The Slow Gym

 

Physical therapists can transform the fitness industry with preventative services.

“You’d be surprised at the number of patients I see for injuries they sustained in a gym, even with a personal trainer,” said the physical therapist who underwent years of training in the medical field and is considered a purist for relying more on hands than on equipment to treat injuries. After an injury while dancing at an Indian wedding, I not only gained a new gait, but also insights into the business of physical therapy.

The facility was equipped very much like a gym, but largely underutilized. This was a physical therapy clinic, but it was also a business. The physical therapist had to worry about marketing, cash flows, and a lease, alongside customer satisfaction.

Another physical therapist at a university, a Ph.D., didn’t have those worries. She brought in research papers to explain how the body works to her college athlete patients. Yet another physical therapy office had mostly elderly patients. For all practical purposes, the place looked like a busy gym in slow motion due to its rehabilitative purpose – a slow gym. Slow gyms, like Slow TV, the Norwegian television channel which broadcasts several hours of views from a running train, serve a niche audience. A physical therapy center must go beyond its niche audience.

Typically, one thinks of a physical therapist only for rehabilitation after an injury or surgery; there is a stigma attached. They don’t permeate popular culture, something that personal trainers have done since the Jan Fonda era. Peloton gets celebrity trainers to keep its subscribers hooked. Social media’s audio-visual convenience allows individual physical trainers to build a massive following. Chris Heria has close to 5 million followers. We even see solo fitness instructors at parks leading small groups of followers. ‘Future’, an app, makes markets for personal trainers allowing for subscribers to get one-on-one lessons via live video. Subscribers’ progress gets tracked on a complimentary Apple Watch.

The market seems primed for physical fitness. Viral marketing tools abound. Gyms allow us to pay a subscription fee to feel less guilty about not working out regularly. Physical trainers push their sweaty customers to the sound of pulsating music.

In the midst of this fitness frenzy, physical therapy practitioners are left behind. Even when exercising the wrong way causes injuries, chiropractors get a call, but physical therapists remain an afterthought.

Physical therapists must eliminate the stigma of being something for the injured or the elderly and expand into physical fitness by promoting preventative maintenance of human mobility. Physical therapists could try:

• Subscription based models for access to a physical therapy expertise.
• Training camps for personal fitness instructors.
• Extended hours to utilize the capacity of a physical therapy center after patient hours.
• Partnerships with gyms and fitness instructors as distribution channels or affiliates.
• Building a cool personal brand online.

Lastly, advocacy groups must make slow gym into a movement by enlisting the help of athletes, soldiers, and movie stars – maybe even Jane Fonda.

 

 

Leg room has no legs

The airline that rethinks leg room on long haul flights could have a leg up on its competition.

In starting this article, I got distracted and tried to see how many times I could use the word ‘leg’ or legs’ in the title and sub-title, much like how airlines are obsessed with extra leg room to differentiate their brand.

Long haul flights quite often resemble traveling by bus in rural India. “That’s why they have Airbus,” quipped a fellow passenger when I made the observation as we calmly watched the gate agent in New York’s JFK airport coping with passengers jostling to board the flight and stay crumpled in uncomfortable positions for hours at a stretch.

While airlines flaunt the extra inches they offer you in leg room, others design products to make long haul flights in cramped seats less unbearable – from special neck pillows to compression socks for the elders. Some passengers show up for long haul flights dressed in their pajamas with a pillow tucked under the arm, ready to sleep. In coach or economy class, the lucky few win the coveted three-seater or four-seater lottery where they get to stretch out and actually sleep flat if their neighboring seats are unoccupied.

Besides the discomfort, not only for the passengers, but also for the crew on long haul flights (they take turns sleeping inside tiny box-shaped cells in 4-hour spells), the health risks of sitting in flights for long stretches of time can be serious. Cases of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) affecting even young and athletic passengers aren’t unheard of.

Any airline that is serious about standing out from the crowd has an opportunity lurking within this problem. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines could reimagine aircraft interiors from scratch and think of how best to use the space inside an airplane for giving long haul passengers the most comfort with the least health risk.

Aviation could draw lessons from the rail transportation and the furniture industry.

Aircraft manufacturers could hold a contest for industrial design students and professionals to rethink aircraft seats. Long haul air travel probably needs a transformer seat, one that transforms into some sort of a bunk bed.

Perhaps they can they draw inspiration from sleeper cars of long-distance trains of the Indian Railways. Their 3-tier sleeper cars have seats where both, a bench’s backrest and its canopy, get repurposed using a simple chain and hook to make three tiers, each with a flat bed. The overhead bins will need to be reconfigured. Seat belts, safety regulations and instructions will have to be redesigned for the sleeping position.

Business and first class could still stay differentiated with options of privacy and elbow room.

Long haul flights where all passengers enjoy the choice of being seated or lying flat during flight could mean higher revenues per passenger for the airline, and fewer sleepy faces for the immigration cameras.

The Cinderella Customer

Resorts that use the fear of missing out to sell memberships must fear missing out on digital age customers.

The resort was a marvelous machine that hummed day and night. I had recently watched a documentary called ‘Secrets of the Mega Resort’, so I simply had to slip away from a family event to understand the sales and marketing at such a resort.

The booking desk for the ‘presentation’ promised me a 90-minute process. I had my timer ready, but they told me I had to go through two registration desks before I could start the timer. I tried to nudge them along, but they insisted on printing out the forms. It turns out that the back of the printouts become part of the working papers they use to explain complex pricing by masterfully writing numbers upside down when seated across. After being passed on from desk to desk, the fourth person I met was the 'tour guide'. She wanted to drag out the process by including a lunch hour, but my timer was on.

I took the liberty of rearranging their sales workflow.

I asked to first see their best room, then talk to a customer, followed by pricing. I was driven in their ‘Cinderella carriage’ (a better golf cart) to a faraway section of the resort to see a luxury suite with a stunning view of the ocean, chef included. On my way out, I stopped a passerby who turned out to be a ‘member’ who loved his scheduled vacations and in there was a compelling testimonial from one workaholic to another. For pricing it was another building. We crossed a massive hall buzzing with salespeople pitching prospective customers. I was soon handed off to another impressive salesperson who didn’t care for my compliments about their sales machinery but was focused on assessing my purchasing power, inclination and impulse to buy. I was upfront that I do not make impulse purchases. Then another handler appeared and advised me curtly that I will never be returning and won’t get their special deal again. He pointed me to the final handler symbolically positioned near the toilet for my dismissal.

Resorts can do better with their marketing:

• Wallpapers in other rooms showing the best views from member suites to encourage inbound inquiries.
• Account managers, not handlers. Train all staffers to subtly weave sales pitches within conversations.
• Use the time with a prospect to open up a lead pipeline to their contacts.
• Compress the tour and complement with direct email marketing.
• Make prospects your brand evangelists even if they don’t buy immediately.
• Celebrate your members, publicly, with their permission.
• Build a community of your members.
• Bundle products like event services, insurance, air-tickets and ride-share.
• Straightforward pricing like Costco to prevent buyers’ remorse.

My time was up. I was their Cinderella customer. My carriage disappeared as my timer chimed. I was left to find my way back from the far end of the resort but left wiser.

Learning from Milano Design Week

Piggyback economics extend the benefit of an event beyond the fair grounds.

It is not known how seriously Walmart CEO Doug McMillon took former Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi’s recommendation to go to Milan for the Design Week, but I did. The opportunity finally presented itself after Italy lifted Covid travel restrictions. It was everything that Ms. Nooyi talked about – an entire city celebrating design. However, what was eye-opening was the way the common Milanese seem to embrace the Design Week.

The cab driver speeding at 190 kmph from the airport to the hotel wasn’t showing off his motor racing skills. He merely wanted to rush back to pick up as many arriving Design Week visitors as possible. The hotel, whose lobby had registration desks for hospitality suites and private events by furniture brands, offered free shuttles to locations in the city within walking distance of the various venues. From the art installation covering an entire building, an entire district designated for design, several pop-up studios and displays, the high-end over-the-top launch event of a one-armed chair by an iconic fashion brand, to the very basic shadow art by a small wallpaper company, it was noteworthy how cars, fashion apparel, fashion accessories and luxury goods had created their own displays, sometimes co-located, filling the city with design surprises at almost every turn.

Milano Design Week seems to have found a way to align itself with the economic interests of many business enterprises in the city beyond the furniture industry. The average person seemed to have caught the design fever and leveraged the event to derive personal value, meaning and pride. This manifests as the common person on the street cheerfully giving directions to nearby design event venues, and store owners and restaurateurs noticeably appreciative of the additional traffic from the Design Week. I believe that businesses can register themselves for a spot in the Design Week’s online directory. Such an extension of an anchor brand to bring engagement at the grassroots level reminds me of TED Talks and its satellite TEDx events.

Cities can learn from the Milano Design Week. With infrastructure such as an international airport, several indoor and outdoor waterfront venues, research institutions and Universities, comfort with hosting major events and housing visitors at scale, it is perfectly conceivable that a city like Tampa can emulate the success of the Milano Design Week.

The canvas and the palette are ready, but not the subject. Identify a human endeavor which touches almost every person and every industry, centered on which, the city can brand a week-long celebration, such as Engineering Week or Automation Week. What Davos has done with the Economic Forum, with consistency and clarity of purpose, the branded event-week can put a city on the world map of industry, help reap compounding returns and make it a magnet for capital – both, human capital, and financial capital.

Luxury brands need some bureaucratic love.

This article was written on February 21, 2021.

Luxury retailers can learn pandemic-responsiveness from the U.S. Passport Office.

One of my favorite luxury brands, considered the bellwether of innovation, seems to be struggling to cope with the pandemic-related stress on its systems. While I arrived on time at their retail store for a repair-appointment, it took 30 minutes before I was allowed into the store. Not surprisingly, I enjoyed exemplary service from Edward, their knowledgeable and earnest technician. The retailer is, after all, known for setting the gold standard in customer care. However, COVID-19 has required a reconfiguration of their in-store experience. This seems to have tripped the luxury brand.

When I arrived for my appointment, I walked enthusiastically into the store, only to be blocked by the outstretched arm of an intimidating security guard. He asked me to wait in one of three lines formed outside the store. The saga of my repair appointment continued to unfold over the next two weeks as I had to revisit the store a few more times and wait in line.

At each successive visit, my wait time and the choice of the line in which I was asked to wait varied. The security guards outside the retail store were totally in charge of the brand’s luxury experience, improvising rules. My wait time depended on primal skills, like the use of body language when the guards were making a visual assessment to decide my fate, projecting confidence through sustained eye-contact with the influencer guards, my use of persuasion to be allowed to choose the shortest line, and walking up to eloquently reason with them that it was unfair to make me wait in line on each visit for the same repair order especially when the technicians had clearly said I would be a ‘walk-in’.

Humor notwithstanding, for a luxury retailer to trust its brand in the hands of guards from a private security agency seems reckless. What customers first encounter almost resembles crowd control by bouncers outside some seedy night club.

In contrast, consider the Passport Office. Pre-pandemic, it was a chaotic room stuffed with families carrying wailing kids while the officials calmly shuffled papers and expired passports. During the pandemic, my visit to renew my passport was a markedly better experience than that at the luxury retailer. I walked in at the appointed hour. People waited their turns in the parking lot. The bureaucratic brand trusted its system, and more importantly, its customers.

Bureaucracy is not often associated with creativity. Luxury brands that pride themselves on building a brand perception of cool creativity do not want their brand to be associated with anything ‘bureaucratic’. However, a well-oiled innovation machine can get derailed when not built upon reliable systems that allow creative work to forge ahead. A robust bureaucracy provides for flexibility, just like expansion joint gaps that accommodate expansion of railroad tracks in hot weather. Bureaucracy fosters the dependability that luxury brands need now.