Fittus – a fitness app for exercise enthusiasts

Fittus founder Joel Edwards speaks with James Geshwiler, Director of Common Angels at a recent Pitch in the City event.

Success in the startup world takes savvy business planning, hard work and a bit of luck. But Fittus founder Joel Edwards took to heart a lesson he learned early while studying business at Suffolk University — that you need a passion for what you are doing to start a company — and launched an enterprise that combined his interest in exercising and working out with his desire to be an entrepreneur.

Fittus is developing a mobile app that helps gym members find workout partners based on their preferred exercise goals and routines as well as gym or class schedules. The app also is designed to help personal trainers and gym owners create and manage relationships with members.

The 31-year-old Edwards draws on his passion for what he is doing as he goes through the struggles that most entrepreneurs face in the early stages of a startup, which include working other jobs to keep things going, late nights and early mornings, and constantly scrambling to take advantage of any opportunity that could get his fledgling company over the initial hurdles.

While Edwards feels strongly that what Fittus offers is something users need and want, he is bolstered by the knowledge that he is chasing a potentially lucrative market. There are more than 40 million gym members in the United States. Industry data show almost half of these people end up quitting, a number that personal trainers and gym owners would love to remedy to remain profitable. From his own experience, Edwards says that one reason gym members drop out is due to little engagement or connection with others who have similar exercise goals. That is where Fittus comes in: Its aim is to link people with similar fitness goals, align their schedules, invite new members and even share workout experiences through text or video. As users rely on the Fittus app to create workout networks, personal trainers and gym managers can keep members engaged and coming back, which can mean a more reliable revenue stream.

Muscling in

Fittus’ initial plan is to target small- to medium-sized gym chains. Targeted member outreach through a gym facility, including informal word-of-mouth and social media, can achieve the visibility it needs. Edwards’ bigger vision: Connect with franchise gyms such as Planet Fitness and Gold’s Gym.

But for now, the focus is on readying the Fittus app for beta testing at local fitness facilities Brooklyn Boulders, Boston Body Pilates and Leap Fitness.

Edwards already has made the rounds getting early feedback, and expects current testing to help him iterate a demo version ready for release in the near future.

“We have been able to go directly into gyms and ask people, ‘What do you need?’” Edwards said. “Overwhelmingly, people are saying there is a need for this.”

Of course business success is not as simple as proving demand, and Edwards knows it. Fittus has at least 10 different competitors hawking similar apps, including Fitocracy, Gympact and Activepepper. But Edwards says what Fittus does is different enough to make it stand out.

And he believes that he has a better business model and strategy, which will allow Fittus to prevail.

Anyone can enter the iTunes store and search for fitness apps — there are roughly 13,000 of them — but most of them are geared to a single user, with features like helping people track weight loss or follow exercise plans. These apps make money from user fees.

Fittus’ focus on engaging and retaining dues-paying gym members (who also may be interested in personal training services) aims directly at the sweet spot of a 20-plus billion dollar industry. That’s real money. While the Fittus business model continues to be tweaked, Edwards says the revenue stream does not rely on gym members; except for premium features, the app is free for them. His business model relies on administrative accounts that cater to providers — that is, accounts held by gym managers and personal training professionals. Initial pricing for administrative accounts is $9.99 per month, or $79.99 a year.

The path to digital business

Nowadays, the basics of app design and development can be learned easily enough, with little-to-no-programming language. In the beginning, that was the path Edwards took. As he progressed, he incorporated feedback from testing as he prepared for market release.

This will cost money, but Fittus already has received some funding, including a $10,000 prize from a Suffolk University business plan competition held last year, and some venture capital from a private investor.

But he estimates continued app development will cost in the range of $5,000 to $10,000, so continues to be on the lookout for more funding.

“The big thing is that to really have a beautiful clean app that runs on Apple and Android you do need to put some money into it,” Edwards said.

Like most startups, Fittus is a one-man show for now, but once the app is ready to go Edwards knows he will need more permanent help keeping it up-to-date and working.

Edwards lives in Grove Hall and currently runs Fittus out of Smarter in the City, an incubator in Dudley Square. He plans to continue operating Fittus in Boston as it grows beyond its out of incubator status.

He grew up in Jamaica Plain before moving to Eden Prairie, Minn., his senior year in high school in 2000. When he graduated from high school in 2001, he attended some classes at a local college, but worked in sales for a number of years before deciding he wanted to go to business school.

He said he caught the entrepreneurial bug while working those early years out of high school and began having ideas for businesses to start. But he wanted the business knowledge necessary to be successful so he turned to Suffolk University back in his hometown of Boston to lay the groundwork.

In 2011, he started as fulltime student at Suffolk and then graduated in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship and advertising.

Early in his Suffolk career he had a fortuitous classroom experience that would lead to Fittus’ eventual launch: A professor assigned an entrepreneurship project during which he had to match likes and passions to potential business ideas.

While Edwards said his idea has evolved, the heart of the concept remains the same. He also has integrated his ongoing insights about technology and the use of apps to develop Fittus into what it is today.

Edwards is the picture of the startup entrepreneur — he works fulltime as a manager at a UPS retail store in Downtown Boston while juggling his passion project Fittus.

But he believes that his company’s big jump is not far away. The goal is to have the app ready for the New Year’s fitness boom that is common after the holidays when gyms always see a surge in new members.

“I think this could become huge by January 1, by next February,” he said.