← Back to Sweat Equity
← Labs
3 November 2026ResearchLearning5 min read

What we heard: round one

We put our stacks in front of the people we built them for. They told us, kindly, that we’d built the wrong thing. Here’s the whole loop.

loop_01 · pmf · 4 of 6 stages run BuildShow peopleListenRead the numbersDecideTest again Round one 3 November 2026
How we work: build something small, show it, listen, check the numbers, decide, and go again.

Everything on this page so far was our own reasoning. This is the first entry that isn’t. We showed the three stacks to the kind of people they were made for, and asked one thing: would you want this?

What we heard

Three things, again and again.

signal_01
A fixed bundle is too rigid.
signal_02
I already have one or two places I go every week.
signal_03
Let me build my own.

The first stung. The second was the interesting one: nobody arrives with a blank week. They already have a Lagree studio, a Barry’s, a yoga class they never miss — and everything else they buy moves around it.

What it confirms, and what it overturns

It confirms what our persona research already suspected: people will only join if we cover the studio they already love. It’s also how people behave everywhere else — ClassPass users end up sending most of their bookings to the same few studios.

It overturns three things we’d built on. The fixed stacks as the product — they become suggestions. The persona group as the thing that shares packs. And the idea that our founding studio rates can reach a member’s favourite studio, where by definition they’re already a regular.

What the numbers say

Before deciding anything, we ran the feedback through the price book. The anchor — the studio people already love — is the worst place to look for savings. A regular often already pays less than our pack price through their own membership, and ClassPass sells the same class for $19–27. The money is in the orbit: the recovery, the second class type, the extras around the anchor.

spread · share of retail
Where a better price can actually come from
The anchor — a regular’s own studio12–19%
At public pack prices, for the anchor classes we’ve priced so far. Against their own membership, close to nothing.
The orbit — everything around it21–40%
The best extras the planner finds around an anchor. Higher end when packs are pooled across more members.
0%25%50%
Modelled on today’s public prices, not on member data.

That turned the feedback from a problem into a shape. Don’t try to beat people’s favourite studio. Keep it, and make everything around it better.

What we decided

We brainstormed eight ways to rebuild the model around this, and kept three to put in front of people next.

pivots · 8 brainstormed · 3 kept
Remix
The three stacks become starting points you can edit.
Kept
Anchor + Orbit
Your one or two studios at the centre, with extras you choose around them.
Kept
Routine, Rewarded
Your anchor runs through us at today’s price; the spread comes back as a rewards balance you spend on the rest.
Kept
Bring Your Studio
Not this round
Studio Crews
Not this round
Pledge
Not this round
Coach Stacks
Not this round
Card-linked rewards
Not this round

How the three fit together isn’t decided. Remix may be the door for someone with no anchor yet; the other two are two ways to treat the anchor — leave it where it is, or route it through us and give the spread back.

What we didn’t record

Radical transparency includes our mistakes. We didn’t write down how many people we spoke to, or how each of them pays for their anchor today — drop-in, a pack or a membership. That second one decides which of the three models works. Round two collects both.

Round two

A Rewards System page on the site, with a switch between the three models, so people can react to each one side by side. And underneath it, a backend that plans per member instead of per group, so a stack can bend around anyone’s routine.