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>View discussions about this entry Country: United States
Organization: Pantometrics, Ltd
Year work began: - 1999
Focus of activity - Technology
Project URL: http://www.pantometrics.com/
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
What is your signature innovation in one sentence? - Turn stationary exercise equipment into social exercise game platforms for fun, motivating, interactive, virtual reality, social networks.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field? - The Fitclub system attaches to different types and models of stationary exercise equipment (cardio at first). The Fitclub system:
1) renders your workouts in 3D virtual reality, What barriers exist that are creating the problem your innovation is hoping to address/change? - Most people find it hard to engage regularly in cardiovascular exercise.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing. - There are a number of ways to do this:
1) Provide continuous reinforcement through real-time performance, progress, and bio-feedback. 2) Ennable CV exercise to be social with leagues, group spin classes, and metaverses. 3) Provide user-controlled exercise reporting for financial incentives & recognition. 4) Develop a supportive and results-oriented environment in a new health & wellness center. 5) Package CV exercise with 'education & discovery' through things like bio-feedback, virtual cities, & educational exercise games. How do you plan to scale your innovation? - We plan to retrofit ellipticals and treadmills for functional scalability.
We plan to outsource the hardware and mechanical components, and the retrofitting, as soon as possible, with discount pricing for volume productions, and bigger markets for vendors providing the best deliver, installation, and maintainance. Licensing the software to OEMs for new equipment (if we can get that) will also help speedy reliable scaling on the HW side. To get gyms to adopt the business model we may have to develop our own showcase wellness club. Scalability for the software is no problem, it is hardly more difficult to produce another hundred or another thousand copies. Provide one sentence describing your impact. - Fitclub makes exercise motivating, social, rewarding, and fun, thereby enormously improving peoples health and energy.
What impact has your innovation had to date? Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation? - We are still trying to implement a proper beta testing phase. But in the meantime, it has helped me maintain my own fitness and health for the last two years. The beneficiaries are everyone who uses it, their families, their employers, and their health insurance and health care stakeholders.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation - Mainstream commercial companies have expressed interest in our technology, and I have noticed competitive products implementing increasingly similar functionality over time.
What are the main barriers to creating your impact? - 1) Raising sufficient funding.
2) Finding the best customer market to 'emerge' the product. 3) Creating the necessary distribution chanel(s). 4) Completing the beta testing, and ongoing product adaptations and enhancements. How is your initiative financed? - Myself, plus some investment from friends and family.
Provide information on your finances and organization: annual budget, annual revenue, number of staff: - Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff. No funding left, so no annual budget. No annual revenue yet, 6 team members, but no permanent staff yet (except me).
What is the potential demand for your innovation? - In the US alone, at least 200 million people should be doing CV exercise on a regular basis. But they don't. 44 million are members of clubs, but 80% of those just pay, but don't actually use the facilities. Most need significant ongoing behavioral reinforcement.
The Revenue potential from 'exercise as healthcare treatment and disease prevention' is $Billions annually, and perhaps 100s of $Bns. What are the main barriers to financial sustainability? - Identifying and implementing the right business model, for the right customer segment.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. - I have been an avid runner and athlete all my life. Deteriorating knees from about 35 years of running pushed me into gyms to do exercise. This is where I discovered that gyms and equipment manufacturers provide such a poor service and poor experience to help people improve their health. Stationary exercise equipment providing a mind-numbing exercise experience, a poor social environment, and no support aside from weight training at $60 per half hour result in an industry with an exploitative business model, a 40% annual member attrition rate, and experience so bad that only 20% of members use the club.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material - Mark Martens, Male, 47.
Born in US, dual US/UK citizen. Formal education mostly in economics, business, and finance. Career mostly in Federal Government consulting, mostly IT acquisition. Skills mostly in analysis and writing. Ex-CV Fitness nut, running, soccer, swimming, cycling, volleyball, & anything sports. Languages: English, French, Arabic, Spanish Contact Information:
Mark Martens
President Pantometrics, Ltd (Technology Startup) Discussions about this entry |
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This is a pretty interesting idea that you have there. Although it seems that it would be quite expensive for a program like this, how are you planning to get people to believe that it is worth the money?
Hoang
Hoang:
My original notion was based on
Retrofit the system on health club equipment at cost (about $1,500).
Let individuals become members of Fitclub for a monthly subscription fee, (say $10 per month).
Provide software enhancements for free.
As to "getting people to beleive it's worth the money", it's a question of creating enough perceived marginal value to justify the marginal cost, in other words, 'marketing'.
For the current system, the value comes from things like:
1) Increasing your cardiovascular exercise, fitness & health
2) Losing weight, increasing energy, reduce stress, enhance cognitive skills.
3) Getting proven fitness RESULTS!
4) Having challenging & rewarding CV exercise (Kick Your Own A$$).
5) Seeing your progress in real time.
6) Connecting socially with others.
7) Having more fun exercise experiences.
8) Receiving accurate, reliable online reports.
9) Qualifying for employer incentives.
10) Lowering healthcare costs.
11) Qualifying for health insurance discounts.
The auxiliary strategy is to reduce the costs, by one or more of the methods below:
1) Get healthcare stakeholders (like employers, healthcare, health insurance, medicare, etc) to subsidze the system purchase or monthly subscription price.
2) Sell 'in terrain virtual interactive advertising'.
3) Sell hardware systems, or memberships, as loss leaders till a profitable model emerges.
4) Set up our own health/wellness club operation. This would allow us to implement an environment designed specifically to maximize the educational, social, and health improvement value, using the Fitclub system and other innovations, in a synchronized and economically efficient business model.
5) Reduce the cost of the hardware platform over time (this may happen gradually anyway).
6) License new kinds of games on the Fitclub exercise platform (this will happen anyway).
7) Subsidize early implementations at schools, etc, with grants or funding from non-profits.
The reduced health care costs that come with sustained CV exercise, are more than sufficient to qualify for reimbursement from health insurance companies as preventive health care. This trend is unfolding in our society right now. There is also research to indicate that the economic value of increased productivity from improved health is even greater than the reduced health care costs. Studies indicate that companies are getting between $3-6 of return for every dollar invested in wellness and disease prevention programs.
Mark Martens, President
Pantometrics, Ltd
Thank you for your compelling, well-presented entry, Mark. I'm curious to know a bit more about how the social networking part will work. Will people have the opportunity to choose riding partners on the basis of performance, geography and personal preference?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Diane
The Changemakers Team
Diane:
Re-reading your question I realize what you are asking better. The answer is, I hadn't thought of that, but yes choosing a live exercise partner based on those criteria is relatively straightforward.
Mark Martens, President
Pantometrics, Ltd
Diane:
On the system as it is right now you can:
1) Give permission to others to view your reports.
2) Give permission to others to 'use your saved workouts' in their exercise.
3) Use the saved workouts of your buddies to pace you in your workouts.
4) Race others in real-time, as long as they are in the same facility (connected to the same router).
5) Instant message others while racing them.
6) Print out reports of group performance (e.g. top ten males or females in frequency, total # minutes of exercise, average duration, highest average heart rate, etc).
7) Conduct personal training group cardio spin classes in virtual reality.
All these things can be used to create collaborative, or competitive social networking environments.
With about another two weeks of website programming you will be able to:
1) Start a new league using a variety of criteria like; gender, location, age, health club or organization membership (and even things like resting HR, Blood pressure, A1c levels). And to set performance goals like workout frequency, duration, distance, average HR, minutes per mile, or health goals like resting HR, recovery rate, A1c, BP, BMI etc).
2) Enter a team in one or more established leagues (by group, by occupation, gender, hobby, age, co-rec, etc).
3) Print out and celebrate acheivements through automated reports, by league, by team, employer, by individual, etc.
4) Communicate with selected individuals, or groups through dynamic web pages on the application itself.
With additional Development (12-36 months?), we plan to have
1) Reading and writing E-mail between users, in the Fitclub applcation.
2) A variety of socially-oriented team exercise games specially designed for connected exercise platforms.
3) A set of Fitclub-specific social networking functionality (including some in the application, while exercising) for connecting with other members for exercise support, recruiting for league or game teams, connecting by occupation, work projects hobbies, community events, and friendships.
So yes progress monitoring, incentives, and recognition, are helpful. But equally as important for most of us is the understanding that it's much easier to sustain exercise programs when they are done collaboratively, and with the support and encouragement of others., or as part of a social network.
Mark Martens, President
Pantometrics, Ltd
Thanks for providing such detail. As someone who can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, I'm awfully impressed by the very idea that people might ride a bike and IM at the same time(!). Will there be a proper keyboard, or just palmsized handset similar to what cellphones provide for texting?
Best,
Diane
The Changemakers Team
Diane:
There are keyboards on the touchscreen at each point where the application uses input from the user. Fitclub is an interactive 3D VR system and is based on having a touchscreen attached to each peice of exercise equipment.
Mark Martens, President
Pantometrics, Ltd
What is the projected cost per station, assuming volume?
What is the list of your competition?
It cost us about $1,500 to retrofit each exercise bike in this (current) HW configuration. Most of that is the touchscreen and the PC. I'm not sure what volume discounts could do to the price of a (full) production system, but not less than $1,000, I think. TV functionality can be added with an $80 TV tuner card.
The cost of the current HW configuration is an issue, especially for the commercial health club market (who don't really want members doing lots of exercise anyway). But in schools, and homes, the PCs are dual use. In fact, with the right design, existing PCs may be utilized. This will cut the price in half.
11 Direct and Indirect Market Competition
Although there are no other products that provide users with precisely the Fitclub system functionality, the list below shows companies with products in this space worthy of reviewing.
11.1 Spark Bike from Expresso Fitness http://www.expressofitness.com/expresso.htm
11.2 Netpulse http://www.netpulse.com
11.3 Wellness System from Technogym www.Technogym.com
11.4 The Sci-Fit Range of Exercise Equipment http://www.scifit.com/
11.5 CycleFX http://www.cyclefx.com/pages/1/index.htm
11.6 The HealthZone from Virgin Life Care (VLC) www.VirginLifeCare.com
11.7 Garmin’s (Motion-Based Fitness)
11.8 FitLinxx
Mark Martens, President
Pantometrics, Ltd