Our story

Twenty squat racks on a property, to five factories and more than eighty people.

Ever since I was young, my dream was to own a gym and make people strong. After 20 years working within the manufacturing industry, it made sense to combine my passion for fitness with that experience.

That order matters. I spent two decades making things in factories before I made anything for a gym, and it is the reason Bench exists in the shape it does. I wanted to draw a machine, cut it, weld it, train on it, and then change the parts of it I did not like.

It is a harder and slower way to build a company. It is also why, when a gym owner asks whether we can move a handle, change an angle, widen a frame or match a colour, the answer is usually yes - the people who would have to do it work down the road from me.

What follows is how we got from twenty squat racks on my property to five factories in Rayong.

Watch

In the factory, with customers

Our company film - a lot of it is me on the factory floor with customers.

Inside the factory

How it happened

2014

The first machines
I started by drawing equipment and having it built so I could train on it myself. Twenty squat racks went up on my property, and I ran workouts there for the local expat community - partly because I wanted people training, and partly because I wanted the equipment used hard by people who would tell me what was wrong with it.
Plenty was wrong with it. That is the point of building the first version yourself.
2016

A 200sqm factory in Pattaya
I ran out of space at home. Everything moved into a small 200sqm factory in Pattaya - cutting, welding, painting and assembly in one room, with a handful of people.
Nearly every range we sell today started as a drawing on that floor.
2017

Bench Fitness starts trading
We stopped being a project and became a company. First commercial customers, first gyms running the equipment every day, and the first honest look at what a machine does when it is used all day in a busy facility rather than on a property in the evenings.
Some of it came back for changes. That feedback loop is still how the equipment gets better.
2019

Factory 1, Rayong
We relocated from Pattaya into the building we now call Factory 1 - 600 square metres in Rayong, with every process in it.
We outgrew it in a year and took Factory 2. Then Factory 3, where we built our own powder coating line. Then Factory 4. Each one let us bring another process in house, or give one that was already here proper room.
2023

Our own gym
Thai Strength Club in Pattaya is our gym. New equipment goes there before it goes to customers, and visitors train on a machine before they commit to a floor of them.
Having somewhere our equipment is used every day by people who do not work for us is the most useful product testing we do.
2026

Factory 5
We added Factory 5 - another 1,300 square metres, taking the site to more than 3,500 across five buildings on the same road. It holds prototyping and testing, large equipment assembly, and staging for international orders.
More than 80 employees, and our equipment trains people in over 20 countries - US Marines across Asia, international gym franchises, hotels, universities and a lot of independent gyms. Over 80% of what we sell is made in our own factories; for the rest, we choose the specialist suppliers ourselves and hold them to the same specification.