Rainer Schaller
Rainer Schaller (born 4 January 1969 in Bamberg) is a German entrepreneur. He is the Founder CEO of the RSG Group, which includes the McFit, John Reed and Gold's Gym fitness studios. He hit headlines as a result of the disaster at the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg.
Contents
- 1 Early life
- 2 Business career
- 2.1 Retail
- 2.2 Fitness industry
- 2.3 Love Parade
- 3 References
- 4 External links
Early life
Rainer Schaller grew up in Schlüsselfeld, Germany near Bamberg. His mother and grandfather worked in retail there. The conductor and Anton Bruckner expert, Gerd Schaller, is his brother.
Business career
Retail
Rainer Schaller completed his training as a retail salesman in Schlüsselfeld. He supplemented this with further training to become a business and retail specialist. At the age of 22, he took over his first Edeka supermarket, and shortly afterwards three more in his home region.
Fitness industry
In 1997, he switched to the fitness industry and opened his first studio under the McFit brand in Würzburg, Germany. He tapped into the discount segment of the market with this brand. By mid-2006, McFit was operating 62 fitness studios in Germany with a combined 400,000 members and 1,000 permanent employees. In 2011, McFit was considered the largest fitness studio operator in Europe, with more than 1 million members. Schaller gradually diversified his business to reach different target groups. In 2018, Rainer Schaller appointed Vito Scavo to oversee operational management of his holding company. In August 2019, the McFit Global Group holding company was renamed RSG Group and encomp*es twelve fitness chains (including McFit, John Reed, High 5). In 2020, Schaller acquired Gold's Gym, which was in bankruptcy (Chapter 11 proceedings) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By the end of 2020, Schaller's group of companies employed 41,000 people in 48 countries, managed 17 different brands and more than 1,000 studios.
Love Parade
In 2006, Rainer Schaller became managing director of Lopavent, which organized the Love Parade until 2010. The aim was to use the event to promote McFit's studios. The Love Parade went off without incident, under Schaller’s direction, for three years. In 2010, however, he came under fire for the stampede at the Love Parade in Duisburg, which left 21 people dead and 652 injured. Schaller testified as a witness in the court proceedings on the accident in 2018, accepted moral responsibility, but was not charged.