Irish businessman Conor O’Loughlin has a unique set of pastimes: P.C. science and rugby. After suffering damage that ended his expert rugby days, he channeled his electricity into building a fitness-centered startup, Glofox.
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His corporation, which sells software to boutique fitness studios, currently picked up a $10 million Series A. The round changed into led utilizing Octopus Ventures, with participation from Partech, Notion Capital, and Tribal V.C. It brings Glofox’s overall regarded investment to approximately $12.7 million.
Let’s damage it down for readers careworn with the aid of millennial health lingo.
There are gyms–like Crunch, 24 Hour Fitness, and Equinox (for the bougie types)–after which there are so-called “boutique fitness studios.”
Boutique health studios usually focus on one specialized location of health, from yogalates to CrossFit. This category can include large chains like Soul Cycle and more minor spots like boxing gyms and Bikram yoga studios.
“In the traditional health club, someone purchases an annual membership, and the gym hopes they don’t show as much as maintain space at a minimal, and it’s a completely remoted enjoy,” O’Loughlin stated. “With boutique [fitness]… it’s an awful lot group- and community-themed, and there’s an extra social issue to it.”
He said that issue units boutique health studio owners aside when it comes to customer and management software programs. It’s also why he thinks his product can compete with Mindbody, a usual software issuer that works throughout segments including salons, health, dog grooming, and fitness and wellness.
“We’re extraordinarily slender in our target audience,” he said. “It’s very applicable to the boutique health studio model, that is extra pushed around engagement… it’s extraordinarily centered on how boutique health studio owners can build and develop their enterprise.”
Glofox’s product offers owners more branding manipulation integrated into studios’ apps and features that permit membership flexibility, like trials. The software additionally consists of member insights that may assist owners in predicting attrition, coupled with CRM and customer engagement tools.
While the business enterprise wouldn’t share unique revenue metrics, O’Loughlin instructed Crunchbase News that Glofox processed over $ hundred million in bookings on its platform in its final year. More than 1.5 million customers use the Glofox platform and apps, stated O’Loughlin.
Originally based totally in Dublin, Glofox operates in over forty international locations. The company’s foremost H.Q. is now in Los Angeles, focusing on its U.S. Enlargement. This purpose is one of the motives why Octopus Ventures (based totally in London and New York) turned into a good fit, O’Loughlin said. With 50 percent of Glofox’s revenue and nearly two-thirds of its new leads coming from studios within the U.S., that’s, in all likelihood, an excellent flow.
So, You want to Be a Fitness Model?
People who observe my stuff understand I usually write about nutrients, supplements, schooling, and topics that are more technology-based than subjective subjects, including what this text covers. I decided to shuck my technology geek persona and write on a topic that might benefit heaps and want health fashions.
As properly an acknowledged “tough core” technological know-how primarily based on no B.S. creator, why am I writing what some will understand as a “fluff” article? Over the years, I have gotten masses, possibly hundreds, of gals that ask me through electronic mail, letters, or in man or woman, “How do I come to be a healthy version, Will? You have been in the business a long term; surely you of all and sundry need to understand.” I get this from inexperienced persons and women who have been at it for some time but have been unable to “spoil it” efficiently.
The truth is, I have been in the health, fitness, and bodybuilding biz for a long term. Even though I am known as a technological know-how and vitamins primarily “guru” type, I have even trained many a fitness athlete and judged health and discern/bikini shows for the NPC, Fitness America, Fitness USA, and different federations in addition to given marketing and commercial enterprise recommendation to all varieties of athletes, including fitness fashions. So, it is now not as far-fetched as it would appear that I will apply this area to cover a non-scientific subject matter, that’s, how one goes about being a health model.
