Since 1988, Canada's specialty fitness industry has had a well-kept secret. There's a good chance the last piece of gym equipment you bought passed through our warehouse — even if you bought it somewhere else.
It started with a toolbox, not a showroom
In 1988, The Treadmill Factory wasn't a store. It was a repair operation — fixing treadmills for other retailers and for people who'd bought machines that quit on them. That's an unglamorous way to start a company, but it turned out to be the best possible education. When you spend your first years taking apart every brand on the market, you learn very quickly which machines are built to last and which ones are built to look good on a showroom floor.
Nearly four decades later, that's still the lens we buy through. We've just done it at a scale nobody outside the industry really sees.
Same company. Bigger name.
In 2019 we began transitioning from The Treadmill Factory to The Fitness Factory. Not because we were sold, restructured, or rebranded by a marketing firm — but because "treadmill" stopped describing what we actually do.
Today we sell rig systems and squat cages, Pilates reformers and massage chairs, 20mm rubber flooring by the roll, competition kettlebells, Nike Strength urethane plates, Hyrox sleds, and full commercial gym builds for hotels and fire halls. The treadmill is one aisle now.
Same Canadian company. Same ownership. Same 1988 start date. The name just caught up to the business.
Here's the part most people don't know
Walk into a specialty fitness store somewhere in Canada that isn't ours. Look at the treadmill on the floor. There's a real chance that machine was imported, warehoused, and invoiced by us before that retailer ever put a price tag on it.
The Fitness Factory is the exclusive Canadian distributor for many of the biggest names in fitness. We don't just sell these brands — we bring them into the country.
- Nike Strength
- Horizon Fitness
- Bowflex Fitness
- NordicTrack
- Matrix Fitness
- Vision Fitness
- ProForm Fitness
- Assault Fitness
- AbMat
- Element Fitness
- Flow by Element Fitness
- IRONAX Fitness
- XM Fitness
- Jasmine Fitness
- Gorilla Flooring
- Mega Fitness
- Schwinn Fitness
…and more.
That's the quiet reason our numbers don't match our footprint. A competitor can open twenty storefronts, but if they need Horizon, Assault, or Nike Strength on their floor, they're buying it from us at wholesale and marking it up to their customer. We're the layer underneath a large part of the Canadian specialty fitness market.
Which means when you buy from The Fitness Factory, you're buying at the first stop, not the third.
We buy by the container, not by the pallet
Distribution only works if the product actually shows up. So we buy direct, by the sea container, straight from the manufacturer.
Two things happen when you buy that way. Cost drops — there's no importer, no middleman, no domestic wholesaler taking a cut before we do. And inventory exists — real Canadian stock, in Canadian warehouses, ready to ship. No twelve-week backorder. No "we can order it in for you." No cross-border freight and duty landing on your invoice for a 400 lb pallet.
That's why our pricing looks the way it does. It isn't a sale gimmick. It's the supply chain.
Our showrooms aren't showrooms. They're MEGAstores.
The typical Canadian specialty fitness store runs about 2,000 square feet — enough for a handful of treadmills, a bench, and a wall of dumbbells.
Ours run close to 10,000 square feet each. Across the country, we operate over 200,000 square feet of showroom and warehouse space, and it's stacked with inventory — not display models waiting on a factory order.
You can walk in, get on the machine, run on it, load the bar, feel the difference between an 8mm and a 20mm tile, and take it home the same day.
Eight locations, coast to coast:
| Location | Address |
|---|---|
| Markham, ON | 505 Cochrane Dr — 905-944-0090 |
| Mississauga, ON | 2111 Dunwin Dr — 905-828-9033 |
| Whitby, ON | 1450 Victoria St E, Unit 6 — 289-278-1975 |
| Barrie, ON | 21 Commerce Park Dr, Unit K — 705-719-0160 |
| London, ON | 843 Wharncliffe Rd S — 519-681-6633 |
| Calgary, AB | 628 Manitou Rd — 318-591-1206 |
| Edmonton, AB | 5115 99 Street — 587-672-1234 |
| Dartmouth, NS | 75 Akerley Blvd, Unit 16A — 902-481-0898 |
Open Monday to Saturday, 10am–6pm.
Four businesses under one roof
The storefronts are only one of the things we do. There are really four:
Retail. Eight superstores where you can touch, test, and take home.
E-commerce. A full online store shipping anywhere in Canada, from Canadian stock, with free shipping on most cardio and strength equipment to major cities. Financing through Flexiti, up to 12 months on orders over $450.
Commercial. A dedicated division — not a salesperson with a second hat — specializing in vertical markets: hotels and hospitality, condominiums and multi-family residential, corporate wellness, military, police and fire services, hospitals and rehab clinics, senior living, universities, municipal rec centres, and personal training studios. The process runs space planning and blueprint, then full 3D design and approval before anything ships, then certified on-site delivery, assembly, and installation. You see your gym in 3D and revise it as many times as you want before a single item leaves the warehouse.
Wholesale. The distribution program that supplies the brands above to retailers, gyms, and dealers across the country.
And behind all of it: an in-house parts and service department staffed with technicians who can diagnose your machine over the phone, ship you the right control board or walking belt, or come out and fix it in person. Thirty-eight years after we started as a repair shop, we never stopped being one.
Why we're finally saying it out loud
We've spent almost four decades being the company behind the company. Fine by us — the work got done and Canadians got equipped.
But there's a cost to being quiet. People assume that because we've got eight locations instead of twenty, we're smaller. They assume a big-box logo means better buying power. They pay a markup to a retailer who bought the exact same machine from our warehouse last Tuesday.
So, plainly: The Fitness Factory is one of Canada's largest specialty fitness retailers and the master distributor a large share of this industry buys from. Founded in 1988. Canadian owned. Container-direct. Over 200,000 square feet of inventory. Eight superstores, a national online store, a commercial division, and a wholesale program.
Not just another retailer. The source.
Come see the difference. Visit any of our eight locations, shop the full catalogue at treadmillfactory.ca, or talk to us about a commercial build at 1.888.469.3031.