Staying afloat

How a rowing based fitness program is staying profitable in a competitive fitness industry.

Community based exercise programs seem to be the future of the fitness industry. However to be competitive in the industry each company needs to find a category to fit into, aka the method of exercise. Companies have already cornered the market on the most standard workouts, weight lifting: Crossfit, Cycling: Peloton, HIIT: Orangetheory. So how do you enter into the community based fitness industry? With a new way of working out.

Rowing has seen a jump in popularity over the past few years. Since 2014 there have been multiple new startups that take the rowing machine and market it to the average person as a “full body workout experience”. Again they’ve taken the community model: instructors, leaderboards, friends you can compete with and just applied it to a different machine. Hydrow, a new rowing based company has been the most successful so far, but there are plenty of others, Nordic track, Ergatta, and Cityrow to name a few.

Hydrow started in 2017 and is still in the first phases of funding but is already seeing rapid sales growth. As they start to enter into the mainstream their biggest threat is going to be the “Threat of Substitution”. Although the Peloton wouldn’t be a one to one competitor to the Hydrow, it's a comparison the average consumer can’t help but make. One could argue that if they were already in the market for an at home workout experience that the Peloton would be the number one choice. Furthermore, the Hydrow isn’t cost competitive coming in at $2,245. So in order to become a real competitor in the industry Hydrow needs to figure out a way to carve their own unique path to ensure their survival.