Drawing the first product sketch on napkins and testing market response with a crowdfunding platform, Bala Fitness has achieved $20 million in revenue from scratch in the weight-bearing fitness field, which took only 3 years.
Bala Fitness founder Natalie Holloway and Max Kisleviz.
In 2016, Natalie Holloway and Max Kislevitz, two couples who worked in the advertising industry for a decade, decided to give themselves a long vacation and quit their jobs to travel to Southeast Asia. In addition to their work in the advertising industry, the two are also yoga instructors.
Outside of the tour, Holloway and Kisleviz insist on doing yoga training every day. After a meditation class, the two had a whim and began to think about how to improve the effect of yoga and other exercises. After some brainstorming, Holloway and Kisleviz set their sights on the weight-bearing bracelets, a regular on fitness tapes of the 1980s. As they discussed how to improve the weight-bearing bracelet, they picked up a few napkins and began to sketch some products.
"We talked about 1985, when it was fashionable to tie heavy objects around the wrists and ankles and do weight training. We wanted to recreate the scene of that year, improve the effect of exercise, and make this kind of activity more fashionable. Kisleviz introduced himself to Forbes.
After identifying the product design ideas and schematics, a new problem arises – where does the start-up capital come from? Will the market pay for this weight-bearing bracelet? "Self-made" Holloway and Kisleviz had a stroke of genius and decided to use the crowdfunding platform. Through the crowdfunding platform, they can not only raise start-up capital, but also test the market response and improve product design through platform feedback. "We don't know if anyone will be interested in these products, crowdfunding is a good way to test the market response." Holloway said in an interview with Shopify.
Such a decision proved to be the right one. In 2017, Holloway and Kisleviz posted a concept map, schematic diagram of the weight-bearing bracelet and the business philosophy of the business on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, which eventually garnered the support of 381 people and raised more than $50,000 in start-up capital.
In addition, after Kickstarter launched a crowdfunding campaign, they upgraded the prototype several times, made more than a dozen templates before finalizing and starting production.
After the release of the first weight-bearing bracelet product, Bala Bangles, Holloway and Kisleviz ushered in the most familiar link - how to promote a new product.
When designing products, Holloway and Kisleviz emphasize that products must have fashion attributes, so Bala Bangles has 12 colors including green, pink, black, and blue.
The colorful design actually caters to the younger generation of fitness enthusiasts who not only want to exercise, but also take photos and punch cards and share them on social media platforms. Fitness equipment is generally dominated by black and gray, and the more colorful Bala Bangles will be more conspicuous in a large number of fitness equipment, and the photos taken will be more beautiful. Through this design, it can stimulate the desire of fitness enthusiasts to share, and bring more publicity and exposure opportunities to the product.
In the choice of sales channels, Bala Fitness focuses on retailers and online shopping platforms, hoping to use the popularity and influence of the platform to let as many consumers as possible know and understand this new brand. "Our initial plan was to have retailers as a means of publicity for us." Holloway told Forbes.
On this basis, the appearance on variety shows further accelerated the development of Bala Fitness.
Shark Tank is a reality show where entrepreneurs can bring their products to the show and convince 5 rich men to invest in their products. Bala Fitness was supposed to debut in The Shark Tank for season ten, but was screened out before final recording. "We were very frustrated because we spent a lot of effort preparing." Holloway said in an interview with Shopify.
Holloway and Kisleviz attend Shark Tank.
Thankfully, Bala Fitness soon had its next chance, and they were shortlisted for the eleventh season. Holloway and Kisleviz took the presentation very seriously, "We practiced it no less than a thousand times, and we marked the tone of each word with a pen. In addition, they reviewed each past episode of Shark Tank, simulating what might have happened on the show and thinking about how to answer them.
That episode aired in February 2020, and Holloway and Kisleviz initially hoped that someone would be willing to buy a 10 percent stake in the company for $400,000. In the end, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and women's tennis star Maria Sharapova decided to take a 30 percent stake for $900,000.
In fact, Bala Fitness's original company name was Bala Bangles, which had the same name as its weight-bearing bracelet, but decided to change the name after the show aired. Behind the name change is Holloway and Kisleviz's determination to do a bigger business, and at present, in addition to the weight-bearing bracelet, Bala Fitness has also launched fitness equipment such as weight bars and weight-bearing rings, as well as supporting products such as non-slip mats, elastic bands, and equipment cleaning sprays.
While corporate operations and product marketing are important, Bala Fitness's explosive growth in 2020 is mainly due to catching up with the "east wind" of surging demand for home fitness under the epidemic.
In March 2020, gyms and fitness studios across the United States were shut down on a massive scale due to the pandemic, and demand for home fitness rose sharply. During this period, Bala Fitness happened to let more people know about the brand through Shark Tank, and the sales of its load bracelets skyrocketed.
Fitness tutorials on bala Fitness's official website.
In addition to the bonus of the variety show, Bala Fitness also provides fitness enthusiasts with free fitness tutorial videos through YouTube and Instagram live streaming, teaching them how to exercise with Bala Fitness products. These fitness tutorials are synced to Bala Fitness's official website, where more than 20 fitness instructors have been present and 42 have been offered.
With the help of fitness tutorials, Bala Fitness can demonstrate the functions and roles of its products on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also precipitate consumer groups and develop online community culture, providing drainage for future sales and operations.
With the help of this series of actions, Bala Fitness's annual revenue in 2020 is as high as $20 million, a tenfold increase compared to 2019.
But as Bala Fitness's products became more and more popular, fakes began to flood. In the final analysis, the threshold for the production of weight-bearing fitness equipment is not high, and it is inevitable that imitations will be popular. In this regard, how Bala Fitness maintains its core advantages while building its own "moat" is the key to continuing to break through upwards.