Group fitness classes have garnered a religious following in recent years.
Boutique studios that offer classes such as Barre and CrossFit have multiplied in urban and upper-class suburban areas, boasting the life- and body-changing benefits of their highly curated workout classes that can generally be completed in an hour or less.
Reggie Senegal wants to take that concept and make it more accessible and versatile with his newest product: the OctoFit.
The OctoFit is a multipurpose workout device that can enable cardiovascular exercise, HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts, resistance band work and core strengthening. Users also get access to a store of online, 20-60 minute video workout classes and a fitness tracker to log workouts and trends compared to other users.
Level 10 Products received $225,000 in seed funding from several local angel investors to make prototypes of the OctoFit and develop some marketing materials. The company is now hosting a Kickstarter campaign for the product both to gauge interest and raise money to ramp up production. Senegal said capital is needed to create the "large and costly" mold for the OctoFit here in the Pacific Northwest before it is ultimately manufactured in China.
The system is expected to retail at $399.
Though this is Level 10 Products' first product release, it is not Senegal's first go-around.
Senegal is also the former CEO of Volution Products, which produced his invention, SnapLaces, a bungee cord shoe lacing system. While he said SnapLaces has had some bumps in the road — personnel and money management problems — the lessons he learned there have proven helpful for this current venture.
"It was a tremendous learning experience, I couldn't have gotten that at Wharton or Harvard, any of those top business schools, what I went through with that experience," Senegal said.
While Senegal's focus is, for now, on selling the OctoFit and the online classes, he ultimately hopes to introduce some more traditional elements. Eventually, he said, the company will open "Level 10 Group X," a fitness studio with classes like the ones online that use the OctoFit, and are also streamed on the product's platform so that remote users can participate in a live class.
Level 10 Products will also roll out additional product releases, like a "therapeutic fascia release rolling system" (similar to a foam roller) and a core device, that will complement the classes.
"The boutique up-front is costly, you have to get the people, you’re (hamstrung) by location," Senegal said. "So my vision for this product at this moment is to go out as a virtual, in-home solution, a program that allows even people who have not worked out before to put everything together."