Rosemary Conley: queen of fitness
Article Date: Mar 03 2006
Despite numerous pretenders to the throne, Rosemary Conley CBE is still the biggest name in fitness after three decades helping the nation tone up and slim down. GrowthBusiness catches up with the exercise entrepreneur to find out if business is booming and how she handles the ongoing pressure to compete in a crowded market.
The New Year always heralds the start of a nationwide resolution to shift a few pounds gained through seasonal excess. It’s a phenomenon that the retail sector is quick to exploit, particularly the diet and exercise market. Everywhere you look at the moment there’s a flash-in-the-pan celebrity cashing in by bringing out an exercise video. TV and sports personalities suddenly all have wisdom to impart on the best approach to diet and exercise. But there’s only one lady among them who can truly claim to be an expert, with 35 years’ experience under her petite-sized belt.
As the creator of the world-famous Hip and Thigh Diet, Rosemary Conley has produced 27 fitness videos and 26 books, and has a chain of 190 qualified exercise teachers across the country, busy sharing the secrets of her tried-and-tested fitness regime with 80,000 club members. Alongside Slimming World and Weight Watchers, it’s one of the ‘big three’ weight loss organisations in the UK. But Conley, 59, hasn’t always been interested in diet and fitness and certainly didn’t consider it as a career option. ‘I always imagined I’d end up working with animals,’ she confesses.
From training to Tupperware
Born and brought up in Leicestershire, Conley recalls, ‘I didn’t think much about a career when I was growing up, but then women didn’t in those days. In the 50s, it was the norm to get married and become a housewife.
‘So when I left school at 15, I didn’t have a particular next step in mind. My mother was a secretary so I simply followed in her footsteps.’
After training at Goddards secretarial college in Leicestershire, Conley worked in an accountancy office, which she says taught her a lot about the inner workings of a business and how to be organised. ‘I knew the skills would be useful for my future, as it taught me to be organised and systematic.’
She also began selling Tupperware, the archetypal 60s homeware product. ‘To my delight, I found I was rather good at it,’ she laughs. ‘I was also doing a cordon bleu cookery course at the time, so I used to fill my Tupperware containers with amazing dishes and take them to the demonstrations. No wonder they sold so well!’
After just six weeks in the job, Conley was made a manager and stayed with the company for 18 months. ‘Because I hit all my targets, I was rewarded with fabulous goods like a washing machine and dishwasher, which in those days – the 1960s – was quite something. It was then I came to understand that being rewarded for achieving goals is tremendous motivation.’
But Conley’s love of animals soon precipitated a career u-turn. ‘While I was travelling around the country doing Tupperware presentations, I sometimes left my Peruvian mountain dog in the back of the car. One day, she pulled the lining down from inside the roof. That was when I decided to go back to secretarial work, on the proviso that I could bring my dog to work with me.’
Conley secured an interview for the ideal office job, but admits, ‘I was so worried beforehand that my huge, 12-stone pet would misbehave in the interview, I mildly doped her!’ Suffice it to say the dog slept soundly throughout and Conley got the job.
Flexing her entrepreneurial muscle
By the 1970s, Conley was married and had a daughter, during which time she was doing a lot of home cooking. She recalls, ‘I started taking an interest in food content and learning about calories, as well as tailoring my own exercise programme and realising the importance of good grooming.’
Conley’s approach soon raised interest among her neighbours and she began running an exercise class in her kitchen, then in the local village hall. Within six months she’d given up her job as a secretary to concentrate on developing the business and eight years later had 50 classes countrywide.
‘Then I was approached by the magazine publisher IPC as it wanted a chain of fitness classes to complement its slimming magazine. So in 1981, eight years after I’d started out by spending £8 to print 30 advertising posters, I was able to sell the business for £52,000. That was immensely gratifying.’
Conley stayed on to manage the enterprise for five years, but remembers it as ‘the toughest of times.’ Working a 90-hour week building a business for a large corporation took its toll and she and her husband parted. Reflecting on that difficult time, she says, ‘The stress definitely contributed to the breakdown of my marriage and, to be honest, it was too much responsibility for me at such an early stage in my career.’
