Business View Magazine | Volume 8, Issue 12

135 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 8, ISSUE 12 MYZONE INC . it really didn’t move the needle on retention or engagement at all.” When Leveque left the equipment manufacturing world after approximately 20 years, he wanted to contribute towards solving the number one issue within the fitness industry: retention and engagement. Subsequent studies have shown that members using a Myzone belt make almost 40% more visits to their club, stay about 22% longer, and spend three times as much in terms of secondary expenditure when compared to members that don’t have a Myzone belt. That’s the sort of impact Leveque was looking to make. “The added benefit of the Myzone platform is the way it enables clubs to expand their reach outside their physical location,” Leveque notes. “Their members may train outside the club by engaging in activities, like soccer, bike riding, or a run outdoors. With a Myzone device – either a heart rate belt or a wrist-based device – a club member will still receive an email or a post to per minute, and the yellow and red zones four points per minute.” With Myzone Effort Points, users could come together and challenge each other, while clubs could leverage a reward system that has become the currency of the fitness industry. In fact, Myzone’s status ranking system can take users from the “iron” rank to “silver,” “gold,” and all the way through to “Hall of Fame” status. This has proven highly effective at encouraging user engagement. According to Leveque, “We’ve created a kind of shoots and ladders system, where if a member maintains their physical output and meets the World Health Organization guidelines for physical activity in a given month, then they’ll make progress towards the next status level. And if they miss a month, they’ll fall back to the previous level.” When Myzone began in 2011, the founders did not simply want to encourage a short-term interest in physical wellbeing. They wanted to create a sustainable habit around fitness. Today, it’s clear that the company has gone a significant way to achieving its goal. Myzone is present in over 8,000 facilities across 85 countries and has offices in the U.K., Australia, the U.S., Germany, and Singapore. What’s more, later this quarter, Myzone will be opening up an office in Mexico City to cater to customers in Central and South America. Despite Myzone’s innovative approach, the company wasn’t looking to get involved with fitness technology when it started in 2011. Instead, it was simply looking to create a heart rate-based system that would be personalized to every user and aid clubs in retention and engagement. “The dirty little secret in the fitness industry is that we lose between 35% and 40% of our members every year,” says Leveque. “In my previous career, we made fitness equipment for health clubs – and we thought the better equipment we made, the higher levels of engagement the clubs would benefit from. But