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The Future of Fitness – Lymber Lets People Exercise Options

San Diego tech company Lymber is dialing in on those noncommittal gym-goers by making an app that gets users active without tying them to monthly memberships.

The app is essentially a marketplace for boutique fitness studios (think: yoga, Pilates, and kickboxing), where users can shop for affordable fitness classes on-demand rather than signing up for a monthly membership.

Company founders are hoping Lymber will do for the fitness business what Expedia did for the travel industry. The app is powered by a “dynamic pricing algorithm,” meaning prices for fitness classes fluctuate depending on factors such as availability and popularity. If users try to book a last-minute spot in a popular class, they’ll pay top dollar. But if they’re early birds on less popular classes, they’ll get a steal.

For the casual yogi or every-now-and-then cyclist, it’s ideal.

“It helps consumers, because you only pay for what you use,” said Lymber’s Chief Technology Officer Chuck Phillips.

Still in beta mode, Lymber has already signed over 450 studio clients between San Diego and Los Angeles.

The app company was founded and run by Phillips and CEO Doug Hecht, the guys who founded Digitaria, a digital marketing agency that sold for enough cash to make Hecht an active angel investor for the past few years. Hecht, a partner at Seed San Diego, was an early investor in popular local startups Wrapify, Porfolium, and the now-booming Edico Genome. It’s fair to say he has an eye for good investments.

Hecht was inspired to create Lymber after the failure of a different fitness app startup in San Diego called Fitn (later rebranded as Wildfire). Hecht was called in by Fitn’s investors to take a look at the company’s business model.

“I decided I couldn’t help them on Fitn; It just wasn’t a model that I believed in,” Hecht said.

His judgment was spot on, as Fitn abruptly ceased operations and angering a slew of paying members.

New York Influence

Fitn was piggybacking off a model popularized by New York-based ClassPass, a company that offers an all-access pass to hundreds of boutique fitness studios and gyms in major cities.

ClassPass was a quick success and is now considered the startup that disrupted the entire fitness industry. But ClassPass and Fitn both faced challenges with their studio clients. Both companies sported membership business models, originally offering such low membership rates that they were undercutting the studio’s own memberships.

ClassPass eventually raised its monthly membership rates (partially to appease studio clients), and users have suffered a much less competitive rate as a result.

Hecht believes Lymber’s new app fills the gap left by both ClassPass and Fitn.

Rather than roping users into memberships that hurt studio clients (and hurt consumers when they pay for a $150 membership they don’t often use), Lymber has a pay-as-you-go model.

It’s good for users, but it’s also good for studio owners, said Jana Rubenstein and Johnny Archer, co-owners of Cycology Fitness in Encinitas and a new studio client of Lymber.

“If one of our classes is in super high demand, then we can set the drop-in rate really high so that it doesn’t compete with our members,” Rubenstein said. “But if we have a class that’s less popular and we want to get people in the door, we can start the rate really low.”

Company’s Cut

Lymber’s cut is about 25 percent of every transaction under $100. Considering the success of ClassPass, which last year had 11 million reservations made through the app since launch, Lymber may be onto something.

The app is currently in beta test mode in Los Angeles and San Diego, but plans call for a rollout to about 15 major markets including New York, Chicago, Dallas and Denver by year’s end.

With StudioGO, dance studios can rent out their space during dead time. Photo courtesy StudioGO

StudioGo Finds Upside of Downtime at Studios

Another tech startup is focusing on boutique studios, but instead of fitness, StudioGO is targeting the dance industry.

Co-founder Jessica Yahfoufi, a semi-pro and competitive dancer, is solving the problem of dead space in the studio between dance classes.

“If you’re a hip-hop dance studio that has classes three times a day, why not rent out your space when it’s not being used?” Yahfoufi said. “There’s lots of dead time at dance studios, so you could, for example, rent out the space to a group practicing for a local salsa competition.”

Yahfoufi points out that there are many groups looking for open studio space, including competitive dancers, and independent yoga and dance teachers.

“There’s not a lot of online tools for the dance industry,” Yahfoufi said, adding that dancers are not known for their tech-savviness.

She hopes StudioGO will turn into a marketplace for dancers where studio owners aren’t the only ones who cash in. She envisions a place where independent dance teachers can make a living by posting dance classes online, or market workshops or competitions locally.

“It’s really difficult to make a living in dance, but I don’t think it should be,” Yahfoufi said.

StudioGo, which launched last month, is currently a website, but there are plans in the works to go mobile. The company currently has 70 studios on board.

Brittany Meiling

BuddhiBox Taps Yogi Spirit And Inner Consumerism

BuddhiBox, a San Diego upstart in the retail space, is jumping on the subscription box bandwagon with a product that targets the yoga-pants-wearing crowd.

If you’re not familiar with the relatively new retail trend, subscription boxes are a fast-growing business model in which companies such as BirchBox or RocksBox curate and send a collection of random items to your doorstep once a month. Think of it as an old-fashioned book club, but instead of books each month you receive high-end makeup or a random assortment of jewelry.

Most boxes are thematic, like shoe boxes, book boxes, or boxes just for sunglasses.

BuddhiBox is an all-natural, eco-conscious subscription box filled with five or six full-size yoga goodies and samples. Each box contains ethically sourced, cruelty-free products like Chakra Mala bracelets or “Calm My Dosha” tea.

Founder Maxine Chapman completely bootstrapped the company with her own $7,000 savings, and runs BuddhiBox as a one-woman show. Today, the company has 1,500 subscribers and brought in $500,000 in revenue last year.

Brittany Meiling

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