In today’s world it’s no longer enough to have a fitness studio with a great method. Consumers, today, seek a connection, a memory, and an opportunity for meaningful interactions, in addition to an awesome workout. A studio’s success is no longer determined just by the workouts it offers, but also by its atmosphere, its camaraderie, and its customer service. FitGrid is the first company to truly understand and appreciate this evolution and the significant impact it can have on the fitness ecosystem.
Fitness is a people business, and at FitGrid, we care a lot about people. In fact, our entire business is based around the idea of enabling, mapping, and encouraging the connections between people in fitness communities — between the clients, the instructors, the staff, even the owners — and working to find ways to make those interactions more mutually beneficial.
We know that clients are more likely to go back to fitness class the more connected they feel to the people around, whether it’s the instructor, the studio staff, or their fellow classmates. Through our software, we map those connections and leverage them to elevate the experience for all members of the community, leading to more profitable studios, more engaged instructors, and happier clients.
Building authentic connections is what FitGrid is all about. Connections with customers, partners, consumers, and each other drive our success. We believe that connecting the world through fitness will help people lead healthier, happier lives.
FitGrid thrives on open communications and a clear mission. We aim to be proactively open and honest and we pride ourselves on providing complete visibility into the successes, and sometimes failures, of our business as we grow and scale.
We focus on people and relationships. Integrity and empathy is the foundation of our company and we continually aspire to design our products and processes in more human-centered ways. We recognize the impact our work has on people within our company and out in the world.
Being a startup requires a unique and unparalleled vision, smart and swift innovation, and deliberate execution. We think big, take risks and learn from failures. In other words, we have grit, we get scrappy, and we move quickly.
We are continuously innovating while learning from our customers and the industry. We look at new ways to do things and we dare to do it differently.
In an increasingly connected world, the feeling of disconnectedness is pervasive. The ease with which in-real-life connections are formed is slipping, leaving people isolated, lonely, and anxious. Physical activity has always helped to reduce such anxieties, and physical activity in group environments has the added benefit of bringing people into contact with each other around a common interest. People need and crave these connections, and we believe the fitness studio (or any fitness community) is the perfect place to fulfill them.
FitGrid is building the technologies that connect people in the fitness environments where they already congregate, and using that to create a world of deeper connections, more collaboration, a greater sense of personal achievement, reduced anxieties, and hopefully greater understanding. We hope to encourage and inspire greater possibilities, one push-up, and fist-bump at a time.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Like that, FitGrid took time to evolve.
Nt Etuk develops plantar fasciitis (very painful foot condition due to too much running) and can’t stand for more than 15 minutes. While in PT it is recommended he try group fitness – yoga to lengthen the muscles, pilates to strengthen the core. He finds Holly Jean Cosner, a private Pilates instructor. In 3 months she has him up and moving – a minor miracle in his mind. He is invited to join her group classes and sees the power of connection.
Nt Etuk, Holly Jean Cosner and Carmel Louis join to put up YourGuru, a marketplace to help instructors connect with clients and earn extra money outside their studio positions. The system grows to over 1,000 instructors in 6 months. The underpinning of the system is a set of social tools that connect the instructors to the clients they teach. During this time the company is searching for ways to push into the gyms and studios around.
The marketplace evolves into YG Studios, a concept that still incorporates the underlying social connection, but focuses on the group fitness instructors and lets go of the personal training aspect.
Realizing the challenge of operating a fitness studio while building out the technology to underpin operations, Nt decides to strip away the YG Studios aspect and focus exclusively on the software.
FitGrid software rolls into beta in late 2017. By December 2017 the company had 5 beta clients.
FitGrid scales to hundreds of clients and delivers game-changing innovations such as Instructor Follow-Ups, more deeply connecting instructors and clients in support of delivering better retention for the studio.
FitGrid delivers the first installment of its Daily Recommendation System, an AI platform meant to drive the right interactions with clients, at the right times, from the right studio team members. FitGrid also delivers FitGrid Client, the first social network connecting clients to each other, instructors, and studios.
When studios first started to close as a result of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, we rushed to put out FitGrid LIVE, the first seamless live-streaming solution for the fitness industry. Our goal was to help studios preserve their existing business models and hold onto their clients. In the weeks that followed the launch of LIVE, thousands of studios, including some of the industry’s biggest brands, adopted FitGrid to host their first virtual fitness classes. Today, millions of minutes are streamed through LIVE on a weekly basis by studios across the US and the globe, and FitGrid is viewed as the most user-friendly solution, as well as the only one with integrated retention and community building tools.
In addition to Mindbody stuidos, we built a new integration and now we can service Mariana Tek studios. We also revamped and grew the company size, and now have a dedicated Customer Success team.