Anyone who’s been to cycling studio Flywheel Sports knows the appeal of its booking and in-class technology – you can sign up for classes with a few clicks, online or on the app, and even select the location of the bicycle you want to ride.
Flywheel was a pioneer in sharing performance stats from computers on stationary bicycles in a classroom setting, before there were any wearables in the marketplace. It was, according to the company, one of the first fitness brands to build its own platform.
That innovation was the brainchild of Stacey Seldin, Bob Rademacher and John Huffsmith, who started business management platform Mariana Tek after selling Flywheel in 2014.
“We got to that point of leading the intersectionality of technology and fitness and we had a lot of phone calls from other brands in the industry asking us what platform we used because it looked a lot better than theirs,” said Seldin, CEO. “And after some amount of time and a lot of those phone calls, we reached a point where we were exiting Flywheel and I said, it seems like there’s an opportunity staring us right between the eyes.”
Mariana Tek licenses its desktop and mobile platform to boutique fitness operations that offer classes like cycling, yoga or boot camp, as opposed to the traditional gym. On its system, customers create accounts, book classes, reserve equipment, manage memberships and purchase food and merchandise. For the studios, it’s the point-of-sale system and reporting database for corporate staff and executives.
Changes in the boutique fitness industry have driven a lot of needs, Seldin continued. High-end, class-based concepts were getting more popular than traditional gyms. Equinox acquired SoulCycle. A massive franchising movement was heating up with concepts like Pure Barre and Orangetheory.
While Mindbody has been a successful booking platform for small fitness businesses since the early 2000s, Mariana Tek brings something different to the table in its focus on enterprise clients, Seldin said.
“We believe that we have a unique combination of great technology and really deep domain expertise that we’re pulling together to create a feature set that’s really spot-on for the enterprise clients and fitness today.”
If a Barry’s Bootcamp client in the District, for example, wants to attend classes in New York or Los Angeles on their travels, the platform allows them to sign up for classes with one account across all locations.
Mariana Tek launched the enterprise product with Barry’s Bootcamp in January 2018, and is rapidly expanding. Others licensing its tech include Tough Mudder, Modo Yoga, Zenergy Cycling and SculptHouse, among others. The WBJ recently reported that it is looking to enter Canada this year as it eyes an $8 million to $10 million raise – its first outside funding effort.
The startup plans to hire plenty of staffers to support its growth.
“We started 2019 with 30 employees and we’ll have a near doubling of that over the course of this year,” Seldin said. All employees, of course, will receive a stipend for boutique fitness classes.
