­ƒÜòFitX Trekked to NYC!

As I'm sure you've seen on our various Instagram accounts, FitX took our inaugural professional trek to New York City last Thursday and Friday! We had the amazing opportunity to meet with executives and tour the offices of Aaptiv, Peloton, SoulCycle, Equinox, ClassPass and even the MIRROR showroom. We left extremely energized seeing first-hand the drive of each of these companies to impact millions of lives through innovation, digital access, data, and deeply understanding the needs of their consumers. Check out Sonja's Linkedin blog post for a full rundown of our key insights from the trip. 

We look forward to continuing to build FitX's and Ross' relationships with these companies! Check out photos from our visits with each company attached. 

­ƒÆíSpotlight: Diversity in the Health & Wellness Space

Within FitX, we will be the first to admit fitness has a diversity problem (Forbes says so too). The industry has a long way to go, but in light of Diversity Week last week we wanted to spotlight a few bright spots in the industry:

• A company called Gixo provides access to specialty group exercises for a third of the cost of a regular gym (14.99 per month).
• 305 Fitness is rolling out a licensing program to democratize and facilitate entrepreneurship for those who might not have the idea or tools to do so themselves. Since the 305 classes (think dance party meets cardio class) don't require equipment, they can scale their classes and penetrate markets with very low capital expenditure. This means they are trying to go into more rural areas vs. only focusing in major cities.
• Some new apps are trying to be out there for all people at all ability levels
• Traveling to the Bay Area anytime soon? These studios and instructors have been recognized for being inclusive.

ÔÅ® Industry Highlights

"The Best Work-out in the World" just got even better: Barry's (formerly Barry's Bootcamp) announced it's the launch of Barry's RIDE which officially opened its pop-up cycling concept in New York and Venice today (February 18th!). In an extremely competitive spin and boutique fitness industry, Barry's is responding to their clients wish to diversify their workouts but maintain the true Barry's and "Red Room" experience.

How A.I. Could Shape the Future of Wellness: We are seeing how A.I. could be leveraged for fitness and healthcare. Upgrade Labs, a new fitness concept in California developing a platform using their proprietary AI engine to determine the optimal activity for people each day based on the actual state of their body. 

Global Wellness Trends of 2020: The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) trends forecasting team predicts new directions in health and wellness. Wellness used to be composed of siloed segments but now is converging and remaking whole industries - global wellness economy growth outpaces the world's GDP growth! Check out the 2020 Global Wellness report HERE.
 

­ƒÆ╗ Job Descriptions

Internships
Oura:  Rotational Management Internship Program

Walmart: Health & Wellness MBA Summer Internship

Full-time
Fitimage:  Product Manager
Backpack Data:  Jr Product Manager

­ƒôà Upcoming Event: Michigan Fashion Media Summit

The Michigan Fashion Media Summit will be held at Ross on Friday, March 20th. Caroline Gogolak, VP of Retail for SoulCycle and Co-Founder of Carbon38 speaking on a panel titled, "Reinventing Shopping: The New Omni Channel Experience." Speakers from StockX, Bustle, Forbes, Carhartt, HighSnobiety, and more will be in attendance! The MFMS brings 600 attendees from 22+ schools and 90+ companies to Ann Arbor annually. This is a great opportunity to learn about the intersection of business and retail.
 

­ƒÄº Podcast Feature
Check out the How I Built This with SoulCycle podcast and the FittInsider Podcast with the co-founder of Tonal on your commute to and from Ross!
 

­ƒÆÖDo you enjoy our newsletters? Do you have a friend that you think would be interested in FitX? Forward this along to them and encourage them to join (while we are still free!) here.

­ƒôº Lastly, do you have ideas for FitX? Things you'd like to see this spring or next year? Drop Sonja a line and let us know!