Les Mills International - History

History

Les Mills International was founded by Phillip Mills and named after his father Les Mills, four-time Olympian and founder of the Les Mills World of Fitness chain of gyms in Auckland, New Zealand.

Beginning in the 1980s, Phillip Mills developed a series of exercise-to-music fitness programs that would later become the Les Mills Group Fitness programs. Mills developed them for use in the gym chain owned by his father in Auckland, officially releasing the first one, Pump(TM), in 1990. In 1995, after experiencing success with Pump in New Zealand, Phillip Mills, with the support of his family and Bill Robertson, an Australian fitness industry leader, released Pump in Australia. Convinced by the product's success in Australia as well as New Zealand and enticed by what he perceived as a gap in the health and fitness market worldwide, Mills founded Les Mills International in 1997 with the purpose of developing further programs and licensing them for use around the globe. The programs have expanded to more than 13,000 gyms and health clubs in 75 countries, with an estimated 90, 000 Les Mills Instructors worldwide and an estimated 6 million participants every week attending a Les Mills class.

In 2004, Phillip Mills was Ernst & Young's New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year, and the following year he competed in Monaco as a finalist for Ernst & Young's World Entrepreneur of the Year award. In 2005, Les Mills International was named New Zealand Services Exporter of the Year by NZ Trade and Enterprise and, in 2007, he and wife Jackie Mills co-authored the book Fighting Globesity - A Practical Guide to Personal Health and Global Sustainability.