opportunity
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