Super Retail Group (SRG) CEO, Peter Birtles, has moved to clarify media reports that the company’s newly purchased Workout World chain is in administration.

Birtles contacted Inside Retail to set the record straight – the Workout World stores are not in administration.

Last month SRG purchased 21 of the 26 corporately-owned Workout World stores as well as the brand’s IP and inventory. The 21 stores that were purchased are all profitable.

The shell company, Workout World Pty Ltd, which is no longer required by SRG to operate the stores, is in fact what has been placed in administration.

The stores and SRG remain a separate operation to the Workout World Pty Ltd shell company (effectively only a legal entity), and are therefore unaffected by the administration of the former owner of the business.

Birtles told Inside Retail: “We’re going to continue the Workout World brand, we see the opportunity to run Workout World as a separate brand adjacent to Rebel and Amart, we think we can do a much broader fitness equipment and accessories offer in the Workout World stores – there’s only so much space we can allocate to fitness equipment in our existing stores”.