In Equinox Group’s evolution into a lifestyle brand, the company thinks about the four tenets of health and longevity.
“There are only four [actions] that have actually proven to elongate the human lifespan. Lots of studies say that we can double the lifespan of a mouse or a fruit fly, but not a human,” said Julia Klim, Equinox Group’s vice president of strategic partnerships and business development, in conversation with Kathryn Hopkins, senior beauty editor, WWD.
“It’s regular movement, it’s regular sleep, it’s nutrition plan-forward and it’s being part of a community. One of the longest studies ever run on happiness by Harvard was about the fact that the only correlation between people living longer is people being a part of a community.”
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Those four pillars dictate every move at the company, Klim said. “We’re built on four foundational pillars which are not always visible for the consumer,” Klim said, “but it’s how our programming is set up.”
Community, vis-à-vis Equinox, is about habit building and self-optimization. “It wasn’t ever about fitness, it was about showing up. It was about building your habits and building your engagement with our brand,” she said. “We’ve extended it in a variety of ways and verticals, but that’s the core of what we are: It’s a community.”
Points of engagement with its members include 107 locations, one hotel — ”more to come,” Klim said — and spas. Among the next frontiers is mental health, such as meditation, in addition to health care and supplements. “We do innovation across the portfolio,” Klim said. “That’s a classic business case. If you don’t grow, you die.”
Assessing consumer behavior around Equinox’s gyms, Klim said, gave the company the confidence to broaden its reach into other categories.
“A lot of gyms sell you a membership on January 1, and hope you don’t show up later because it gets too crowded. Studies show that by January 19, 80 percent stop their New Years’ resolutions of working out,” Klim said. “We attract people that are serious. We as a brand want to motivate people to actually show up. For us, 85 percent of those people are still here in April. Our entire model is about harnessing engagement.”
Aesthetics and experience also play a large role. Equinox taps top fashion photographers to shoot its ad campaigns, for example, and architecture is a top consideration when opening new locations. “We are a global brand, but it’s your local community. Everyone can have a treadmill, but not many people can have a treadmill in a beautiful location at scale,” said Klim.
Equinox refers to the gyms as “clubs,” Klim said, as a result of the company’s business model. “We’re a membership business, and we want to go back to, ‘who do you belong to, and what do you subscribe to?” Klim said. “Equinox is more than just a place you go to physically, it’s a place that you can interact with in an app. You can interact with it in a variety of ways.”
Equinox Circle is the next iteration of that, which makes exclusive luxury brand partnerships available to members. “StockX is one of our partners, we have Provenance Meals and we have Bezel, a secondary luxury watch market,” Klim said. “Not many gyms or fitness companies would be able to extend in that category or in those super luxury categories. For us, this is just the beginning of redefining what loyalty means.”
Klim added that the reaction has been strong, especially on the experiential side, such as restaurant booking app Dorsia. “The booking app has seen an insane amount of subscriptions from us. It’s clear our community wants all of these different experiences, and most importantly, they want to find a way to meet other Equinox members outside of Equinox,” Klim said. “This goes back to, ‘If you are a member, you stand for something.’ People want to meet each other outside of the four walls, and Circle is another way of doing that.”
Despite that success, Equinox is focusing on offering hyper-curated experiences and services, and will continue to be very selective when it comes to expansion. “It will continue to evolve in terms of who will be on the platform, though we will not add many brands,” Klim said. “We have this arbitrary number of 10, I would say we’ll never have more than 10,” Klim said. “We’re also looking at the buzzwords that have been there forever in wellness, they’re becoming more meaningful, such as hyper-personalization or scientific wellness.”
Those areas have also created white space for Equinox, ranging from sleep to nutrition. “We already have a lot of data – how can we use more data from other parts of the wellness world and health care to help personalize your journey further beyond just a coaching experience,” Klim mused. “We think of it as a health care, wellness ecosystem that will continue expanding, and a particular focus is longevity.”
Klim cited statistics that by 44 years of age, 40 percent of people in the U.S. have at least one chronic disease. “Essentially, 50 percent of your life, there’s some form of pain. It’s a real issue,” she said. “Working out is one of the most potent drugs for longevity, but there are other things we’re going to be extending into.”
It’s the service component, too, that keeps members coming back. “It’s not organic, but it’s like the small surprise-and-delight moments. Those intangibles are the hardest to scale and by far the hardest to execute, but when they work, they work,” Klim said.