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We Work Well Events | Fit Tech promotion
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We Work Well Events | Fit Tech promotion
features

Promo: React Fitness and Styku

Physicist turned tech entrepreneur, Raj Sareen, explains how his 3D body scanner Styku will revolutionise member acquisitions, retention and revenues for your health club

Published in Health Club Management 2016 issue 11

What’s your background?
I was a physicist who also worked at NASA and spent a few of my post-grad years researching extra-solar planets – basically hunting planets around other stars.

But as much as I love science, I felt an urge to build something more tangible. My mother and father are both successful entrepreneurs, having created a very successful CAD software for clothing design that’s used worldwide today. I joined them to learn more about software development and running a business.

What was your next step?
While there, I started a personal innovation lab. The first idea I had was to hack together an inexpensive body scanner. While there were a few products on the apparel market, they were very expensive and clunky.

I could see the potential for offering body measurements in a non-invasive way, and so started to research how we could make this a good experience for people, make the data accurate and offer a product at an affordable cost.

How did you develop Styku?
My first attempt involved 21 off-the-shelf webcams. I wrote the software myself and at 0.87 seconds, it was effectively the world’s fastest scanner. But it was also a behemoth and not something I wanted to commercialise. Shortly after, Microsoft launched the world’s first affordable commercial 3D sensor – the Kinect.

We hacked into the Kinect camera and turned it into a scanning device. Microsoft took notice. Initially, they warned we were breaking their licensing agreements. I have to admit, we carried on regardless, and a few months later they contacted us again to say that actually, they loved what we were doing and wanted to work with us!

That led to us being chosen as one of 11 companies, from 500 applicants, to spend three months at Microsoft’s incubator for Techstars in Seattle.

Was that where Styku was born?
Effectively yes. They taught us how to fail fast and we soon realised the apparel market was not ready for this type of product – at least not yet.

But once we turned our attention to the health and fitness market – creating an algorithm for measuring body composition and body fat percentage using circumference measurements – everything just fell into place. We knew we had a value proposition for health clubs.

Can you describe the product?
Styku consists of a computer, turntable and a vertical unit that houses a 3D scanner. The whole kit only weighs around 17kg and is portable – making it ideal for PTs and for use at one-off fitness events as a sales or educational tool. However, most clubs will find a home for it in their facility and use it as a consistent part of their membership experience.

People hate to be measured with callipers – they’re so intrusive. With Styku, members simply stand on the turntable and within 30 seconds the scanner has taken a whole range of highly accurate body measurements, which are then interpreted by the software.

Even the world’s best tailors can only measure accurately to half an inch – Styku measures to 1/16th of an inch, and records the same points every time, so accurate comparisons can be made.

Why should a health club invest in Styku?
Styku is so powerful because clients can see an instant image of themselves in 3D – which is much more objective than a photograph or looking in the mirror. Moreover, the data we provide is far richer than a consumer wearable or a bathroom scale could ever provide.

Most people who visit a health club say they want to lose weight, but what they mean is they want to lose body fat. This can often lead to great disappointment as they follow a workout programme and see little change on the scales.

Of course, their bodies are shrinking and regardless of an instructor’s efforts to educate them on this, there’s nothing more motivating than seeing the changes reflected back as a real image. Styku is able to lay one scan on top of another to give a very accurate before and after image.

Clients are so motivated they start to work harder to look good for their next scan!

What support do you offer?
We don’t want Styku to be just another piece of equipment that sits in the gym forgotten after a period of time. It’s a very effective business tool for clubs that will help them with member acquisitions, retention and sales revenues.

It’s particularly valuable as a PT tool. This is an area where clubs have an opportunity to become very profitable, but where many of them fail.

Our software is able to interpret the data and help gyms create personalised exercise programmes based on clients’ goals. Clubs can use Styku to engage and motivate – so instead of members just paying their usual fees, they’re actually happy to invest thousands of pounds a year in their transformation and see measured results.

Also, when a gym purchases Styku, we offer them unlimited support and online training to help them turn their scanner into a profit centre. If used correctly, clubs should start to see a return on their investment in just six weeks.

What’s next for Styku?
After officially launching at IHRSA 2015, we’re now in 23 countries, and have just appointed React Fitness as our exclusive UK distributor. We chose them because of their 20 years of experience and in-depth knowledge of the fitness market, and the fact that we share the same value system.

3-1-5 Health Club in Lancaster is the first gym to offer Styku in the UK along with Bodystreet Studio in Milton Keynes. As we talk to all the main fitness brands, Styku will start to become an integral part of the fitness journey in the UK.

Looking further ahead, we see Styku expanding beyond fitness to become an amazing tool that everyone can use to enhance their lifestyle. Whether it’s getting a scan at your GP surgery, or using a scan to shop for clothes, the possibilities are endless, and Styku’s journey is just beginning.

Sign up here to get Fit Tech's weekly ezine and every issue of Fit Tech magazine free on digital.
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Into the fitaverse

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Users can easily identify which facilities in the UK are accessible to the disabled community
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Hannes Sjöblad

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Physical activity monitors boost activity levels

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have conducted a meta analysis of all relevant research and found that the body of evidence shows an impact
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The future of sports and fitness are dependent on the climate. Our goal is to positively influence the future of our planet by instilling a global vision of wellbeing and a sense of collective action
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We don’t just create the technology and bail – we support our clients’ ongoing hybridisation efforts
Fit Tech People

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CEO and co-founder, Auro
When you’re undertaking fitness activities, unless you’re on a stationary bike, in most cases it’s not safe or necessary to be tied to a screen, especially a small screen
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08-10 Oct 2024
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features

Promo: React Fitness and Styku

Physicist turned tech entrepreneur, Raj Sareen, explains how his 3D body scanner Styku will revolutionise member acquisitions, retention and revenues for your health club

Published in Health Club Management 2016 issue 11

What’s your background?
I was a physicist who also worked at NASA and spent a few of my post-grad years researching extra-solar planets – basically hunting planets around other stars.

But as much as I love science, I felt an urge to build something more tangible. My mother and father are both successful entrepreneurs, having created a very successful CAD software for clothing design that’s used worldwide today. I joined them to learn more about software development and running a business.

What was your next step?
While there, I started a personal innovation lab. The first idea I had was to hack together an inexpensive body scanner. While there were a few products on the apparel market, they were very expensive and clunky.

I could see the potential for offering body measurements in a non-invasive way, and so started to research how we could make this a good experience for people, make the data accurate and offer a product at an affordable cost.

How did you develop Styku?
My first attempt involved 21 off-the-shelf webcams. I wrote the software myself and at 0.87 seconds, it was effectively the world’s fastest scanner. But it was also a behemoth and not something I wanted to commercialise. Shortly after, Microsoft launched the world’s first affordable commercial 3D sensor – the Kinect.

We hacked into the Kinect camera and turned it into a scanning device. Microsoft took notice. Initially, they warned we were breaking their licensing agreements. I have to admit, we carried on regardless, and a few months later they contacted us again to say that actually, they loved what we were doing and wanted to work with us!

That led to us being chosen as one of 11 companies, from 500 applicants, to spend three months at Microsoft’s incubator for Techstars in Seattle.

Was that where Styku was born?
Effectively yes. They taught us how to fail fast and we soon realised the apparel market was not ready for this type of product – at least not yet.

But once we turned our attention to the health and fitness market – creating an algorithm for measuring body composition and body fat percentage using circumference measurements – everything just fell into place. We knew we had a value proposition for health clubs.

Can you describe the product?
Styku consists of a computer, turntable and a vertical unit that houses a 3D scanner. The whole kit only weighs around 17kg and is portable – making it ideal for PTs and for use at one-off fitness events as a sales or educational tool. However, most clubs will find a home for it in their facility and use it as a consistent part of their membership experience.

People hate to be measured with callipers – they’re so intrusive. With Styku, members simply stand on the turntable and within 30 seconds the scanner has taken a whole range of highly accurate body measurements, which are then interpreted by the software.

Even the world’s best tailors can only measure accurately to half an inch – Styku measures to 1/16th of an inch, and records the same points every time, so accurate comparisons can be made.

Why should a health club invest in Styku?
Styku is so powerful because clients can see an instant image of themselves in 3D – which is much more objective than a photograph or looking in the mirror. Moreover, the data we provide is far richer than a consumer wearable or a bathroom scale could ever provide.

Most people who visit a health club say they want to lose weight, but what they mean is they want to lose body fat. This can often lead to great disappointment as they follow a workout programme and see little change on the scales.

Of course, their bodies are shrinking and regardless of an instructor’s efforts to educate them on this, there’s nothing more motivating than seeing the changes reflected back as a real image. Styku is able to lay one scan on top of another to give a very accurate before and after image.

Clients are so motivated they start to work harder to look good for their next scan!

What support do you offer?
We don’t want Styku to be just another piece of equipment that sits in the gym forgotten after a period of time. It’s a very effective business tool for clubs that will help them with member acquisitions, retention and sales revenues.

It’s particularly valuable as a PT tool. This is an area where clubs have an opportunity to become very profitable, but where many of them fail.

Our software is able to interpret the data and help gyms create personalised exercise programmes based on clients’ goals. Clubs can use Styku to engage and motivate – so instead of members just paying their usual fees, they’re actually happy to invest thousands of pounds a year in their transformation and see measured results.

Also, when a gym purchases Styku, we offer them unlimited support and online training to help them turn their scanner into a profit centre. If used correctly, clubs should start to see a return on their investment in just six weeks.

What’s next for Styku?
After officially launching at IHRSA 2015, we’re now in 23 countries, and have just appointed React Fitness as our exclusive UK distributor. We chose them because of their 20 years of experience and in-depth knowledge of the fitness market, and the fact that we share the same value system.

3-1-5 Health Club in Lancaster is the first gym to offer Styku in the UK along with Bodystreet Studio in Milton Keynes. As we talk to all the main fitness brands, Styku will start to become an integral part of the fitness journey in the UK.

Looking further ahead, we see Styku expanding beyond fitness to become an amazing tool that everyone can use to enhance their lifestyle. Whether it’s getting a scan at your GP surgery, or using a scan to shop for clothes, the possibilities are endless, and Styku’s journey is just beginning.

Sign up here to get Fit Tech's weekly ezine and every issue of Fit Tech magazine free on digital.
Gallery
More features
Editor's letter

Into the fitaverse

Fitness is already among the top three markets in the metaverse, with new technology and partnerships driving real growth and consumer engagement that looks likely to spill over into health clubs, gyms and studios
Fit Tech people

Ali Jawad

Paralympic powerlifter and founder, Accessercise
Users can easily identify which facilities in the UK are accessible to the disabled community
Fit Tech people

Hannes Sjöblad

MD, DSruptive
We want to give our users an implantable tool that allows them to collect their health data at any time and in any setting
Fit Tech people

Jamie Buck

Co-founder, Active in Time
We created a solution called AiT Voice, which turns digital data into a spoken audio timetable that connects to phone systems
Profile

Fahad Alhagbani: reinventing fitness

Let’s live in the future to improve today
Opinion

Building on the blockchain

For small sports teams looking to compete with giants, blockchain can be a secret weapon explains Lars Rensing, CEO of Protokol
Innovation

Bold move

Our results showed a greater than 60 per cent reduction in falls for individuals who actively participated in Bold’s programme
App analysis

Check your form

Sency’s motion analysis technology is allowing users to check their technique as they exercise. Co-founder and CEO Gal Rotman explains how
Profile

New reality

Sam Cole, CEO of FitXR, talks to Fit Tech about taking digital workouts to the next level, with an immersive, virtual reality fitness club
Profile

Sohail Rashid

My vision was to create a platform that could improve the sport for lifters at all levels and attract more people, similar to how Strava, Peloton and Zwift have in other sports
Ageing

Reverse Ageing

Many apps help people track their health, but Humanity founders Peter Ward and Michael Geer have put the focus on ageing, to help users to see the direct repercussions of their habits. They talk to Steph Eaves
App analysis

Going hybrid

Workout Anytime created its app in partnership with Virtuagym. Workout Anytime’s Greg Maurer and Virtuagym’s Hugo Braam explain the process behind its creation
Research

Physical activity monitors boost activity levels

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have conducted a meta analysis of all relevant research and found that the body of evidence shows an impact
Editor's letter

Two-way coaching

Content providers have been hugely active in the fit tech market since the start of the pandemic. We expect the industry to move on from delivering these services on a ‘broadcast-only’ basis as two-way coaching becomes the new USP
Fit Tech People

Laurent Petit

Co-founder, Active Giving
The future of sports and fitness are dependent on the climate. Our goal is to positively influence the future of our planet by instilling a global vision of wellbeing and a sense of collective action
Fit Tech People

Adam Zeitsiff

CEO, Intelivideo
We don’t just create the technology and bail – we support our clients’ ongoing hybridisation efforts
Fit Tech People

Anantharaman Pattabiraman

CEO and co-founder, Auro
When you’re undertaking fitness activities, unless you’re on a stationary bike, in most cases it’s not safe or necessary to be tied to a screen, especially a small screen
Fit Tech People

Mike Hansen

Managing partner, Endorphinz
We noticed a big gap in the market – customers needed better insights but also recommendations on what to do, whether that be customer acquisition, content creation, marketing and more
More features