Shane Farmer - Dark Horse and The Future of Rowing

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. InsightTracker can help. Insight Tracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Insight Tracker store. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Inside Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. InsideTracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Insight Tracker, the science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is InsightTracker.com forward slash future. This episode of the Future of Fitness is presented to you by the Fit Tech Club, a business network run by the creators of the Fit Tech Summit, Europe's leading conference devoted to fitness and health technology. Look, friends, the fitness industry is changing faster than ever. The intersection of technology with fitness and health is growing bigger and more dynamic by the minute. Gyms are exploding figuratively, and their constituent parts are ending up at home, outdoors, on your wrist, or in entirely new places with brilliantly new concepts. Investors are pumping astronomical amounts of money into the market like we've never seen before. The FitTech Club believes that collaboration is the advantage to these times of change. That's why the club aims to bring thought leaders together to inspire them by making the right contacts at the right time and giving insights to the industry's most relevant and current trends. Here's what Melanie Lauer, CEO of Kettler and TriSports, says about the FitTech Club.

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If you're interested in the fitness technology game and looking to accelerate your growth, I highly suggest you check out fittechsummit.com forward slash club to learn more. You can join the highly valuable newsletter, apply for the FitTech Club itself, or simply learn more or connect with people like me. That's fittechsummit.com forward slash club. Shane Farmer, welcome back to the future of fitness, man. I could not be happier to be here. Yeah, it's gonna be a great conversation. I am of course I look forward to talking to you every time we chat, and we do uh get to chat quite often. And it's just good to have you back because I mean today's uh it's in March sometime of 2022. Man, like this whole rowing thing has really taken off. I don't know if you noticed, um, but it seems to be quite popular nowadays. Yeah, people keep telling me this. So and I don't think uh I know anybody uh within the fitness industry. And I I know like having Anthony Veneri on this show, he said, you know, you've really carved out this niche really well um, you know, for over a decade span, really, um, with dark horse rowing and your educational products. And maybe you can give us some clarity on what exactly is going on on the market. And let's start with this, dude. Let's I have people can go back and listen to our previous interview. I think it was released uh two or three years ago. Um yeah. But let's give us an update. Like, what is dark horse rowing? What are you up to nowadays? And then we'll get into the the total market.

Um all right, so dark horse rowing is started after, I guess at this point, let's call it kind of the halfway point of my career. Uh, I had been coaching on the road, teaching seminars for concept two, for CrossFit uh teaching the CrossFit Rowing Seminar, which was kind of a conjunction of those two, um, teaching with the Invictus Athletes camp. So I was on the road a lot, and then just recognized that I was only able to have an impact on the people that I was coaching when I was in front of them. And uh that was inherently frustrating for me. I I wanted to be able to reach more people, and 25 people a shot just felt like, okay, I mean, I can only travel so much. How do I impact you know more lives? Um and I I can't just keep traveling for the rest of my life. At a certain point, I'm gonna want to slow down. So I started to try and figure out how do I crack this nut of teaching people how to how to row. And uh at the time it was just blog articles, and so I started with writing and you know, trying to put insert pictures in line with blog articles, and that obviously had its own challenges. And then when I started to think, okay, well, surely there must be some video content out there that I can pull from and then you know add my notes to it to kind of explain what I'm talking about, and there was nothing. I mean, not a single video out there except for one like famous video from Concept 2 where it's just a woman like on a dock on a rowing machine, it's still out there. Uh, but that was it. And so I was like, well, I guess I I'll have to start making videos, started filming with my phone, and um here we are. Uh, you know, now we're six years down the road, seven years down the road, something like that. And um, we have the world's largest rowing YouTube channel. Not that that's you know, saying a whole lot. That's just people's vote of uh confidence in indoor rowing, I'd say, more than it is in me. And I've just tried to continue to educate people along the way and then figured, you know, as long as I keep educating and giving everything that's in my brain out, uh, somehow we'll find a way to make a business out of it. And uh, here we are having made a business out of it. So now we provide online coaching, programming, as almost every business does nowadays. We have a membership program, um, but we started with courses online, so I took my my official concept to seminar online. Uh so we make video content. Uh we're kind of heavily involved, about about as heavily involved in the entire vertical of indoor rowing as one can be. So that's our that's our current up to speed.

Yeah, and it's it's such an it's such a great story. I, you know, when I was doing more business coaching, um, and this is pre-pandemic, it was always, you know, but pick a niche, right? Pick a niche, niche, um, what whatever your flavor is. But you know, that was always a big thing. I'm not gonna judge you. Yeah, it's like that was big things. Pick it pick a niche, and you did years ago, um, and you really stuck to it, man. And I think it's really, you know, bore a lot of fruit from you as you know, not only your your expertise in the vertical, but you know, it's provided you um, I know with a nice lifestyle and your business, and um, you've made a great community of of online people. Maybe it describe people uh because I think it's important, like when you say a dark horse, like what does that mean to you and to your community online?

Yeah, uh, and then that's that's always been an interesting um point of communication for us as a business to the outside world or for me as a person to the outside world. Because a lot of people hear Dark Horse and they think it's just kind of a title. You see a lot of different businesses called Dark Horse X, you know, coffee. It's one of my favorite coffee shops nearby, Dark Horse Coffee. There's wine, there are comics, there, I mean, everything. Um, but at the end of the day, the reason I chose Dark Horse as the name for my business is because my entire life prior to finding rowing had really been, and even after I'd found rowing and when I moved into CrossFit and started coaching and competing, um had always been the like textbook definition of a dark horse, which is an underdog essentially that nobody expects to win, but somehow finds a way and is able to succeed. With that, it becomes a whole bag of um things that you embody as you try to live that lifestyle. It comes with humility, personal responsibility, working hard and worrying more about what your results say than what about what words you say, what you tell people you're going to do doesn't really matter in my book. What matters is what I see you do, um, or perhaps what I may not see you do, but you do anyways. And really that's what it means to be a dark horse is you know work when no one is looking, work hard and understand that you have the responsibility to change your own life, nobody else. And that you can't control anybody else's life, that you can only control your own decisions, your process in order to change the outcome. And we can't even control the outcome. But what we can do is control our day-to-day process in hopes of orienting towards a North Star, and hopefully our outcomes end up in that direction. And so the people that we orient or that I orient the business to are those people who who have an inherent sense of what that means. And they're here to do the hard work. They need somebody to support them, and those are the people that I want to work with. I believe in them. I believe in those people who are willing to do the hard work themselves, and nobody else may be giving them the time of day. And I think that if we can inspire this community of people, of which there are many, they're parents, they're busy professionals, they've just chosen that they to have a rowing machine involved in their life in some way. We as a business, dark horse, are about empowering that individual. We just happen to use rowing. So we're less a rowing company and we are more of a lifestyle company about building a community of people who believe in themselves as dark horses.

Right on, man. Well said. And it is uh, I think the rower has this amazing ability to it's just it's it's a machine that's there to produce work, right? It's not it's not a glorious machine. I mean, I I do a lot of you know the your community's workouts uh at my local uh gym here, the uh shout out to the white fish wave. Um great, great community spot. But you know, there's just two rowers in the whole place, and you know, I gotta go find and truth be told, they're usually both vacant. Um, so it's not a problem finding one. But you know, when you when you get to it and I'm doing workouts like this, I'm like the guy grunting in the corner and like you know, uh bent over, breathing really hard. And I'm sure people are like, what is that guy doing? But I don't care because I feel part of the community.

What's that? How did he even get that done on that machine?

It's it's uh, I mean, the machine itself is is is amazing. And I'm talking about C2 or which we're gonna get into the whole gamut of you know, the the machines available and the technology. That's what I'm really looking forward to. But there is just something special about it, you know, having come from a CrossFit background, people who have really pushed hard on a rower know it brings you to special places that maybe other machines can't quite get you to. Uh it's it's it's unique uh in it. And I think that's one of the reasons, you know, uh, like I said, Anthony Winari mentioned it earlier, is he just loves it helped him in his rehab, you know, from you know getting back in shape after a battle of cancer and uh how that machine and the metrics and the simplicity of it, just you and a machine that doesn't lie to you, uh kind of like weight training, weights don't lie, right? They're always the same. Right. Um, you know, there's there's uh an elegant simplicity and beauty to it. So um, well, let's let's get into the meat of this, man. So I kind of thought about breaking this conversation down into three components, like the past and the present uh and the future of of what rowing is. So maybe we can start with the past. You know, how has rowing kind of taken itself off the traditional form on the water in a boat with a crew to you know what it is, what it is now? So yeah, get us, get it, bring us up to speed.

All right, so let's take a historical look, an historical look at uh at what rowing has done, because I think understanding the past is a great way to help understand the future. So the rowing machine as we know it really was built by Concept 2. Um, and this is back in the 70s. The the first rowing machine was built off of essentially used bike parts, and uh it was nothing glorious. The Dreysegacker brothers, the founders of Concept 2, uh were making oars at the time. They were both Olympic hopeful rowers, and they m started playing around about the same time that carbon fiber started to become popular, and so um they wanted to make a better ore and they started trying to use carbon fiber to create lighter ores as opposed to wood ores. Same time they were trying to figure out how they could train. Uh, and being both of them engineers, they started building a rowing machine out of again, used bike parts. They essentially took a bike wheel and put glorified baseball cards on the spokes to create resistance, and then they put gears on it. And uh, if you look at the original one, which I had one for quite a while here, I sold it recently. Um, it was just tube steel and uh and bike parts. That was it. Uh so that's where it started. Get into the 80s, and their machines have started to gain some popularity. The a race is created called the Crash Bees, um, which takes place in Boston. And it's essentially an indoor rowing competition. Uh, things were a little bit different when it first started because these machines didn't have digital monitors, they used speedometers from indoor uh or stationary bicycles. It's like the old Schwin speedometers are what they used. So it was like a very manual process. So Crash Bees becomes the first indoor rowing event, really. Um, I do want to preface this prior to Concept 2, there were indoor rowing machines. They had existed going back years and years and years, but they always used they used like pulleys and gears, and they were just pretty robust systems. So um they created the modern version of it. Crash Bees comes, indoor rowing starts to pick up in popularity, not as a sport, but as a training for rowing. Some dedicated rowers and lovers of rowing end up you know having machines bring them into their basements at home so that they can train during the winters, and that's kind of where that rises in popularity. Then we hit this, like they they kind of take off in popularity. Indoor rowing, or uh, I should say, rowing accepts the rowing machine as a training tool for them. Concept 2 is kind of the only player in the game at that point, and so they take the lion's share of the market. Not that it's a huge market, it's mostly just serving rowers. Come into like the late 90s, and the indoor rowing machine is starting to taper off. There's not a whole lot of excitement behind it. Rowing is only so big as a sport, it's inherently kind of standoffish from the rest of the world, and so indoor rowing starts to decline. In comes CrossFit, which accepts the rowing machine as a training tool uh for CrossFit, and all of a sudden the surge in indoor rowing popularity begins. And mostly because every CrossFit gym was just picking up, snapping up every rowing machine they could find. Uh, because it, as you mentioned, it's just a work tool. And so they were bringing these tools in just to create work. Nobody was focusing on how to do it or you know, good rowing. It was just, we know we can put somebody on here and make them suffer. That really kicked off what we're seeing now. Now, of course, this is like 2003, really, when CrossFit started to snowball. So 2003 restarts the excitement behind the indoor rowing machine. Along the way, new machines start to trickle in slowly, slowly, and it's this kind of long uphill climb. But let's call it 2014-ish is when, and this is just based off personal experience, I started to really feel the like there was starting to be some weight behind what was happening with the growth of indoor rowing. So um it starts to go, and now within the last like three, and I I back then was saying it like indoor rowing is going to have a heyday coming soon. And here we are. Um in the last three years, really, we've seen a big increase in investment into the space. Tons of new machine companies are entering the space, which I mean, exceeding what I thought we would see. So you've got investment dollars, you have excitement, you have marketing dollars. Um, all that just means that now indoor rowing is kind of getting its own, its own moment in time. Who knows how long this will last? Um we'll have to see as you know, players shake out of the space. But there are plenty of players in the game right now. And so that's kind of how we arrived at this exciting crossroads we're at at the moment.

Yeah. Well, what do you, I mean, when you look at the the functionality of rowing, what what makes it so attractive to people? I mean, outside of like, you know, the the hardcore rowing community who actually compete, right? But to the to the general consumer, what do you think it is? What is it about the rower? Because I I've been asked questions from friends and family, like, hey, I'm thinking about getting a rower, which one I should I get, what do I do? Um, and there just seems to be an attraction to it.

What do you think that attraction is because you can get so much done with a singular piece of equipment? You can get some we'll call it low-level strength. Um, obviously, you can't achieve the same kind of strength that you could with a barbell in your hands or cattlebells or dumbbells, but you can achieve strength, you can achieve endurance, you can achieve strength endurance. I mean, you can go as hard and fast, and this machine will push back as much as you can give it. I mean, it's you cannot no matter how many rounds you want to go, the machine will always win. Um, there isn't a person alive that can out that can beat the rowing machine. Uh so it'll always keep punching back. So as as hard and fast and as short as you want to go or as long as you want to go, it'll accommodate it all. It's inherently low resistance, so there's very low risk, so it can be high reward, low risk, which in the world of fitness is always a question that's kind of tumbling in people's minds, whether they know it or not. All right, what's my risk for reward factor here? If I decide to take on CrossFit, well, I inherently have this okay, so my risk level's relatively high because there are a whole lot of movements that I have to learn, so on and so forth. So it's uh, you know, high success rate, low risk of injury or not being able to do it any longer. It's inherently simple. You don't need a lot of equipment, you just need one piece. It can accomplish a lot of your goals, and price point-wise, depending on where you land, if you want high-end to low end, you can kind of land anywhere in the spectrum, um, anywhere from $200 up to $2,200. You know, you have a now at this point a broad spectrum of choices. So I think it's convenience, I think it is effectiveness, and I think it's low risk.

You know, I'll add one more thing to that because I kind of thought about this the other day as I was looking to get to buy one as I was telling you. Um it it like a CT rower will when it's laid down in it's you know, when it's ready to be used, it's what, you know, eight feet or nine feet long. But when it's put up, it actually takes uh into a storage uh, you know, uh configuration, whenever when it's put up on its its top end, it takes very little space. I mean it takes very little space, you know, as opposed to a treadmill or anything like that. I was thinking about that's brilliantly functional in so many ways.

Yeah, it's simple. And you know, that comes down to the simplicity side of things. It doesn't it's not a whole lot of contraptions. It's just one long piece that can stand up on end and you know goes into the corner and it tucks away nicely. Does uh you know, if we're talking about concept two, does it look pretty? No. It's a very industrial looking piece of equipment. Um it's not meant to look pretty, but there are other solutions to looking pretty uh in the rowing space now. And so you have, again, you know, this is kind of what we're getting at is you have a broad spectrum of choices. Do you want pretty? Well, now there are rowing machines that'll that'll do that for you when you you know put stand them up and get them out of the way.

Uh I'm gonna take that segue. I'm gonna run with it. So let's talk about the the present moment in time uh for rowing. I mean, so we have um like you mentioned, there's just a ton of investor activity in in that particular vertical, you know, uh as the race for everyone to be the Peloton of something, right? Um in the connected space. Uh there's the studio spaces and the franchises are expanding with you know numerous brands. Um, you know, and like I alluded to Peloton just a second ago, but they're talking about entering the space now. Um give us give us kind of the lay of the land, man. What it what does it currently look like as of 2022? Oh man.

Okay. Um I mean, rounds are closing left and right on investment for kind of the top players in the connected machine space. So I guess we can we'll start with the connected machines. Connected machines wise, I mean, we're loaded with machines at this point. Um, you have Ergata, Hydro, uh City Row, Averon, Techno Gym, Nordic Track. Uh the list goes on. I think there's one I'm maybe lit method. I don't know if they have their own machine. I mean, again, just five years ago, none of these machines even existed. And uh, other than Water Rower, which supports City Row and Orgata. They both use a water rower platform. Um, they've just built a smart monitor that goes on top of them. So those are the companies that are now in the space. And so when I say rounds are closing left and right, every single one of those guys is getting, you know, they've all gone through their their initial seed round, they've all done the three to five mil rounds. They're now breaking into the anywhere from 18 to 30 mil rounds. Um, what I imagine is the A. But some of them, I mean, just keep going. Hydro closed a massive round with like funding from JT and Lizzo. And um so, I mean, the interest is inherently there. People know that this machine has some gravity. So we've got all these connected machines in the space, and as you mentioned, they're all just kind of punching to see who can take the top share of that market before Peloton makes its play. Um we have to assume it's coming, and I think even this is just what I've heard. I didn't actually see the statement, but uh, I believe Peloton's planning on launching their rowing machine in May, as far as as far as I understand. So it's coming, and that means that every one of these companies is they know that they're gonna have a fight on their hands simply because of the market share that Peloton already has. And in this space of connected rowers, they're all fighting for the same target market. Now they may they may say, okay, well, we're trying to get to the video game-minded single individual who lives in a small apartment and wants to utilize this, but really they're all drawing from the same pool, which is essentially non-experienced rowers. So non-rowers who want to pick up rowing. Because a rower will most likely not go to a connected machine, they'll almost always use a concept two. Almost always. Maybe they'll use a water rower, but for them, a connected rower isn't really a consideration because they know the sport of rowing. They grew up on concept two machines. There's this like this cult passion for concept two. Um, and so they're not really considering it, but they're also the smallest share of the market, right? Um, so all of these new machines, they're out there, they're fighting for the same market share. We're gonna get another one, you know, coming in here sometime soon with Peloton, and then who knows who else will jump into the space after that. Um then we have the app space. The app space is starting to pick up. You have uh, you know, those that are kind of trying to get into like the web 3 virtual world. You have uh Xer, IC Row, they're creating like avatar-driven spaces in virtual worlds. Um, so that's inherently interesting. But then you also have more studio experiences that are trying to go the go to the app space. So I think you have uh Regatta Fitness or something like that, uh Club Row, that are all again trying to carve their niche of like, hey, you can have it on your tablet, and you can use your tablet on whatever rowing machine you do have. So you don't have to buy the machine from us, you can just subscribe to our our studio experience. Um yeah, I mean, those are kind of the two ways that uh companies are starting to iterate. I'm not seeing a whole lot in the space of like um wearables or anything making its way into rowing yet. Wouldn't be surprised that that starts to happen. Um, there are a couple players in VR, but as I've tested, VR gets a little weird on a rowing machine because there's so much tracking back and forth. It got it was really tough for me. And they're like, no, no, just keep using it a few times. You'll stop getting motion sickness after the third or fourth use. And I was like, I don't, that's not a hurdle I want to overcome. Like if it's gonna make me motion sick, I don't want then I'm just not gonna use it. Uh so there are, you know, there are players that are testing VR. Uh, I don't know how much success they'll find in rowing. I could see it for like paddling. Uh, you can there are machines out there that are like paddle ergs for Outrigger Canoe and Canoe uh canoe and K1 and things like that. And you can fix a seat on a concept too, and you could use it for for to emulate paddling. That would make sense because your seat's fixed, so now you know that that changes things. Um so that's kind of the current lay of the land.

And when you uh I think there's one other category I want to uh dive into a little bit because I know you you've worked or at least talked to, but like the actual studios that are developing just around rowing, right? So like um Row House, you know, had their president on Ramon not too long ago. Um you know, that that always fascinates me is when people take a simple com, you know, like running, you know, like indoor running and indoor rowing, and they build a whole franchise around it, right? Um give us some insights into what your thoughts are in that particular area.

So you have City Row, uh, you have Row House, and then there are some small, you know, one-offs or maybe five offs in that category. But really, you're looking at Row House and City Row that are kind of duking it out right now. Row House has the largest share. City Row's been a little bit more conservative in the way that they've uh opened locations. I think they're a bit more strategic in the way they do it. Row House went with uh a franchise partner that just like scattershot them everywhere. So you can find a lot of row houses out there. What do I think based on that based off that experience? Having been in uh several row houses and one city row, um, but having experienced it, it is a good experience. I I think you inherently run into a bit of a an issue when you have such a monostructural focused studio experience. And I'm not knocking what they're doing, but I just think they may have a sl uh a harder time of things than these rowing machine companies because if I can have the machine at home, that means that I can use the machine and do other things at home. Now, obviously, a row house does include other elements to their workouts, but I think uh selling an entire concept behind one monostructural movement of rowing poses its own challenges. So I think that's something they're up against. The experiences that I've had have been good. Um City Row, I think to their credit, have launched their own connected machine, which gives them a bit of a leg up on versatility. So if somebody doesn't want to come in-house, you can have the app or you can buy their machine, their connected machine, which I have one sitting on the wall here behind me. Um and their experience is pretty good. I actually really like their machine. I think they did a nice job on it. And the class experience that you get in their monitor, in their their operating system is is clean. Their classes are good. They they pay a lot of attention to their instructors, which I give them a lot of credit for. Um Rowhouse is pretty they're pretty all in on just the studio experience. So they're gonna live or die by how well those those studios succeed or fail. Um so you can kind of tell who's who's putting their chips where when it comes to the studio experiences.

Yeah, it's it's interesting. I mean, the the natural um comparison is is spin, right? Which uh has proven that it's a it's a viable product in the market. I mean, there's no denying that. I've taken spin classes, I enjoyed it, you know, I love the energy. It it all really comes down to the energy, the the instructor and the music and the playlist, right? Um, that's kind of what keeps you going and and who you're in the room with. And I think if you can kind of get those things, it makes a lot of sense. You know, I feel like there's inherent differences between a rowing machine and a spin machine. I don't know what it is, but it just feels like, you know, one's more uh you have both hands on it the whole time, right? Like it's just you there's not a whole lot of like looking around and cheering and and doing that on the row, or maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that's a challenge they would have if you were going to compare it to spinning.

Yeah. Rowing, I mean, cycling is a fixed movement that the machine guides you through. It's almost impossible to fail an indoor cycling machine, uh, you know, spin bike. You can't fail. It just, you know, you may get your setup a little wrong, like maybe your seat height isn't the right position, or maybe you're a little bit too for far forward or back, or your handles aren't in the right place. But for the most part, you're not gonna fail the movement. You can sit there and you know, dial the resistance up or dial it down, and it's gonna you'll get a good workout.

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Rowing's in rowing's challenge is that it's not a natural movement. It's a skill movement that requires education to get right. I've never seen a single person sit on the machine and just understand the rowing stroke without ever having seen anybody do it or without ever having practice it. It's a complete new newbie to rowing. He's going to sit on the machine and it won't make any sense because the machine doesn't guide you through the movement. It doesn't spin your legs in a little circle. You have to be aware kinesthetically of what your body is doing, number one. And number two, you have to be able to understand how you're supposed to move and then execute it correctly. And so there are plenty of barriers to entry in rowing. And this is rowing's probably biggest problem is that it requires education. And a lot of people don't love education because learning a new skill is hard and takes time, and you're not good at it right out of the gates, and that takes a lot of humility and patience. This is where like the dark horse concept comes in, right? If you don't have the patience to look at your own movement, we're not for you. We are all about laying good foundational elements to the way that you move. And if you just want to pay somebody money and in return you expect them to be the ones responsible for your health and fitness, we're definitely not your crowd. We expect that somebody would come to us and be involved in the process. And with any of these connected rowing machines, apps, or studio experiences, the balance that everybody has to strike and that everybody's trying to figure out right now is how much do we educate? How do we educate so that somebody can enjoy the process? Because if you don't understand how to row, it can become really frustrating because it be it becomes like a black hole. You're like, I'd put energy in, and then not the same amount of effort seems like it comes out on the other end, and I don't know why. If you can demystify that process, well, then you start to enjoy it because you go, oh, okay, well, now I get why you know I was just capped out on capacity. Or, oh, my mechanics just needed to be repaired, and once I could change that, now all of a sudden I started getting the energy out that I put in. Um, so that's kind of what you're up against.

Yeah, man, good answer. So you uh your position, whether it was intentional or not, is fairly agnostic. Like you're you're besides your brand, our course rowing, you you haven't really latched, you know, your your cart onto anything in particular, all these brands. You get to talk to a lot of people. I think that brings a lot of value to your expertise in this particular vertical because you can speak about things agnostic. You can give honest opinions, you can compare, and people, I guess, really want to seek out your approval as companies as well. And you had mentioned like you like I know in in your studio there you have many, many pieces of equipment. Um you know, maybe give us a brief summary of like some of the stuff you tested, what your thoughts were and and what you're thinking about, you know, um when you are testing these things.

Yeah, so that it I mean it was a conscious decision at a certain point um that you know to be able to reach people, I can't exclude anyone based off of what equipment they have, nor do I want to. If you want to row, I want to help you. Right? And I and if you're interested in rowing as a a business or consumer, I want to be able to help educate you one way or another, right? Whether it's the ability to speak to the audience, as in like, hey, I can see the trends that are happening here and and understand, you know, from a boots on the ground level what's happening, where the interest is moving, where the dollars are going, or if it's doing consumer, how do you move on this thing? How do you? I don't really I didn't want to eliminate anybody because as I mentioned at the end of the day, the dark horse is the bigger component of this rather than the rowing. So it was an intentional move to be agnostic and say, you know, while you may see a concept two in a lot of my videos, I also have, you know, a city row up on the wall and an ergata down here, and that's a hydro right behind me, and uh I have a whipper unit down here. So uh I've tested a lot of the machines. Uh I definitely have opinions about many of them. I mean, I can speak to the strengths and the weaknesses of them all. Uh and it really depends on who you are. The things that I look for are usability, um, the experience, the comfort level when you're on the machine, the type of resistance, the way the resistance is delivered, the ergonomics of it, uh, the accessibility of it, the cost. There's so many different variables involved. And I'm lucky, you know, Hydro, Orgata, City, or they've sent me their machines. So and and they're, you know, I'm uh my membership is comped on them. Um but I'm also very conscious of what a consumer has to pay, the member, the ongoing membership fees, the upfront price, what kind of experience they're getting, how how well that's delivered. Um my you know, my career was as a coach. And so coaching is very ingrained in me, like professional coaching, what it means to be a great coach, not just a fitness studio group instructor. The group instructor thing drives me crazy. Coaching, I'm I'm a fanatic about. And so I I carry a very high bar of what a quality experience is because that's what I did for the longest time when I started my career. I was on the floor coaching and I was surrounded by amazing mentors and like truly, truly amazing mentors who taught me what what the what coaching really means and what you can do if it's done well. And so I carry a very high bar for when I watch these classes and the experience these experiences, and I judge accordingly based off of that. You know, is it clear that they put a lot of effort into developing and raising great coaches who can then relay that to the audience? Or does it feel like they're just trying to push the business and just try to ship machines out the door with no real care for the experience? So, I mean, you know, I can each one I could talk about a million different points on. Um, but I mean, those are the machines that I have in here. There's a whipper, Vergata, Hydro, City Row, Concept 2. Um, I think there's a uh on its way, I think there's a techno gym. Um haven't tested Averon, haven't tested Lip Method or uh Nordic Track yet, but at some point, maybe, hopefully. Yeah, you're gonna need more space, dude. For sure. I I physical space desperately need a solution. If anybody is watching this and happens to own like a tiny house or you know, like high-end shed building company and wants to uh partner, please let me know. I desperately need I desperately need more space with all the rowing machines coming.

Uh so I want to have you kind of dust off your your crystal ball here. And let's let's look into the future of the industry because it's changing so fast. And I think a lot of people are placing bets on where this is gonna go. I mean, the total available market size for this, just like I mean, you look at like uh climber, right? Climber is essentially the versatile climber that you and I have known for a while. Once again, a tremendous machine for producing suffering and pain um in the right hands, um, in a good way. And uh the good kind of suffering. Yeah, the good, yeah, uh type two suffering is what we're doing. Type two suffering. Um the uh so we've seen like this model kind of pan out, and you know, now it's it's just the rowing motor is is hype. And you mentioned stuff like Web 3.0, um, all of that, right? I mean, there's so many different things, and this is why I think fitness technology overall is such an exciting space right now. But yeah, let's get into it, man. Where where do you see the potential of this market going?

Yeah, so number one, you have market size to consider, and nobody knows for sure. There are plenty of uh, you know, I have my own my own guesstimates of the market size out here based off of a number of factors. Um But I think we have a market size that's into the low millions as far as users go. Um as and that's I'm talking existing machines that are out there. Uh you know, this is considering kind of the how long the industry's been around. So many of those machines are probably concept twos. Um, and then the available market. And a good, I think a good look at the market size. You know, when I started Dark Horse, I thought my pie in the sky was like 50,000 subscribers on YouTube. Like, man, that would blow my mind if we could get 50,000 subscribers. And we're coming up on 200,000. And uh to this day I'm like, holy smokes, like never in my wildest dreams did I expect that. So that's an important metric right there. Just keeping in mind, I haven't even come close to capturing the entirety of the market. Um, I think I've just succeeded. Like from a race of attrition here. I've been willing to stick around it long enough. And so, you know, 200,000, do what you will with that based off, you know, and extrapolate what the total market size may be off of that. You also have to keep in mind, I think there's this uh this bubbling. I think there's a bubble starting to happen. It's already happening, and many people feel it, and they've probably vocalized it, but at a certain point it's gonna, it may not burst, but there's gonna have to be an adjustment of subscription burnout. I mean, we're just every single business is converting to a subscription model. At a certain point, you can only carry a monthly subscription load of a certain amount before you're like, I I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm tired. I I I just want to pay one time and know that this thing you know costs that much, and and there's it's always there. So I don't know how the fitness and the fitness industry adjusts from that when and if that happens, that subscription burnout, um, for as an industry-wide concern, not just indoor rowing. So there's subscription burnout. You're gonna have some losers in the connected machine space. Um at a certain point, a couple are gonna have to bow out. Peloton's gonna enter the space. Peloton has such a large market share in the spin space, the tread space, obviously, they've had problems with, you know, problems with the machines, they've had to be recalled. Obviously, with their CEO stepping down, a new CEO being appointed. It's it's inevitable that through the pandemic, these connected machines dealing from supply chain issues are gonna have to remedy like the the estimations that they were coming up with because COVID created this enormous spike in demand, which they couldn't fill. Then they started planning for the spike, which was already too late. Then the supply chain issues hit. I I am I don't envy a single CEO out there of these connected fitness companies trying to deal with forecasting because how do you forecast this? I mean, these are unprecedented times. Demand is by is isn't anywhere close to consistent. So indoor rowing was a huge saw a huge spike because of COVID. Our channel saw it. I mean, we just skyrocketed for almost a year because we were just here. It wasn't because we did anything different or all of a sudden it was like I cracked the code. We were just here for it. And rowing became an easily accessible way to stay fit when nobody could leave their homes. And so everybody started clamoring machines, you know, prices on Facebook Marketplace for a concept two, which brand new costs $900 plus $45 flat rate shipping and local sales tax. You were seeing them listed for $2,000. It's like, what is what is this? Like, none of this makes any sense. And people were paying that for you know short window of time. People were paying that because concept two was like three months out on shipping, and some people just didn't want to wait the three months. And um, so we're in this wild space. Peloton, obviously, they're they're the biggest player, and so everybody watched what happened when their forecasting just went down the tubes because you know they picked up um what was the name of the company that they bought in an effort to increase production? Uh I'm totally blanking. Yeah. Anyways, so they picked, you know, they pick up a they buy an equipment manufacturer in an attempt to speed up their production process, but then they the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction, and now they have this massive load that they have to carry, and the demand drops out because everybody's got one, and every machine has a life cycle, and that's what all these rowing machine companies are gonna have to deal with is what's the life cycle, what's the you know, the real size of the market, how many people can actually be purchasing $2,200 machines. Um, you know, I've always you kind of have three segments of the rowing machine market. You have the bargain machine, which I lump anywhere from you know $100 to $500. In that $100 to $500 range, you have a ton of different machines that are, you know, decathlon sells a bunch of different ones. If you don't know them, they're a big sporting goods store in Europe. Um, Amazon, Sunny Health, Matrix, they they all have these really low-end machines that you can pick up. They lack a lot of features, they lack a lot of the like professional um connection ability. So you generally don't get any connection, Bluetooth, things like that. Once you pass that range, you kind of are then left with essentially concept two and maybe a water rower, a base model water rower. Um, and that's where concept two shines. You're at that thousand dollar mark, that's still palatable by some. Um, you know, concept two machines have this amazing, I call them a Toyota of workout equipment because their resale value is incredible, they are industrial strength, they never break. Their parts are incredibly basic, and concept two doesn't try to make money on their repair parts. And it's all so simple that you can do the repairs yourself. There's nobody out there really who does like concept two repairs because it's just bike parts. You need basic wrenches and um like T25 and T27 drivers, which are easily accessible. So Concept 2 kind of owns that middle market, and I think that that's where they probably have seen the most success is at $1,000, it's kind of tough to argue with something that I could buy brand new, use it aggressively for three years, aggressively. I mean, I'm not talking light use, regular usage. And after three years, I could probably sell it for maybe a hundred dollars less than I bought it for, and somebody'll snap it up the instant I put it up on Facebook Marketplace. That's unheard of in the fitness market, except for like dumbbells, I guess. You know, weight will always cost money. Um but then you get into the connected space. So now you jump from about a thousand to twenty two hundred is kind of the market rate for a connected fitness machine. They all offer discounts at various points in time, and many will bring it down to 1900 or but you're still paying damn near $2,000 for the machine, and then you have a required membership, which is anywhere from $29 to $39 a month ongoing for the machine to continue to be useful. And you can't really get out get around that. You have to pay that membership. So that's your break in the market, right? And at this, as each of these machine companies figure out how big is this market, how many people want to continue to invest in their fitness through rowing specifically, keeping in mind right now is definitely a flash in the pan moment for rowing. Um, but how long will this continue? How many of these guys can continue to exist at the levels that are that they're existing at? These investment dollars, you know, they got to get used for something, and most of it's going towards marketing to try and get people to pick up their machines, I think, and get them locked into memberships before interest slows down. Not to mention mirror and tonal and RPM and all of these other connected home fitness um companies. Sorry, I know you were about to jump in there, but I mean this these are all the considerations that these guys have to be making, right? And now that things are starting to lighten up, people are going back to the gyms. They were never gonna stop going back to the gym. It just there for two years people were scared. And you can only be scared for so long before you eventually reach a point of burnout where you're like, I don't have it in me to be scared anymore. And I I just need to see other people and other humans, and I need to live my life. And uh, so people were always gonna go back to the gym. However, I think many more people at least realize that home fitness is feasible, is doable. And so I think what we're gonna end up in is a hybrid bottle where people spend some of their time at home, some of their time in the gym. And where does that land? I guess this is where my crystal ball gets hazy. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I I I think there's a couple things that are evident from our our conversation and just my you know experience and knowledge within the industry as well. Is I think C2 rower will continue to be a clear winner, right? They always have been. They are, like you said, almost just a cult following. Anyone who knows rowing knows these things are rock solid, and there's so many. I mean, you can you could get a CT rower, join a community like Dark Horse Rowing for 20 bucks a month. You have everything you need. Everything. You have community, you have instruction, you have coaching, um, and you have it for a very long time at an extreme value, right? That's hard to beat. Um, now, you know, people who want, you know, more of like the artistic rower, they're willing to pay for something that's more beautiful and aesthetic within their home, they have that. I don't think that market is particularly um exciting yet. I mean, there's a lot of people competing for it, but I think when you're looking at the general masses, I can't imagine that C2 is going to go. And of course, we talk about Web 3.0 and the you know the fitness metaverse and all that. That's extremely hazy to me. Uh I've talked about that in nauseum. Like I just can't, I'm still wrapping my head around it. Um, but I think I feel like C2 Rowers just they're just quietly doing their thing and they're hysterical in the way that they communicate with everybody else. They're just very like just a small mom shop is just doing their thing, man. I am such a fan of how they work.

Don't get me started on the way that they do business. I both hate it and respect it at the same time. And it is it's infuriating.

Yeah.

Uh so yeah, man, I guess to sum it up, it's it's a wild world and it's a very exciting time. And I, you know, like a lot of uh, you know, I feel like really good businesses and operators in the space, like the market came to you. Like you stuck around, like you said, through attrition long enough, and all of a sudden you found yourself in an extremely exciting, you know, area. And I guess what let's let's finish with that. How does that feel? Like what to even be doing this podcast about you know the excitement around the rowing industry, the indoor rowing industry, did you ever think this was gonna happen?

Yes. I mean, from day one, I knew that this was gonna happen. And I and I think that's the that's where this is so rewarding for me. I guess, you know, I players came in and out of the game to compete with what I was doing at Dark Horse, but uh it always felt like it was with um, I don't know, like they were trying to compete with the thing I was doing, but for me, it was never about the thing, it was about the bigger picture, which was I knew that this is where things were gonna go. And so I wanted to be around for it. And I wanted to be a part of the picture, which is why we've stayed machine agnostic and why I I am having these conversations with all these different connected companies and helping to guide the conversation there is because at the end of the day, what I inherently have as a you know tool at this point is I've been talking to the community now for 10 years, and I've felt it every step of the way. I've felt every small switch and transition and the perceptions, and that's what I've been around for. And so people coming in, you know, try to they want to compete on the YouTube channel. It's like, okay, great. I don't, I'm not, I've never competed with anybody because for me, it wasn't about the YouTube channel. It wasn't about our programming, it wasn't about our sponsorships or our partnership. It was just, I love, I love to educate and to coach and to teach, and I love business. And so for me, it was like what like I I feel in my bones the things that are happening, where the industry is going, how it's going to happen, how where the attention is going. Like that's the rewarding part for me is that I've I've known it, I've seen it, I don't know how it was gonna happen, right? Less, like I said, like I I don't I can't, I don't have a crystal ball, but I knew in some way and shape or form it was gonna happen. And here we are. And so now being a part of all these conversations is the exciting part for me. It's it's how do we get to like do really fun, cool stuff for people? How do I get to be a part of as many conversations as possible where the outcome is an improved experience for the user where we can change people's lives and do better things for them? And that's the rewarding piece of this is like I mentioned at the beginning, I was tired of only being able to coach 25 people at a time. And I was only able to teach very direct results. Here's how you row. But what I care more about, and the clients and the people that I care desperately about are those people who are trying to make shifts in their life that come from this dark horse side, not the rowing side. You improve your 2K, like polite golf clap. You lose 50 pounds and all of a sudden you can get on the ground and play with your kids. Like I'm screaming from the hilltops how excited I am for you. And so my position in this space, being able to go and work with any company that wants to come into this, that's the reward. Is at the end of the day, if I can help usher in a better experience for the person who wants to make a change in their life, that's my legacy, right? That's what I want out of this. So it's rewarding and it's exciting.

Right on. Well said, man. And I'm excited for you. You know, you've you put in a lot, you put in the time, you put in the work, and uh you found yourself in a very exciting spot. And uh, you know, just being respectful of the time here, Shane, I think, you know, be a good chance. Like, what do you what do you need right now as a business owner? Um you know, what what what can our audience help you with?

That's a great question that I wasn't expecting. Uh I think for me, what comes next with Dark Horse is um number one, I I desperately want to I guess maybe it's better the the best way to answer this, I guess, is to lay out like what I see as the vision for for myself and for Dark Horse. Number one, I want to see Dark Horse move into a place where we can drive a better experience for people. Currently, the way that we do it uh has been I I don't understand software, but I'll I'll be the first to admit that. Right. So I need help figuring out how to improve our deliverability, the way that we do things so that we can have a better experience for the people that trust us and come and work with us. Number two is being an impactful part of the of the big conversations that are happening in the industry. I would, I mean, for a national rowing federation who wants to create a bigger impact in the world of rowing or wants to grow the sport of rowing, that's those are conversations I want to be a part of. And so finding ways to these high-level conversations, being a part of advisor groups, you know, finding ways to create investments into these companies that you know, again, I get to see what's happening on the ground level. So I inherently have a gut feeling about who's gonna do well, what's needed, how they're delivering it, will it be successful? And so being a part of that from an investment standpoint of both dollars and time, those are the things that are interesting me at this moment. Um so you know, as far as how people can help me, distill out of what I just said, I guess what you will and you know what's what's valuable in that. Uh, but but these are the things that excite me and and where I I know that I want to orient my time and efforts.

Awesome, man. And if people do want to get a hold of you, uh, where do you want to send them?

Darkhorse rowing.com is the hub for everything and all social platforms just at Darkhorse Rowing. But uh, you know, if there's a a particular reach out, if something that you heard, you're like, yeah, I got I can help with that, um, just email support at Darkhorse Rowing.com and that's that will always make its way to me. Right on.

Sheen, man, thank you so much for spending some time and uh clarifying, explaining, and as you said, distilling what the hell is going on in the uh in the rowing vertical. Uh, I think it was it was really educational and and you did a great job laying it out from uh you know past, present, future. So really appreciate the time, man. And uh yeah, people should also go check out your YouTube channel, Dark Horse Rowing. There's a ton of free educational, funny, you know, entertaining content that you put up there. Uh your Instagram uh is awesome. You do a great job of you know showing up there in a in a, like I said, a very entertaining and educational way. And uh yeah, man, people should just get on board with Dark Horse. It's uh absolutely thanks for having me on again. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and we want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.