SERVICE DESIGN ODYSSEY • 2022-2024

How might we make the cult’s fleet of gyms a loved, attractive & profitable service?

Airbnb of gyms.

Gyms have high capex & recurring costs to run & Covid lockdown wiped out many gyms. But in post-covid world, many HNIs started opening standalone gyms or small chain of gyms as they were becoming a lucrative business model. And cult.fit acquired & partnered with many high quality gyms to build a fleet of 300+ gyms in Bengaluru & Hyderabad & was approaching gym monopoly in some cities.

Platform

cult.fit has became a platform that offers turnkey facilitation in the gym deployment & operation along with easy brand trust for any investor who runs or wants to run a gym

marketplace

on the already popular cult platform made cult.fit a silently growing monopoly in Indian fitness space

Platforms that mediate two parties at scale face these challenges

Cult came across two challenges.

Understanding the Gym Ecosystem

Gyms primarily make profit through renewals.

Gradually, all internal senior stakeholders aligned to the riskiest assumption:

A stellar on-floor training experience at gym is what new-to-fitness beginner members want.

Trainer as a product.

Trainer quality = Experience quality.

Trainer’s inherent drive is key

Partially validated hypothesis: Intermediate & Advanced members rarely seek guidance

“How might we improve the on-floor general training experience of the new-to-fitness to early intermediate gym members?”

empower the general trainer (GT)

-Reward truly stellar floor training experience

-Make everyday tasks easy & clear for GTs

Enter Guaranteed Guidance.

Onboarding journey to make guidance guaranteed for every new ‘beginner’ member made live in one pilot gym

Trainer: Handwritten Exercise Cards Create Digital Workout plan in 10 minutes
Member: Mark your exercise cards See & log your workouts on your phone

“This is when I joined & started with a guerilla research to understand the members & GTs at the pilot gym. What we found...

Understanding Gym Member

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Understanding Floor Trainers

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative

The quotes are crafted and only representative of the research findings

Understanding Personal Trainers

Impact & Experiments

The projects were done at different times as per organisational priorities but are shown together for the context & narrative