Barry's Bootcamp Turned a French Furniture Showroom Into Seattle's Only Red Room

From French Armchairs to a Red Room

Six years ago, the corner of Westlake Avenue North and Denny Way sold armchairs. Ligne Roset, the French furniture retailer, had a showroom on that corner before Barry's Bootcamp took over the address and painted the inside red. The studio at 112 Westlake Ave N opened around March 21, 2019, Barry's first Pacific Northwest location by its own count. It sits in South Lake Union, close enough to the Denny Triangle line that the two neighborhoods blur at that intersection. CEO Joey Gonzalez said as much when the studio opened, telling Seattle Magazine in 2019: "Seattle has been on the top of our list for a long time, it was only a matter of finding the right real estate." Seven years after the format's Los Angeles debut, the wait ended at a corner that used to sell French sofas. What Barry's actually sells is a room split down the middle, treadmills on one side and free weights on the other, run by a company that has changed hands twice since Seattle got its studio and whose own materials currently can't agree on how big it has grown.

Where the Format Actually Started

Barry's traces back to Los Angeles in 1998, founded by Barry Jay along with John Mumford and Rachel Mumford, out of a body-sculpt class Jay had been teaching at a Gold's Gym in the mid-1990s. The format wasn't planned. "I started telling people to meet me a half hour before class to run with me on the treadmills; I'd just scream out things to do and people followed along, and then we'd do the class right after. That was the birth of Barry's," Jay told Thought Economics. A classmate suggested calling it boot camp. Rachel Mumford pitched "Barry's Boot Camp" as the name, and Jay initially didn't want his own name on it. The dim room came early too, if not the red. "In the classroom, I always used to turn off the lights," Jay said. "It wasn't the red we have now, but it was dim." Two decades later, that same idea, half-hour bursts on a treadmill folded into a class, showed up in a former furniture store on Westlake.

Run, Lift, Repeat

The Seattle studio runs the same structure as every other Barry's: a wall of the company's signature Woodway treadmills facing a floor of dumbbells, benches and mats, with the class alternating between "Run" segments and "Lift" segments. Barry's own description of the format is blunt: "low lights, loud music, and Instructors who know exactly when to push you." Each muscle group gets trained, then rested, on a rotating cycle rather than run straight through once. There's no on-ramp built into the schedule. Barry's FAQ says directly that "we don't have a 'beginner's class,'" and instead tells newcomers to arrive fifteen minutes early so staff can walk them through the equipment before class starts. Once class begins, members set their own treadmill speed and their own weights, which means a first-timer and a five-year regular can technically be taking the same class at very different intensities.

An Hour That Became Fifty Minutes

The math inside that hour has shifted. Seattle press covering the 2019 opening described the class as one hour, split evenly between thirty minutes of treadmill and thirty minutes of floor work. Barry's now describes the standard class as fifty minutes: twenty-five on the treadmill, twenty-five on the floor, with a few minutes of stretching folded in at the end. Whether that reflects a real change to the workout or just tighter scheduling isn't something the company has explained publicly, but the number on the page has moved. Members who would rather skip the treadmill entirely can book a "Double Floor" class instead, a fifty-minute strength-only session that swaps the Run block for a second round on the floor. Either way, the format still runs on the same premise it did in a Gold's Gym in the 1990s: whoever walks into the room is not the one deciding when the work stops.

What's Actually in the Building

The Seattle studio keeps a fairly tight schedule: Monday through Thursday 5am to 8pm, Friday 5am to 7pm, weekends 7am to 2:30pm, though hours like these tend to shift and the studio's phone line, (206) 687-7180, is the more reliable way to check same-day. Inside, the amenities lean more boutique gym than bootcamp: a Fuel Bar taking shake pre-orders, free guest WiFi, locker rooms with hot showers, complimentary towels, Dyson dryers and OUAI grooming products at the sinks, plus a small retail shop near the entrance. Parking is street parking on Westlake Avenue, metered at around $2.70 an hour, which for a fifty-minute class means budgeting closer to a full hour once someone showers and dries their hair before heading back to work.

How Much It Costs, Sort Of

Barry's doesn't publish a Seattle-specific price anywhere on its site, and the studio's own FAQ keeps things structural rather than numeric: members buy either class packages or 30-day memberships, no year-long contracts involved. The packages and promotions rotate on their own schedule instead of sitting fixed on a rate card. Past national offers have included a "Summer 6-Pack" and a "Holiday Sale 6-Month Membership," the kind of seasonal pricing that suggests a company more comfortable running promotions than posting a flat rate for anyone to screenshot and compare against a competitor down the street. Without a confirmed Seattle number, the honest answer for what a class here actually costs is that it depends on when someone signs up, which deal happens to be running that month, and whether they buy in bulk or pay for a single class at a time.

A Chain That Just Changed Owners, and Can't Agree on Its Own Size

Barry's has been owned by outside money since 2015, when the private equity firm North Castle Partners bought a majority stake. In January 2025, the company added a second investor, Princeton Equity Group, with deal terms undisclosed. "Barry's is a brand that has consistently withstood the test of time, thanks to its unique, results-driven workout...," said co-CEO Joey Gonzalez in the announcement. Gonzalez has led the company since 2015, after starting there as an instructor in 2003; JJ Gantt joined him as co-CEO in 2024. Jim Waskovich, a managing partner at Princeton Equity Group, added: "Barry's has successfully combined world-class fitness with an incredible sense of belonging." The same release put the company at 7 million visits in 2024 and 89 studios across 15 countries. Barry's own About page, checked separately, currently lists a smaller number: 84 studios worldwide. Probably just a page nobody updated, but it is the kind of gap that turns up when a company expands faster than its own website can track. No second Seattle studio is in the pipeline right now; the next round of openings runs through Bethesda, Ardmore, Southlake, Carlsbad and Athens.