EGYM and The Future of Client-Centric Gyms - Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, where we talk with entrepreneurs, researchers, and practitioners in fitness, wellness, and the health sciences. I'd like to give a big thanks to our sponsors, Level 5 Mentors, helping entrepreneurs achieve the highest levels of freedom in time, money, relationships, health, and purpose.

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Go to level5mentors.com or certifiedcoursecreation.com and learn more. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. We're live. Phillip, welcome to the future of fitness, my friend.

Hello, Eric. It's my pleasure to uh spend some time with you here.

Yeah, it's uh it's great. I I've been working to get you uh on the inner on the podcast for a while, and you know, I've been really interested in in the work that eGim does and and the purpose and the the services that you guys provide. So it's it's really great. And the timing, I mean, wow, you know, it's just uh it's an interesting, obviously time. I think we're all kind of tired of talking about the pandemic, but it's hard to uh to ignore, especially with its impact on the fitness industry. So we'll get into all that, kind of what what's going on now, your point of view, and you know, you're over in Germany, so uh I appreciate you coming on in the evening hours. Let's start here, Philip. Uh, how did you get to be the founder of eGym? Where did that come from?

Yeah, so you know, I was born and raised in Germany, and then I moved to the US for my university. Uh I attended Columbia Business School in New York City, and when I started there, my friends uh told me, hey Philip, if you go to a US business school, what you have to do is two things. One, you have to wear your Columbia t-shirt every day, and you have to take that t-shirt at least two times a week to a place we call gym. So that was really for me the very first time in my life to go to a gym. And I just didn't understand the product. Like I saw all my friends also not understanding it really well, because what we did was we walked on the training floor, we pressed the quick start button on cardio machines, which makes kind of no sense in the world because it's not dependent on my training goal, it's not dependent on my body. I just do something random. And then I would, you know, approach all the strength machines and do three sets of 15 reps of a random training weight. And when I left the gym, I never knew whether I was you know successful today. I I'll there was a total lack of data here. And you know, the more I you know asked more friends about their experience in the gym, I realized that I know so many people that go to the gym, and all of them have one thing in common, they are not really successful. And for them, the experience doesn't feel great. And most of them also told me that they had been churning through that industry already multiple times and joining again in January post-New Year's resolutions. And so then at this time I felt, wow, like so many people understand they should be going to the gym, but the product just doesn't work yet for them. And I believe that technology can do a lot to fix that problem and then make the gym industry much, much bigger. And that's why I founded eGym then.

Yeah, you you identified a huge problem. And something I saw, you know, early on as we were just talking about before recording, you know, having own CrossFit gyms kind of early, you know, 08-09, when we are working out like, well, what is our differentiator here when we talk to people when they come in the gym and we're doing their consultation? You know, what is what's the differentiator? It didn't take very long to realize that most people just go into a gym and they're lost. They walk around, they exactly like you described, you hit quick start on some kind of button, maybe they do it for 20, 30 minutes. You can see it. Like I'm in the gym all the time too, and I see people just kind of going from machine to machine with no real idea of what what why they're doing it. And it's obvious, right? But you have not too many people tackle it. So, yeah. So, where when when you so you decided to found eGym, what year was that?

That was back in 2011.

Okay. And that was kind of when boutique fitness was starting to pop up a little bit too. When you're starting to see all these noticings, where did you see the greatest potential for technology within our industry, within the fitness space?

I felt that, you know, when you think about the gym, I always call it it's kind of access to tools. So you you sign up for your membership, and then you have access to this rope and the these free weights and these guarding machines, strength machines, these spinning bikes, all of that. But there's like in my view, maybe 80% of people that go to the gym just because they have a training goal. And I always compare the access to tools versus access to solutions a little bit like Eric. Imagine a restaurant, you walk in there, but in this restaurant, you don't you cannot just order your salami pizza, but you will have access to tools. In this restaurant, you will have you know access to eggs and milk and flour and you know salami, and then you can prepare your own pizza, you can put it in the oven and bake your own pizza. And this is pretty much how gyms are providing their service. If you have a training goal, you still only get access to tools, and then you need to find your way on your own. And I believe that with technology you can help turning the gym from access to tools to a real solution provider. So you don't need to prepare your own salami pizza, you can just order it and eat it, right? And with technology, what we can do is we can personalize the user experience. Imagine a gym where every single piece of equipment would know you, Eric, and knows your training goal and your current state of your training. And every single piece of equipment would, you know, set up automatically and guide you through an ideal workout perfectly tailored towards your goal and your body. And when you when you leave the gym, you would see data that is meaningful, that makes sense for you. It's easy for you to understand how you have been progressing. That would all of a sudden be a gym that turned from access to tools to access to solutions. And 80% of the people that go to the gym just want to have solutions. And what they need is a personalized user experience. And so, therefore, uh you hear a lot about you know what could be, what is digitalization of the gym, how could digital technologies be used for the gym? And oftentimes they end up being a lot of different rabbit holes because I really believe to digitize the gym really means personalizing the user experience. And that's why I believe the biggest impact of technology inside the gym could be personalizing the user experience.

Interesting. So the market that you guys, it sounds to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, because this is I could very well be, but gyms that have traditionally focused on access. So, you know, like a 24-hour fitness model, right? Um, you know, like the boutique and you know, high-end personal training studios, um, that's that's a different breed, right? They're very high service, they want to create that human-to-human. But you're maybe talking about that elephant that that basic access model and elevating it up to a higher service offering through technology. Is that am I summarizing that well?

That's correct. That's absolutely right. And uh we have we we see see in the meantime also boutique concepts that only focus on the eGEM Tech Stack, but these are boutiques that want to really serve the 80%. Um and we call these people the health seekers. In my view, more or less three groups of people that use all kinds of different fitness facilities. There's on the one hand side, you have the expert users, those people know exactly how to work out. They don't need much support from us as an industry, they just need to have access to tools, and it needs to, these tools need to be, you know, as close as possible, 24-7 open, and as inexpensive as possible because they just want the tools. These are the expert users. I would say they're roughly 10%. On the very other end of the spectrum, there are the what we call engaged or vanity users. Engaged users are people that don't know exactly how to work out, but they're willing to move mountains to be successful. These folks are buying personal training, or they're also going to boutique gyms. In boutique gyms, they don't buy one-to-one personal training, but they buy maybe, you know, one to ten or one to fifteen personal training. So small group training. And what personal training and small group training have in common is that you provide guidance for people that don't know how to work out properly or have a lack of motivation. You basically provide guidance enough to make them successful and compensate for the lack of motivation and expert status. And those people can also be up to 10%. And then you have in the middle the 80%, and we call them the health seekers. These health seekers are just, you know, your uncle Joe or your aunt Anna, normal people that just want to live longer and better. They join a gym because they want to lose some weight, because they want to get rid of their back pain, because they want to sleep during the night, you know, just people that want to live longer and better. They're not highly engaged, but they also have a lack of expert knowledge. I for those kind of folks, I compare the gym a little bit, like for maybe you and and and me brushing our teeth. We are not particularly passionate about brushing our teeth, but we absolutely understand that we want to do that to live longer and better. Um, maybe in that case it's more about living better. But when you think about working out, it's really, it's literally about living longer and better. And um, in my view, those 80%, those normal people that just try to be successful in a training floor, we force them into an expert product. They're not engaged enough to, you know, go to a boutique, they're not engaged enough to buy personal training, but then we force them to use exactly the same product as expert users. But the gym for them is not self-explanatory. They go on a training floor and and do some quick start training on cardio machines, and maybe if they even dare to do strength training, do three sets of 15 reps in a random training way. And so um, I believe that technology can really fix the biggest problem. I do think that we have like incredibly awesome boutique concepts like you know, Orange Theory and many others. I believe we have incredible personal trainers as soon as people are engaged enough to buy that service. I also believe for expert users that exactly know how to work out, they have more gyms for less fees closer to their neighborhood that they could ever dream of. But it's all paid by these 80% that keep churning through and just can't figure out quite how to be successful on a training floor. And for this group, we call them the health seekers, we believe that technology can do everything to provide them with a similar experience as if you would be joining a boutique or if you would be draw having a personal trainer that literally personalized for you the experience and helps you to do only things that will not risk your health, but really make sure that every single minute you spend on a training floor actually creates positive health outcomes.

You know, this uh it reminds me a lot of how fitness professionals go after the corporate wellness market, right? So most fitness professionals, coaches, trainers, even gym owners probably fall into that 20% of the two categories you're talking about of expert and engaged, right? Um, so when they approach a corporate health and wellness program, they forget that the majority of the people within that corporate environment are gonna be the health seekers that you're talking about. Absolutely. Just by simply, you know, offering another class or you know, maybe putting a facility into a corporate location or on a campus that that's gonna solve the problems that the company is facing. It's not because you know who's gonna go there? The experts and maybe the engaged. And they are gonna go to a gym either way. Maybe they just got it cheaper now, right?

Eric, Eric, you speak so close to my heart. This is exactly true. And and it is quite interesting because, in the meantime, you know, I start I after I had the idea, I moved back to Germany and founded a company here. And in the meantime, we are also active in the US market, uh, which was always for me the holy grail. Uh, but but when I started here, I quickly penetrated the market with eGym quite well. We are now in 15% of all German gyms with our software and our connected hardware. And we have already the reputation of you know solving the issue for health seekers. And that's why we've also become the largest corporate wellness provider here in Germany, because corporations basically approached us. This is how everything started, and told us look, if we just give our employees money so that they can access gyms only, well then it's a it's it's the it's just the small piece of the ROI, which is a nice benefit for engaged users and expert users that would go to the gym anyway. So they maybe appreciate it, but they understood that the biggest chunk of their ROI of investing in corporate wellness is if they on the one hand activate those health seekers, but then also make sure that they do the right things to be successful and create positive health outcomes so that they generate less healthcare costs and less sick days and higher productivity and so on. So it's funny that you say that because this is actually how we ended up being in corporate wellness so far only in Germany too, because we got approached by corporations that exactly wanted to wanted a solution for the health seekers and not for the expert and engaged users.

Yeah. Well, it's it's uh, you know, I've had my my friend and uh colleague Ken Andruka on the show, who's created a very successful corporate health and wellness company up in Canada. And he he went at the same approach you did, is like, well, you know, the overwhelming, and let's just use the 80-20 rule because it seems to be applicable for everything, but 80% of the costs are coming from 20% of the population who in no way have any intention in the next few years of going into a gym. And you have to find a way to get to those people because that's where, like you said, pharmaceutical spend, um, sick days, all the healthcare costs tend to gravitate around that 20%. So it's it's a really interesting solution. It it just comes down to kind of addressing the problem for what it really is and you know, not looking at everything that it's you know as if it's a nail because all you got is a hammer, right?

You know, what I love about our industry is that everyone working in our industry is extremely passionate about what we do. But the flip side of that is that the people we are serving are not all hugely passionate about fitness. And so we as an industry need to think more: who are these people that come to our gyms? What's our growth potential? And the growth potential is these are the health seekers that not everyday Joe that just wants to live longer and better. And if I would now have, you know, my aunt Anna joining a fitness facility after being inactive for 20 years, and you would now tell her, you know, the best thing you could be doing is this high-intensity interval functional training. Well, you you guess what? She would maybe break something and will definitely not keep going. Because what we need to understand is every every new joiner has a member journey. And we at one point we want them all to do this really crazy, you know, things that are most effective, like functional training, but we fail for most of our users to get them there because we're not really building into our fitness facilities a proper journey that allows people to turn from health seeker to maybe engaged or expert user. And and that's so important because I often speak to fitness professionals that say, like, I believe in you know, functional training, I don't believe in guided movements, things like this. But the real answer is I believe for beginners in this, and I believe for experts in that, you know, and I believe for engaged users that have a personal trainer with them, this is the right solution. And it really depends on the member. And we need to become much more member-centric to understand, to unlock the huge potential our industry has, because probably you and I agree that actually 100% of Americans should be working out. It shouldn't be just 20%. But from the 20% that even go to our fitness facilities, 80% fail their training goals because we don't have good solutions for them. So, how could we even, you know, dream to become bigger? We need to fix our product for the people that are just normal people. We have a, you know, we can address a mass market, but we also have to get our things together to actually then solve for their issues and not just sell a membership to them. And and home fitness providers like Peloton, it's pretty amazing what they're doing to, you know, engage their members much more.

Awesome. So we're on the same page. I'm excited about that. I think maybe just to give our listeners a little bit more clarity around eGM. Give us me an example of how you've helped modify successfully a gym and what that user experience differentiated. Like, like walk me through. If I'm, you know, if I'm uh an average Joe walking into the gym, how is my experience different once eGym is implemented, what it does?

Yeah, uh, thank you very much for providing me with that opportunity. That's something I love to talk about. So you will be you you joined that gym, and what will happen is depending on the format, you will join online or you will, you know, join offline. But basically, as soon as you walk on the training floor, all strength strength machines and all cardio machines will know you already. So let's say you are Eric and you want to lose weight, then you you get from your gym your membership card, you walk on the training floor and you pick any of the strength machines, you swipe your membership card, and the strength machine would set up automatically everything electronically, right seat position, right you know, setup for your body and your training goal. You then go to a cardio machine, for example, from pre-core, matrix, or life fitness. You swipe again your membership card, and the machine would know also this is Eric, and you want to lose weight, and this is what we need to do. The machine will be set up automatically and then guide you through a perfect workout for you. When you exit the gym, you will pull up your gym's app and you will find data around your, you know, how how this had an impact on your body. For example, our most clicked feature is the bioage. Um, you will understand that right now you're 10 years younger biologically than your real age. And and and the more you push, the younger you get. The way we achieve all that is we have our own smart strength machines. We generate resistance electronically. So you work out against electric motors, and this way we can really make sure that we have a highly personalized user experience. You uh we guide you through a huge touch screen. And whether you want to do extremely high-intense, really tough strength training or a little lighter strength training, we know exactly what you need. We will adjust the way we stress your muscle every six sessions to really keep confusing your muscles and to also keep you motivated as motivated as you are progressing. So we had to really develop the entire strength machine because there was nothing that could be connected. On the cardio machines, we saw already in the market all these great cardio machines that had they were electric, they were internet connectable, but the entire screen was mainly used for things that have nothing to do with your fitness experience. You could watch Netflix there, you could do everything, but on you were basically still pressing the quick start button and do something that makes no sense for you. And so we've worked closely with our partners from Matrix Pre-Co Life Fitness to develop, you know, a what we call smart start. So it's not a quick start, but a smart start. And a smart start means you swipe your membership card and the machine will know you. We will set everything up for you and guide you through an ideal cardio workout. And we take all that data and then you know provide you with most meaningful data in your gym app. I'm always joking with my friends that we are the only white-labeled app for gyms that also includes your workout data and your training plans. So, and and all my friends look at me like, but this is exactly what I would be expecting in a gym app. And I'm like, yeah, but this is exactly what you couldn't find in gym apps before we entered the market. And so we bring that all together with 110 partners that connect to our platform, whether it's the in body uh scale that you know is part of our bio age, we call it metabolic bio age. We do strength tests, we do cardio tests, we take the VO2 max from your cardium training. Or from your Apple Watch, we take your flexibility measures and all of that will then be displayed in your bioage. And that's really um also a nice goal for our gym members because you know, for example, weight loss is always something you do in phases. You have like a diet, but that you want to be always getting younger is something that never stops in your life, and that's what we try to achieve.

Awesome. So it sounds like you guys have equipment partners. So do you develop your own equipment or is it hardware that's installed in an equipment? And then obviously you have platformers, you have white-labeled apps, so you have the software side of it. Um what are all the parts that go into your service offering, your product offering?

We basically have the approach as a platform that we just want to solve this problem for health seekers all the way. And we understand that we need partners in the industry. And when I entered this industry, what I saw was lots of silo solutions. Everyone was kind of building their own little world, right? If you would go to this gym, you would have that app from the gym that has basically opening hours and some, I don't know, trans transactional features and marketing features. Then you would go to this live fitness machine and you have the LF Connect app, then you go to the pre-core machine and you have the pre-core app, you go to the in-body body fit scale and you have the in-body software, or in mostly that was actually a print printout, and and and then it was the job for the gym user to aggregate all the data and make sense out of it. And that's why no one ever used these services. And maybe I'm a little bit exaggerating, but that was my experience. And so what we now do is we bring all these players together in one app, and that's the Gyms app. And whenever we can just work with partners like a matrix, we don't want to do anything they do because they just do this so well, and so we just deeply integrate with them. It's the same, for example, with member management platforms like ABC. We don't need to provide a member management platform, we just deeply integrate with ABC. But for, for example, smart strength machines, we just saw these mechanical strength machines, and we didn't believe that with sensors you really solve the issue for health seekers. So then we decided to really go full stack and develop a fully electric strength machine, like an electric cardio machine, and and sell that too as a piece of hardware, but closely connected into our ecosystem. And so the approach of us always is it's so hard for everyone to really put us in one category, but we jump across categories. We always try to build up strong partnerships because we believe gym operators should always have the choice of best of breed. We don't want to lock in gym operators, but we really want to solve the problem for health seekers, and the more partners we can motivate for solving this problem the better. But if there's crucial pieces that we just can't solve even with partners, we have to do it on our own. And smart strength machines is a good example because strength training was something that just never worked for health seekers at all. And we needed to fix that. And uh, I'm really proud, for example, one interesting data point for you, maybe 50% of our global strength users are female users, as it should be. But when you look into stats from gyms, you will see that the the strength training users and ratio between male and female is very different than 50-50. Um, but we have solved strength training also for women and for health seekers, just for normal people.

This is great. This is really helpful because I think this is the thing that I've been trying to see clarity on. The way that you describe it is you're really just focused on the solution and then you you get to you're focused on the problem, right? And then you use whatever you can through partnerships or you know your own development to get to that solution. So that that makes a lot of sense. And if I'm if I'm listening as a you know a health or fitness coach as well, and I'm wondering, well, what what part do I play in this? Is this you know a platform or is this technology that that I as the coach can leverage? And what would your answer be to that?

Absolutely. Uh the more you are an expert, uh, the better you can leverage it. So what what we will do is, you know, we we definitely automate all routine tasks. So like no coach is needed to set up the strength machine, to set up the cardio machine. This kind of stuff is completely automated by us. But we create a lot of data, and we also have a personal trainer app where we feed all the data into that app. And so, as a health professional, you whenever you talk to me, you have access to immediately to all my data. For example, based on all the different strength assessments we have in our database, we provide you with an analysis on whether Philip has imbalances. And if Philip has imbalances, muscle imbalances, and also complaints about back pain, you as a really expert status health professional, you know exactly how to tackle my back pain. You will add some mobility training and you will to lengthen the muscles and you will fix my imbalances because as long as I have imbalances, there's no way I will get rid of my back pain. So, what I what I'm trying to say is you can start being really helpful and you can you you you don't need you know this these basic routine tasks of setting up equipment for me. And I think that's that's really also a game changer for health professionals because you really become my solution provider, like on top of you know, equipment making sure that you have an excellent workout.

What about lifestyle factors? Are you guys tracking that, like the the sleep, stress, steps, all the other, you know, when people are the other 23 hours of the day when people are not in the gym?

Yeah, absolutely. We uh connect all these consumer devices and consumer apps, and the trainer has also access to all that data. I will say in most of these cases, we more like plot the data, but we are not yet making a ton of sense yet for it. We first want to really fix the workout product from A to C. We want to provide health professionals with access to all the data because they join our platform. But in the long run, we will indeed, you know, for example, part of your bio aid should maybe not only be strength, mobility, you know, metabolism, and cardio, but maybe it should be indeed also sleep, nutrition, mindfulness. However, we are right now still focusing heavily on fully fixing the workout piece. Um, but definitely it's part of the vision because, as you know, these other factors are hugely important.

Yeah. Yeah, awesome, man. I'm I'm loving everything I'm hearing. So looking forward now, as soon as we can, we can wrap up 2020, I hope, uh, and just get out of it with no man no more. For sure, yeah. That would be great. What's your yeah, that'd be great. Let's just, you know, if we could fast forward, let's just end it now. 2021. What what is what is your outlook on the gym industry overall? What do you see?

Yeah, so there's no question that uh 2020 has been a really tough year for our industry. You know, you you you read all about the chapter 11 filings and so on, and it's clear like if you shut down gyms, if you if politicians decide that the gyms are now on a zero revenue level, that's just super tough. And and it there will be also some time in 2021 for them to you know first get established again and get the finances in order. But I I'm actually overly optimistic because the gym industry has never been dependent on the economic cycle. So whether it was 08, you know, 2012, 2001, they've always been great years for the gym industry. So there may be now a recession based on all the corona situation, but that's not problematic for the gyms. The gym industry always kept growing at like 4 to 5% and was really based on an increase uh in health awareness. And I do believe that you know the health awareness in 2020 has for sure been growing more than 5%. And much more people were all of a sudden wondering like, hey, if my immune system is not strong enough, I may be dying here. This is like like I believe this has really hopefully, you know, woken up some folks that I really need to start living a healthier lifestyle. And I saw stats from a McKinsey study already in China that post-lockdown the the Chinese people were way more health aware than before. And so that's for sure a good thing. What I'm also seeing is that the gym industry in general has been really frustrated by politicians that we were all locked down, and and I clearly shared that frustration too. But what I think everyone understood was that we were considered not as part of the solution. We were not considered as a health provider. We were considered as, you know, a pump and iron kind of aesthetics thing that you can also just easily lock down. And uh and I think what I'm seeing now is that our entire industry has started to think more from you know, transitioning from aesthetics orientation to health-oriented workouts. And because I believe that's anyway 80% of the market, this will be very helpful for gyms to think more about health orientation, to not kind of, you know, I think very few gyms will open up post-lockdown again and then advertise the bikini shape, right? There's so much more we can win, and that will help us. We'll complement it with an increase in health awareness. We can track uh in all our we have right, we have our software in 15% of US gyms, we have our software and hardware in 15% of the German gyms, and the US is the largest fittest market in the world, Germany is the second largest fittest market in the world, and so we have access to a lot of data. And what we see is always as soon as gyms are being opened again, the rebound rate's actually really good. It doesn't recoup, of course, for all the thick, all the members we lost during the lockdown, but we will get there again. So the rebound is good, and when we track data, what we see is that the behavior of the you know gym goers has also changed. For our solution, what we do is you know, every user needs to provide us with their training goals. This is how we can then make sure that on strength or cardio machines, the machine exactly knows how you work out successfully. And we have during the first lockdown developed a new training goal called ImmuneFit, where we set all parameters of your workout to push you to your limit, to strengthen your immune system, but then make sure we never over push over your limit, because otherwise you will end up in immunosuppression after your workout, and you're even more likely to be infected. And so we tried to manage that. We cannot control all parameters, we launched that, and from day one, 31% of all users clicked immune fit.

What was that percentage again, Philip?

31%. And when you think about it, for 10 years in this gym industry, since I'm tracking training goals, it has been entirely stable. Always the top two training goals. Guess what, Eric? Weight loss and muscle building. And all of a sudden, weight loss and building muscles are only each between 15 and 20%, and 31% of users clicking immune fit. And that's clearly an health-oriented workout and not an aesthetics-oriented workout. And of course, not everyone, like we will not keep this rate at 31%. People will kind of get over corona, hopefully, sometime soon. But what my wish is is that we keep them on a health-oriented workout goal that is not based on faces, but this will just never go away. And maybe it's longevity, maybe it's a low bioage, right? But this is how we need to make sure that Uncle Joe and Aunt Anna will stay with our fitness facilities for forever. And I see a huge opportunity from a customer side, but also from an operator side, thinking more around health versus just aesthetics. And that makes me hopeful. I really want us to acknowledge that the gym of the past didn't work enough for so many people. And we have learned from that and readjusted our thinking and now help people actually to be successful because this is how we can address a much larger market.

Awesome. So, well, two more questions for you, Philip. And this has been incredibly insightful. And I think you and I share um the same hopes for the fitness and health industry. And really, it's just it is an emergence from you know the typical fitness trainer into the health profession. I mean, I think that's essentially what we're talking about. And it's that the door hasn't been more wide open than it is now. What about connected fitness? So you look at like um, you know, the Pelotons and the home fitness movement, I guess, for lack of better term. Is that is that now a competitor to the gym, or is that what else what is that to you?

Yeah, that's a great question, Eric. And it's everyone is thinking about it right now and rightfully, because the rise of Peloton is just unbelievable, right? When we, for example, track in all our 15% of US gyms, 15% of German gyms, gym attendance, for example, an average user goes four to five times per month into a gym. Um, at the last earnings call, Peloton announced that an average Peloton user is using the Peloton bike 20 times per month. It's like insane engagement and it's millions of people. So this is something that clearly is something great and we can learn from. And you know, home fitness has not been invented by Peloton. One-third of all American households have these, you know, low-cost cardio machines somewhere in their dusty basement. And we all have seen them in the past. But you know, these were not great products, and people didn't pay a lot for it. But now Peloton has completely changed that game and has proven that you can charge like 10 times more if you deliver really a great value proposition. And Peloton does this extremely well. People are highly engaged and they use it a lot and they pay a lot for it, but it's not a competition. Before the lockdown, I think 60% of Peloton users had additionally a gym membership. Now it's 40%. But I do think that's also just because, yeah, we know all that gyms just had been closed. But you know, right now it's a compliment, but the gym cannot stop. Because if what we see right now, the rate of innovation in connected fitness for your home is very fast, and the gyms need to catch up with that. What you cannot do is having like your amazing home fitness equipment that knows the user and guides you through a personalized user experience, and then you go to your gym to the place that is supposed to be professional, and then everything is analog, and you press the quick start button on cardio machines and strength machines, you're you know working with the weight stack while in your home, you have a fully electric and personalized strength machine. That makes no sense in the world. But I would say right now it's a compliment, but it is actually also time for the gym industry to make sure that the gyms not end up being only at home. And we need to invest much more in technology to, on top of all the great things that the gym offered, like hugely variety of tools, a community, you know, well-trained staff, all these things, we just can't afford to then be entirely analog, but we need to be at least as personalized as the home fitness equipment. And therefore, there is a need for making investments. But if we now take that as an opportunity, I believe that can be a nice complement. It could be that parts of cardio, for example, happen to be then a bit more at home, but then still, how can you make sure that you have all the different strength machines in your home? You know, it's difficult difficult. So, in general, a more personalized user experience, in general, you know, more focus on health seekers and in general strengthening what we're really good at, community. These are, in my view, the ingredients we now actually also have to do to grow rapidly as an industry. But if we don't do anything and still provide an analog experience while home fitness is growing rapidly, and with the 40 billion market cap of Peloton now, also really like unlimited funding, then the gym industry will get into an issue. And um yeah, that's that's what is my life's mission to help these gyms because they're perfectly tailored to to deal with the health seekers that are quite frankly not engaged enough to buy a $3,000 bike, right, for their homes. So, but there's lots of opportunity, but there are for sure also threats. But if you now take the right steps, I think there will be a nice way of living in uh in you know in synergetic ways together with the televisions of this world.

Awesome. Awesome. We're gonna leave it on a really positive note right there, Philip. Uh where do people where do people go? What what website, if they want to contact you personally? Yeah, give us the goods, Philip. Where do you send people?

Yeah, you can you can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn. And if you want to have more information about e-Gym, just check out eGim.com. But yeah, I would love to you know get in touch with the listeners. So maybe Twitter is the easiest way.

Awesome. Well, Philip, this was great. I uh I learned a lot, got a lot of clarity around eGym that I've been looking to get for a long time. And uh really appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy, so uh thanks for coming on the future of fitness.

Thank you so much, Eric, for your time. Um, what you're doing is really great for all industry.

Yeah. Hey, it's your host, Eric Malzone. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Future of Fitness. If you enjoyed it, please do me a huge favor by going to the website and signing up for our newsletter. The website is futureoffitness.co. Again, that's futureoffitness.co. We've got some big, big announcements coming down the pipe, and we want you to make sure that you are on top of it. Thank you again. Signing off