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We hope everyone is staying safe, healthy and FIT during this uncertain time. Hopefully, you’ve also found some time to get in some workouts for physical and mental wellness. And now while you’re working out or taking your once-daily government-regulated walk you can do so in style in the brand new FitX Nike Long Sleeve Shirt!!
Click here to place your order. The order will be shipped directly to you! So no matter where you are, you can enjoy this sweet SWAG. You will receive the order the week of April 27th.

Other Programming: Our friends at EVC are promoting some cool virtual via Brunchwork.

SATURDAY, APRIL 4 from 11:30 AM - 2 PM, guest speakers include:

- Love Wellness Founder and CEO Lauren "Lo" Bosworth

- UpFront Ventures Partner Aditi Maliwal

SUNDAY, APRIL 5 from 11:30 AM - 2 PM, guest speakers include

- United Ghost Kitchens Chief Business Officer Atul Sood

- Next View Ventures Partner Melody Koh

Price is $30 per event but a 30% discount is available with Promo Code MICHEVC30
Sign up on their website under "At Home Events" here

EVC is offering to cover the cost of one seat per member for one of the weekend events!
To start the reimbursement process, please fill out this form here
Reach out to Dan Marcini with any questions.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention another cool event via Brunchwork, the Peloton Director of Global Insights and Brand Strategy is hosting an interactive session on SUNDAY, APRIL 19th from 2:30 - 5PM EDT.

ÔÅ® Industry Highlights

COVID-19 & In-HomeFitness: Shelter in place orders have closed down all nonessential businesses including gyms and fitness studios. Digitally native platforms like Peloton we’re quick to adapt and extend its free trial to 90 days. Boutique studios also followed suit. Barry’s Bootcamp and Rumble Boxing are doing daily live streams on Instagram with workouts hosted by trainers across the country. CorePower Yoga and OrangeTheory Fitness are delivering workouts through their app.

Mirror has seen a fivefold increase in exercise frequency and an “uptick” in sales.
Tempo users are working out 35% more often than the previous six months.
Tonal’s sales have tripled in recent weeks. Usage is the highest in company history.
Hydrow saw sales increased 3x in recent weeks. Usage is up more than 40%.
FightCamp usage is up 30%+ and sales were up 2.1x as of March 13
ClassPass’s global revenue fell by 96% (but were quick to stop charging customers and resurrected their online streaming feature)
Here’s more info on how the fitness industry is rapidly evolving.

There’s no doubt that Covid-19 has changed the fitness game for now. What will be curious to observe over the long run is if the in-home workouts will remain as popular once gyms and fitness studios re-open. Will consumers miss the community and in-person atmosphere or will they focus on developing a more comprehensive at-home fitness regime? Let us know what you think!

Here are a few other stories we’re following:

Exercise manufacturers join the fight against COVID-19: A more positive note amid the chaos, Rogue Fitness, a manufacturer of exercise equipment, has joined the fight against COVID-19. Rogue’s founder and owner Bill Henniger announced plans to hire 100 new employees at a minimum starting wage of $17/hour to support the efforts. The company started production of medical supplies and also purchased three industrial 3D printers to make ventilators.

Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and other digital health companies are trying to help: Check out this article for the variety of digital health companies trying to track, test and treat COVID-19.

Can Wearables provide early detections of viral illnesses? FitBit’s working on a New Study to determine if wearable data can provide early indication of viral illness. The study has shown that data from Fitbit wearables significantly improved the prediction of the present, the very near future, and the very recent past, of influenza-like illness.

ƒôê Industry Financial Highlights

India-based CureFit, a vertically integrated health and wellness company, closed a $110M round led by Temasek, bringing their total funding to more than $400M.
┼îura raised $28M for its sleep tracking wellness rings.
Mental health startup Lyra Health secured $75M investment.
Predictive Fitness, a startup using big data and biometrics to impact athletic and fitness performance, raised $880K.

What’s happening to Peloton’s stock?:
Peloton’s stock has gone up approximately 43.3% since hitting it’s low on March 12, far outstripping the S&P 500 which has lost about 2.5% over the same time period. It is even up 12% since California introduced a stay-at-home directive on March 19th. The S&P 500 is only up 2.5% during this period. This is likely because Peloton is not only insulated from the current COVID-19 pandemic but is actually a beneficiary of social distancing. Just as we're seeing gyms and group fitness classes wind down, the advantages of an interactive yet home-based workout platform have never been more obvious. Peloton's decision to offer a free digital subscription offering that isn't tethered to its treadmills or bikes is also taking off as a fitness option. CEO John Foley says it sees "strong" conversion rates from the app to connected fitness equipment, so this could be a sign of increasing sales down the road when the users who grow to love the app are now willing to pay for it. It will be interesting to see how the stock price behaves once the social distancing restrictions are lifted and boutique fitness studios resurge, but for now, Peloton has benefited greatly in these times and will hope to carry this momentum forward.

ƒæÅFitX Feature - Eugenia Tazetdinova ‘21

This week we are featuring fellow amazing MBA 1, Eugenia Tazetdinova, who founded a fitness club in Ukraine!

Tell us about yourself.

I am Ukrainian and lived most of my life in Kiev, the country’s capital. I studied journalism and public policy and then worked for 6 years in corporate communications and marketing. As I navigated my career, I felt fulfilled with the increase in the level of responsibility and the teams I led – but it was never enough. I was striving to lead on a bigger scale, and at some point, I felt that the best next career step for me was founding my own company.

How did you get into the fitness industry?

Around the same time, I became passionate about fitness and a healthy lifestyle and committed to helping people adopt and maintain healthy habits. Importantly, I saw an empty market niche. I saw that as the middle class in Ukraine is strengthening, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor, so do the services that cater to this new population segment. I saw an emergence of middle-class restaurants, shopping malls, housing, and many other things – but not fitness clubs. So I decided to start my own!

In early 2016 I launched Palestra. It’s a 10,000 sq ft fitness club somewhat similar to Equinox clubs here in the US. It has a gym, a range of group fitness classes, a beauty salon, a spa, and a healthy food café. Launching and managing my own company has been an amazing journey and an incredible learning experience, of which I am always happy to talk, feel free to reach out to me!

Can you tell us how your business model has evolved?

Large, multi-purpose, all-inclusive gyms like mine are capital intensive and thus hard to scale; also, the return on investment is relatively slow. However, the annual subscription model and high customer loyalty mean lower level of risk, which is the reason why my particular investors went for the project. Today Palestra is basically a cash cow which continues to grow slowly and has stable cash flows, affected by external factors only to a little extent (with the exception of the COVID-19 of course :))

What do you think is the future of fitness?

I feel that there are two main trends in fitness today:

Specialized fitness studios, usually high-end, that focus on one type of exercise (or several, but it is a small number) such as spinning, yoga, boxing, crossfit. Think brands like SoulCycle and Pure Yoga. Compared to a full-scale gym, specialized studios require significantly less capital to launch, less space to rent, and less equipment – and thus it is easier and faster to launch them. However, studios depend heavier on the personnel, specifically trainers: retaining trainers is key to retaining members, and sometimes studios can find themselves too dependent on popular trainers. Also, the studios’ typical business model of paying-as-you-go or paying monthly provides for a higher members churn rate, and thus requires higher spending on marketing and promotion.
Digital solutions related to fitness. Connected workouts and solutions for training at home are key to this trend – think of brands like Peloton, Mirror, and various fitness apps such as Nike Training Club, Aaptiv, etc. These types of businesses are very scalable and usually strive to increase the number of members which can reach millions. One of the largest number of members in the world is China’s Keep which hit 140 million users last year. The ways to monetize networks of members may differ. Some, like Aaptiv, make money from charging for subscription; Peloton and Mirror also sell equipment; and for Nike, fitness apps are mainly instruments to promote the brand and lead to selling more of their fitness clothes and gear. I think that with the COVID-19 epidemic, as people are forced to stay home, apps for connected workouts have an unprecedented opportunity to gain more members than ever. Some have already temporarily removed subscription fees which I think is a very smart way to reach broad audiences!

ƒÿ£FitX Fun Fact

Want to get ripped like The Terminator? Here’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quarantine workout routine.