Fitness expert runs a healthy business

Instructor turned entrepreneur focuses on studio work and balancing stress. -ST

Sun, Jun 06, 2010
The Straits Times

By Lorna Tan, Senior Correspondent

Last Wednesday, Mr Daniel Dittmar, owner of Focus Pilates, had his head shaved together with 15 of his clients to raise funds for children with cancer.

The event will kick-start this year's Hair For Hope charity drive organised by the Children's Cancer Foundation. It will be a special occasion for the Australian as his new Orchard studio, his second pilates centre, is celebrating its grand opening that day too.

A fitness instructor turned entrepreneur, Mr Dittmar, 34, came to Singapore in 2002. Back then, he had just completed a three-year stint at the luxury spa Chiva-Som in Hua Hin, Thailand, where he was a fitness manager, and was looking for work in a city.

He was asked by Singapore businesswoman Christina Ong, who was a client at Chiva-Som, to move here and manage her Shambhala Yoga Centre at Forum Galleria. He held the job for 18 months before he left in 2004 and joined Focus Pilates at Raffles Place as a senior pilates instructor.

During that time, he also set up a services firm, Corporate Health Initiative, which offered workplace health promotion programmes such as nutrition talks and exercise programmes with $30,000.

Three years later, he bought over Focus Pilates as well as the physiotherapy clinic that was operating there. He preferred not to disclose the price he paid for them, except to say it was a five-figure sum.

A strong believer in the benefits of pilates in sports conditioning and rehabilitation, he decided to integrate physiotherapy with pilates at his centre. This is a new concept here, but not in Australia where Mr Dittmar grew up.

Early this month, he invested more than $500,000 to set up his second centre at Tong Building in Orchard Road. At the same time, he is winding up his services firm.

Besides Focus Pilates, he has investments in his sister-in-law's kitchen design store in Hong Kong.

He graduated in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in applied science (human movement studies) from the Queensland University of Technology. He is married to Hong Kong citizen Bing Lam, 44, whom he met while working in Hua Hin.

Ms Lam handles the marketing and business development area of Focus Pilates. They became Singapore permanent residents in 2006. They have no children.

Q: Are you a spender or saver?

I rarely build up a large amount of cash. When I do, it is usually reinvested into my business, or in some other opportunity. By doing so, I am able to leverage on my dollars a lot better.

As a rule, I don't pay myself a high salary as I'd rather leave the money in the business and draw out dividends or directors' fees if needed. When I was working for other people, I would regularly save 25 per cent of my income.

Q: How much do you charge to your credit cards every month?

My wife and I are not big spenders and we are not really into gadgets and accessories.

We have a lot more interest in spending on growing our businesses which we have a lot of fun doing. So spending is more on living and balancing stress and we use our credit cards only when necessary.

I have two personal credit cards and one corporate card. Our bills amount to about $1,000-$2,000, which we always pay off in full each month. We need about $600 a week.

Q: What financial planning have you done for yourself?

We haven't done a lot of structured planning, although we plan to go more into real estate over the next few years, either here or in Australia. We don't really invest in insurance schemes as we get far greater return on our business investment.

For now, our investment is mainly in our businesses, Focus Pilates here in Singapore, and Bonkuchen, which provides consultation in kitchen design and installation in Hong Kong. Bing and I invested a five-digit sum to buy over Focus Pilates and another sum of over $500,000 to set up the Orchard centre. Currently, we have four physiotherapists and nine staff members. The firm was profitable from 2008 and it doubled its revenue last year.

In 2007, we invested $60,000 in Bonkuchen. It is managed by Bing's sister and is just starting to be profitable. Together with my wife, we had done a little shares trading but nothing substantial. We liquidated our shares portfolio about 18 months ago when the shares were heading south. Fortunately, we broke even. The other reason was that we didn't have the time to monitor the market.

Q: Moneywise, what were your growing-up years like?

There were four children in my family and I was the third child. I have two older brothers so I got some hand-me-downs like school uniforms. My father was a car mechanic and my mother was a housewife. They separated when I was 18.

Before the separation, we lived in a trailer for some years before my father saved enough to build a five-bedroom house on 2ha of land in Mount Burrell in northern New South Wales near the Gold Coast.

I developed a fear of not having money, and perhaps that helped me to develop a drive to do well. During my university days, I worked part-time at a supermarket to support myself. I also worked at Wesley Hospital in a rehabilitative pilates programme. This was when I first came across pilates equipment and learnt pilates there.

Q: How did you get interested in investing?

I guess my interest as an entrepreneur grew during my three-year stint at Chiva-Som.

I came to know a lot of entrepreneurs, extremely successful executives, royalty and movie stars. I realised that there are a lot of opportunities out there and anything is possible. I also saw the effects of overworking on executives and how much value they placed on their health, and therefore the boom that must come in health and lifestyle products and services.

Q: What property do you own?

We own a 1,292 sq ft, three-bedroom apartment in Boon Keng. We bought it for $450,000 in 2008. It is currently valued at over $500,000.

Q: What's the most extravagant thing you have bought?

That would be our three-week holiday in Europe last December when we spent about $30,000. Knowing that we would be very busy with the opening of our Orchard centre this year, we decided to set aside some time for a long holiday. During the trip, we went skiing in Switzerland and visited Prague and Paris. We love travelling and it was our first long holiday since we got married in 2004.

Q: What's your retirement plan?

My plan is to be financially independent within 10 years. Retirement, however, is a long way off for me as I really enjoy what I am doing. I haven't thought about how much we will need in our golden years or where we will live, but I know that we will want to be involved in giving back to society.

Since 2008, Focus Pilates has been putting aside 5 per cent of its profits for charity. The money has gone to fund various charitable activities such as buying seeds to plant trees in Australia, donating a well, sponsoring a needy child's education, and buying bags of rice for an orphanage in Cambodia.

Q: Home is now...

In Boon Keng.

Q: I drive...

I don't have a car. To force myself to keep fit, I have a road bike which I use to cycle to work. Sometimes I run to work. And it's better for the environment.

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This article was first published in The Straits Times.