2 · Where to open

💡 The model’s geography: which areas offer enough managers and professionals, at what density, and with how much leakage to a competing hub.

The location brief

The target is premium cities outside Paris. “Premium” describes the experience and the local ability to support it: spending power, recurring demand, a reachable catchment and a suitable building at a sustainable cost.

Marseille is one candidate location. The first city has not been selected. Compare it with the other markets in the Territories database using the same demand, capacity and financial criteria. Paris remains a research benchmark, outside the target rollout.

The capture assumption

The benchmarks below belong to the initial scenario for a full club with 1,200 members. They must be recalculated for the building, its capacity and the chosen format. The southern triangle alone is not a site’s travel-time catchment.

The initial 4% benchmark

To fill a club with 1,200 members, it needs to capture 4 to 5% of the managers and professionals within a 15-minute travel-time catchment. Break-even is reached at around 2 to 3%. This is not a theoretical ratio: it is calculated backwards from La Montgolfière Canal (Paris 10th) and Lamarck (Paris 18th). The announced cap of 1,800 members represents 5.0% of the managers and professionals within a 15-minute walk of the 10th-arrondissement site; a normal operating level of 1,200 members represents 3.3%. Neither figure is audited. Direct implication: an area with fewer than ~25,000 managers and professionals in the catchment cannot support a club of this size without an unusually high capture rate.

Three geographic scales

The common mistake is to assess the whole metropolitan area. A club has a 15-minute radius, not 45. Three different geographic units give three different answers:

1. The metropolitan area. Useful for brand potential, not for a site.
2. The municipality. The most readily available unit, but too broad in large cities.
3. The arrondissement or neighborhood. The only unit that matches the actual travel-time catchment. Marseille illustrates the problem: the municipality has 79,635 managers and professionals (23.8%, measured by place of residence). But the southern triangle, the 6th, 7th and 8th arrondissements, concentrates 26,617 at a density of 1,006/km². That is the figure that matters, not the municipality’s total.

Secondary cities: what stands out

Serious candidates combine three things: enough managers and professionals, density that makes the catchment effective, and a standard of living that supports a €140–190 membership. Wealthy but small cities, such as Annecy, often fall short on population size, not purchasing power: the standard of living is there, but the number of managers and professionals within 15 minutes is not. These are markets for a smaller format, not 1,200 members.

A corrected blind spot: the Paris suburbs

The first ranking considered only cities outside the Paris region, plus Versailles. That framing was wrong: after Paris itself, the country’s highest densities of managers and professionals are in the inner and outer suburbs. 22 Île-de-France areas were added (EPT and EPCI intermunicipal bodies). The distinguishing criterion is not the number of managers and professionals, which is often enormous, but leakage to Paris: the share of resident managers and professionals who work in Paris and therefore probably train near their office. Three areas combine a large catchment with moderate leakage:

• Versailles Grand Parc
• Paris-Saclay
• Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines These three have an economic life of their own: a much higher proportion of the managers and professionals living there also work there than in the EPT areas of the northern or eastern inner suburbs.

The counting method

Two pitfalls, both encountered:

• Place of work ≠ place of residence. Workplace figures mechanically inflate employment hubs. A club fills with residents (and workers, but at different times). The reference count is by place of residence.
• Municipal figures hide arrondissement differences. INSEE does publish occupational groups by arrondissement (ARM file). There is no reason to estimate them. → See the Territories database at the bottom of the dossier for the detailed figures.