RIZAP's chocoZAP gym chain opens its first Malaysia store, aiming for up to 150 overseas locations by 2027
Japan's largest convenience-gym chain follows Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore into a fourth overseas market, betting its 24-hour, staffless format travels as easily abroad as it has at home.
RIZAP Group said its convenience-gym brand chocoZAP opened its first Malaysia location on 23 June, a 24-hour outlet called chocoZAP Uptown in Damansara Utama, Petaling Jaya, Selangor — the chain's fourth overseas market after Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
According to the company, membership at the Malaysia store costs RM80 to join plus RM128 a month (or RM1,176 a year), and RIZAP Group plans to open a second Malaysia store later this summer.
The overseas push sits against a large domestic base: RIZAP Group said chocoZAP operated 1,962 stores in Japan as of 14 May, with 1.161 million members paying a monthly ¥3,278 domestic fee. The company is targeting as many as 150 overseas stores by the close of its fiscal year in March 2027.
chocoZAP's model — small, staffless, 24-hour gyms bundled cheaply with RIZAP's broader wellness ecosystem — was built for Japan's dense urban footfall and thin staffing tolerance. Whether that travels is really a Product and People question rather than a real-estate one: convenience-gym economics rely on high unit density and low labour cost per location, and Southeast Asian markets vary sharply on both wage levels and regulatory tolerance for unstaffed access. Malaysia becoming RIZAP's fourth overseas market this fast suggests the company is testing replicability across several markets at once, not just scale in any one of them.