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A healthy process of continual innovation accounts for constant, if occasionally frustrating, amendments to the arithmetic of business.

As new ideas and thinking are first absorbed and gradually accommodated across a variety of industries, so entrepreneurs seek to create commercial, ‘first-mover’, advantage by modifying or adapting them.

Such business developments invariably reflect their age – how often have we heard the phrase ‘an idea whose time has come’?

To date, the early twenty-first century has been unique from a business perspective because despite economies suffering severe recessionary conditions, the supply of luxury products and services shows only intermittent signs of slowing. At the other end of the scale however, ‘budget’ has become a byword for efficiency – be it the provision of hotels, airlines or gymnasia.

There’s little doubt that during extended spells of economic uncertainty, people develop an enhanced sense of budget consciousness.

In turn, this creates an environment in which someone invariably comes up with a cheaper, more efficient way of providing a service previously considered expensive, striking a timely chord with our desire to save money.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Britain’s £3.9 billion fitness industry, currently showing signs of becoming even more fragmented, so driving down costs to end users.

When mainstream fitness clubs began to emerge during the late 1980s, they represented a welcome alternative to sweaty, down-at-heel, male-dominated gyms which increasingly looked like relics from an era of black-and-white movies.