Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

How long has it been since you went to the gym?

This may be the hidden pain in the hearts of many people this year. Apart from the fact that the gym near your home may not be able to afford the rent and wages to close permanently, you may not be able to survive the psychological hurdle left behind during the post-epidemic period. if you put on a mask and go to the crowd for exercise, the physical damage is more effective than fitness.

This year, the offline fitness industry around the world will be struggling to save themselves. Gyms are doing live classes and fitness coaches are acting as anchors, but it is still hard to recover the reality of poor offline performance.

In contrast, the hot sales of home fitness hardware products and the popularity of Internet fitness APP, the broad masses of people have nowhere to place fitness enthusiasm still found a space to release.

The popularity of online Internet fitness is due to the "temporary migration" caused by black swans, which will ebb when the epidemic returns, or is it likely to become the new normal of the fitness industry in the future? Of course, we cannot come to a 100% affirmative or negative conclusion.

But we can see the new trend that online Internet fitness is exploding from the recent purchase of Internet fitness startup Mirror for $500 million.

The effect is "visible", the "secret of success" of the intelligent fitness mirror

"Magic Mirror, who is the most beautiful person in the world?" The magic mirror in the fairy tale Snow White has come into reality.

Mirror is an Internet fitness company founded in New York in 2016. At the 2018 "TechCrunch Disrupt" conference, Mirror unveiled Mirror, a flagship product with the same name as the company. And Mirror is an innovative product that transcends traditional fitness equipment-- a full-length mirror of intelligent networking.

First of all, Mirror is really a mirror, as long as it is hung on the wall of the bedroom or living room, it can be seamlessly integrated with the home environment, and it can be transformed into a private high-end gym with only a few pieces of space the size of yoga mats.

When Mirror is turned on, it is a cool piece of smart hardware. Equipped with LCD panels, stereo speakers, cameras and microphones, the "smart mirror" provides users with a two-way interactive fitness experience, along with a Bluetooth heart rate monitor and fitness aids to enhance the workout. It can be said that if you look in the mirror, you can turn yourself into the prettiest kid in the world.

This smart full-body mirror has the following features:

1. Smart mirror is actually a set of fitness system. Users can log in to the system through their Mirror account and record their health data. The system will develop a personalized fitness course plan according to the user's physical condition and personal needs. Currently, Mirror offers a series of fitness courses online, such as yoga, Pilates, aerobics, stretching, strength training and boxing.

2. Because Mirror consists of a mirror and a LCD screen, users can watch and adjust their movements through the mirror while watching the coach's live broadcast or recording tutorials. This is the innovation of the magic mirror, although there is no on-site guidance from the coach, but you can almost immersively compare the differences between yourself and the coach, and be able to directly see the state of your fitness. This immersive exercise atmosphere is almost comparable to the gym environment.

3. In the process of training, users can transmit body data to the system through devices such as heart rate monitor and Apple Watch, and the system uses proprietary algorithms to give real-time feedback according to the user's goals, motion data and body feature data. It will be easier for the coach to develop a more personalized fitness program based on the complete user data recorded.

4. The genius innovation of this hardware lies in using mirrors to awaken people's desire for fitness. Any user who passes in front of this mirror can see his own body directly, which is more intuitive and convenient than those APP regular reminders and punch-in rewards. After fitness, the completion of the training task, looking at the beautiful fitness numbers and sweaty body, is undoubtedly the best reward for users. "visible effect" is almost the main reason why this fitness mirror is so popular.

Mirror smart fitness mirror, although currently only sold in North America, has reached tens of thousands of members in two years. Due to the outbreak of the epidemic, its sales have exploded this year, and sales are expected to reach 100 million US dollars this year.

It is against this backdrop that Lululemon, a technology sportswear company and an early investor in Mirror, recently announced that it would buy the Internet fitness company for $500m.

So why on earth is Mirror so popular?

First of all, it is naturally the impact of the environment. Family fitness has long been a common way of life in American society. According to the survey, spending on home fitness in the United States is expected to reach $14.7 billion by 2026.

Second, specific to the product advantages of Mirror, this intelligent device is more space-saving and cheaper than bicycles or treadmills with online fitness application Peloton. A mirror with no entry threshold but containing a variety of fitness courses is like an all-round family fitness instructor that can provide personalized fitness programs for the whole family, even special groups such as pregnant women, children, the elderly and sports rehabilitation.

In addition, the performance-to-price ratio of Mirror is much higher than that of offline gym. Private training at US gyms can cost as much as $100 per half hour, but the smart mirror costs only $39 a month for subscription. Even Mirror's private one-on-one training course costs only $40 every 30 minutes. In addition, Mirror provides online live courses every week, allowing fitness instructors to give users more professional guidance. One-to-one, one-to-many cost-effective services, users will naturally be happy to pay the bill.

Although home fitness doesn't have the sweaty exercise atmosphere of offline gyms, Mirror creates a more private and highly personalized fitness space. And at a time when the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States is raging, people who are keen on fitness but can't go to the gym are more likely to choose such a cost-effective and good-looking home fitness product.

Of course, we'd like to ask further whether cloud fitness products like Mirror and Peloton are just a hit during the epidemic, or will they increasingly become the mainstream "new normal" of the fitness industry?

Internet fitness VS traditional fitness, a new trend is coming

Before we figure out the answer to this question, let's compare the difference between traditional fitness and Internet fitness so that we can see the new trends that are taking place in the fitness industry.

Last year, Haosha, a domestic gym chain with a history of 20 years, collapsed, closed down and ran away, leaving only a large number of unpaid employees and non-refundable members struggling to safeguard their rights.

Haosha is the representative of the traditional gym. The profit model of the traditional gym is to rely on small profits and quick turnover to sell a large number of cards to attract members, but also have to bear the venue rent, equipment and labor costs. High investment and slow payback require the gym to maintain revenue with very strict and meticulous financial management and private courses that can attract members to continue to spend.

If once the enterprise relies on the way of large-scale acquisition and expansion, but can not effectively control the cash flow and management to expand the chain gym, it can only accelerate the decline of the enterprise.

However, in the chaos in the fitness industry, the most abhorrent thing is that some purse gyms absorb a lot of cash in the way of pre-sale and credit cards, and finally run away with the money, leaving landlords who owe rent and consumers who pay in advance have no way to cry.

On the other hand, fancy membership promotion and private teaching promotion in fitness are the most common tricks in the gym. After 20 years of ambition, the membership fees of card members soon became the basic income of the gym, while private classes with the same routines and similar speech skills accounted for most of the income, and a set of courses cost at least ten thousand yuan. Even if members can afford the cost of private education, there are many holes waiting for them to choose qualified private education.

Fundamentally, the core advantage of offline fitness is that it provides a public fitness space with an incentive atmosphere, a set of professional fitness equipment that ordinary families can not afford, a set of professional fitness knowledge with certain barriers and a personalized fitness counseling system. However, in the face of the growing upsurge of national fitness, the traditional gym, which has been fraudulent for a long time, is actually difficult to meet the diversified fitness crowd and fitness needs. Internet fitness is already standing on the tuyere ready to ride the wind and waves.

Now professional fitness knowledge and fitness courses, in fact, is a completely standardized, standardized content, very suitable for online APP and video courses to meet the needs of primary fitness enthusiasts. In addition, a large number of aerobic fitness methods do not rely on over-professional equipment, online fitness can meet a variety of aerobic, shaping and other exercise needs. In addition, outdoor and home fitness methods have the characteristics of personal and private, which can avoid being disturbed by various kinds of conditions in the public gym. The biggest advantage of Internet fitness is that, because of the head aggregation effect, top fitness coaches in the industry can be selected and high-level fitness tutorials can be made. at the same time, private trainers can more efficiently complete one-to-one and one-to-many online tutoring and earn more income.

In other words, Internet fitness can well supplement the needs and replacement scenarios that can not be met by traditional gyms. In addition to the traditional gym with personal guidance experience and mutual supervision of the fitness atmosphere is difficult to replace, Internet fitness is free or very low online membership model and complete exercise fitness layout, to subvert the traditional fitness business model.

On the one hand, it greatly reduces the threshold for ordinary people to obtain professional fitness guidance and training, and greatly expands the base of the basic fitness population; on the other hand, it expands the fitness territory through the expansion of new scenes such as all kinds of intelligent hardware, auxiliary training equipment, sportswear and so on. to build an ecosystem of outdoor fitness and home fitness.

(data source: Analysys data)

Represented by Peloton of the United States and Keep of China, Internet fitness is building a mature and complete business map of online fitness. And Mirror directly with an innovative intelligent hardware, directly through the final barriers of home fitness and professional gym, so that users can almost immersive experience of private tutoring, to ensure the effectiveness of fitness.

Now, Internet fitness has completed the initial market exploration and product layout, and even without this sudden epidemic, it will enter an explosive period of rapid development. the traditional fitness industry will also usher in the "dark moment" of either change for survival or elimination, but the emergence of this epidemic has accelerated the process.

Cold thinking on rushing to the Internet Fitness Battlefield

However, we should also be aware that the development of the fitness industry around the world is uneven. Compared with the popularity of national fitness in Europe and the United States, the higher popularity of national fitness in the Asia-Pacific region is only in Japan, South Korea and other developed countries, while the popularity of fitness in China is still relatively low. mainly concentrated in the first-and second-tier cities of the middle class, the proportion of fitness population is far lower than the 20% of the United States, only about 3% of the population.

For the newly emerging Internet fitness industry in China, it is naturally both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity lies in that the free applications and tools provided by Internet fitness can reach a larger scale of fitness people. For example, nearly 200m users and 3.6 billion user behavior data have been accumulated in the five years since its establishment, according to data released by Keep. The challenge is that limited by the income level and low payment habits of Chinese users, it is difficult for the vast majority of users to translate into effective revenue. Although Keep has such a large number of user registrations, truly active and paying users still account for only a small portion of them.

The reason why Mirror intelligent fitness hardware is favored by the market is not only due to the new changes brought about by the new Internet of things technology and online fitness model, but also from the large fitness population and high willingness to pay in the United States. Therefore, this model may still be too advanced for the domestic fitness market.

After all, the unit price of Mirror is about 10,000 yuan, the function is single, and there are basic membership subscription fees and more paid courses, even if you enter the Chinese market, it will be more for high-end consumers. The more feasible business model is the cooperation between Internet fitness applications and TV appliance companies to launch cooperative subscription content, so that users do not have to buy additional fitness hardware, but also can enjoy enough professional fitness content.

However, the innovative online and offline service model and the profit model of value-added members represented by Mirror are still worthy of reference for Internet fitness in China.

On the one hand, expand the user base through the free model, on the other hand, through the operation of high-quality private education courses to enhance users' willingness to consume and expenditure, through affordable fitness hardware and surrounding to increase the revenue of the platform, it has become the only way for the development of the Internet fitness industry. Among them, innovative hardware experience and professional content will become the key factors to attract users.

According to the long-term plan in the outline of "healthy China 2030" and the macro data publicly released by the State Administration of Sports, it is estimated that by 2025, the population of physical fitness in the basic stage of our country may increase to about 3.25 ~ 350 million. In the country's overall physical fitness population, it may reach 65% to 70%.

In the face of such a huge blue ocean market, China's Internet fitness industry is bound to usher in a round of long-term explosive growth. But just like the lesson of the rapid expansion of traditional gyms, an overly aggressive development strategy does not guarantee that any company can win the whole game. The characteristics of the fitness industry determine that continuous fine management and high-quality service is the basic logic for the development of enterprises, for traditional fitness or Internet fitness, are the same.

For products like Mirror, which take smart hardware as a breakthrough point, if the price of hardware is greatly reduced or implemented in a near-free way in the future, and revenue is maintained in the member mode for a long time, it may one day be truly large-scale now flying into the homes of ordinary people.

Of course, we still have to ask, is there enough space in your living room to put down that "magic mirror" and yoga mat?

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.