Soon you'll be able to attend a ClassPass workout from the comfort of your home for $15 a month
- Fitness subscription service ClassPass will begin livestreaming original, interactive fitness videos in early 2018.
- The company plans on rolling out the new offering, ClassPass Live, with a number of heart rate training classes, which have proved popular among the company's studio classes.
- ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman says that he believes that the service will widen the company's options geographically and allow it to expand into new markets.
Fitness subscription service ClassPass will soon be available from the comfort of your home, in the form of livestreamed fitness classes. On Wednesday, the company announced that it will begin offering original video content, called ClassPass Live, in early 2018, its first foray into the home workout space.
The four-year-old startup gained attention for offering a subscription in select cities that allowed people to attend a number of classes at various studios in their area for a flat rate. And while the price of that subscription has gone up over time, the underlying model has proven successful: Currently, ClassPass is available in 49 cities nationwide and was ranked among the most innovative software companies earlier this year.
In an interview with Business Insider, ClassPass founder Payal Kadakia says that some of the top feedback among dedicated ClassPass users is that they wish the company offered cheaper, more accessible options.
ClassPass Live is designed to meet these demands with newfound accessibility and competitive pricing. The service will cost $10 a month for existing members and $15 a month for new members, along with a one-time $60 fee for a starter kit that includes a heart rate monitor and Google Chromecast.
The livestreamed workouts will give ClassPass a chance to tackle geographic constraints, a problem that CEO Fritz Lanman says has been the company's biggest shortcoming historically. ClassPass has relied on the market of fitness studios in cities across the US to provide a compelling subscription service that connects them, but ClassPass Live will give the company the opportunity to transcend physical limitations. Video is a top-performing market in the fitness industry, says Lanman.
"It will be a big business," say Lanman, "We're investing in it in a way that underscores our belief that we're going to be big in this category."
Lanman says that ClassPass's stable of offerings will differ from other in-home fitness videos on the market by providing high-quality, original videos featuring hand-picked fitness instructors. All of the videos will be produced in-house in the company's Brooklyn studio.
The first classes that will be offered are specific to heart rate training, a fitness model that relies on heart rate monitors to determine the quality of a person's workout. These classes, says Kadakia, have been one of the most popular among ClassPass's studio offerings, and so the category was a natural place to start.
Viewers will be able to tune in live to the classes, or stream them later from their TVs, browsers, or mobile devices as well as compete with other users in real time and receive personalized encouragement from instructors.
ClassPass expects the product will appeal to the same demographic that currently gravitates toward ClassPass: 24-to-44 year old college-educated women. But it hopes that the video service will attract a new type of customer as well - particularly, stay-at-home moms and businesspeople who travel overseas.
For now, ClassPass Live is only available in the US, but depending on its success, ClassPass has plans to expand overseas in the course of the next year.