Today, I’m joined by Evelyn Webster, CEO of SoulCycle, an indoor cycling experience that kicked off the boutique fitness boom.
With one-of-a-kind playlists, legendary instructors, and more than 83 studios (and counting) across the US, Canada, and the UK, SoulCycle is a category-defining concept that studios across the globe try to emulate.
In this episode, we talk about the pandemic’s impact on brick-and-mortar fitness, while Evelyn shares how SoulCycle navigated the rollercoaster of re-openings and restrictions. We also discuss the company’s omnichannel offering, including its at-home smart bike, digital content, and outdoor classes.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The business model SoulCycle uses for predictable recurring revenue
- How SoulCycle blends brick-and-mortar studios with their digital platform
- SoulCycle’s strategies for retaining top talent in their industry
Links & Resources
- Calm
- Nike Training Club app
- Subscribe to the Fitt Insider newsletter
- Visit the Fitt Insider jobs board
- View current Fitt Insider investment and get in touch
Evelyn Webster’s Links
- SoulCycle’s website
- Follow SoulCycle on Instagram
- Equinox+ website and app
- SoulCycle SOUL Renew subscription
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Evelyn:
When I look at the economics of our business, I see a very robust business. I’m very happy to say that.
I see huge opportunity for us to grow the brand and the engagement with our consumers, given that we are operating in a period where consumers need more support than ever before because of the two years that we’ve all just been through.
[00:00:31] Joe:
Welcome back to the Fitt Insider podcast. I’m your host, Joe Vennare.
Today I’m joined by SoulCycle CEO, Evelyn Webster.
In this episode, we talk about the pandemic’s impact on brick and mortar fitness. How SoulCycle navigated the rollercoaster of re-openings and restrictions. Plus, we discuss the company’s omni-channel offering, including its smart bike, digital content, and outdoor classes.
Let’s get into it.
Hi, Evelyn. Welcome to Fitt Insider. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:53] Evelyn:
Thank you very much for having me, Joe. It’s lovely to be here.
[00:00:56] Joe:
Looking forward to the conversation, very much excited to chat.
Typically I welcome folks to the show and ask them to introduce the brand and talk about the company. With SoulCycle, that’s probably not necessary. Most people in the fitness industry, and beyond, are familiar with the brand.
But maybe tell us about yourself, and give us the current status of what’s going on at SoulCycle.
[00:01:21] Evelyn:
Great. Thank you. Of course. I’m very happy that you said SoulCycle needs no introduction. I agree with that.
So, I’m Evelyn. I am relatively new to SoulCycle. I joined SoulCycle and the industry about a year ago. I joined after having 30 plus years in media.
There have been as many, or more, similarities between media and fitness than perhaps even I had expected. I had long been a consumer of SoulCycle. I was running international publishing and media companies for a very long time, but I was an active SoulCycler.
So it’s a very odd thing when you’re sitting on a bike as an executive, thinking, “Oh my goodness. If I were at Soul, this is what I do with it.”
When I saw that there was an opening, I was thrilled to join. Of course, when I joined a little over a year ago, I thought I was joining to bring Soul out of the 12-month period it had been through, which was the pandemic, which of course we’re all living through at the same time.
I was optimistic that we might see an end to the pandemic a little earlier than we did. The last 12 months have been truly phenomenal. It’s a wonderful industry to work in.
It’s a quite close knit industry. I’ve had lots of new friends. Everybody’s been very welcoming. It’s obviously been quite challenging, managing a business that is predominantly—not exclusively, but predominantly—a brick and mortar business. We have 85 studios across the country and Canada, and in London.
And, you know, for much of the pandemic, many of those studios were closed. we then decided that we were going to pivot and take this experience that had been built with poem clipping in, in a darkened candle lit room with a music pumping to an outdoor, interpretation of the boundary at the height of the pandemic.
We have 30 outdoor activations in broad daylight with six feet of distancing, but huge headphones on. And that’s how we were riding. And so it’s just been a phenomenal ride if you like, excuse the pond Seoul, because we’ve had to pivot and turn and twist and turn and adapt and evolve every step of the pandemic and what I’m thrilled about.
Now sitting here literally 12 months after joining is it does feel now that we have some serious momentum with riders coming back. I mean, I’ve often said that our, our community is our super power and our community really, really, really, really want it to get back to in-person and in real life. And so we’re seeing some tremendous momentum now.
Obviously in the midst of a pandemic also launched our own at home fitness solution with our partners over at Equinox, media and Equinox plus. So we’ve been busy. I mean, you know, obviously a challenging time, lots and lots of change, but, but also I always feel that, sometimes the most challenging and disruptive of industries are the impetus for the greatest innovation.
And I think that’s what we’ve seen in this industry over the last couple of years. And I’ve certainly experienced over the last year at, at Soul.
[00:04:29] Joe:
Yeah, it sounds like. Almost an entire, a career’s worth of pivots and changes and adaption really in, in two years. And as you mentioned, coming from not a fitness background, but kind of a fitness consumer background, obviously that kind of tie in with the media and the content, certainly plays a role in what fitness has become in terms of the content it’s creating and how you’re distributing it.
When you think about the state of SoulCycle now, I mean, as you mentioned initially, when you were. It’s how do we hopefully navigate out of this pandemic, but it’s been continuing to whether it, has it been a wait and see, or a maintenance mode or restructuring, or just, how would you even, you know, what words would you use to describe where the kind of businesses now and how you think about navigating going forward?
[00:05:25] Evelyn:
Great question. so it definitely hasn’t been weighted fee. It’s been always at.
If I, if I was to describe it in any way, that certainly my last 12 months here, and of course I, I joined a team who had already been managing this brand in this business for 12 years, 12 months of the pandemic before I even got here.
So for the last two years, the team, but for the last year, I feel as if we are constantly looking around corners poised to perhaps emerge from the pandemic and, and we have had 12 months of some pretty stuttered starts and stops, you know, where we’ve, all of the last may last summer, all of the restrictions around distancing and masks were removed, but then of course we, and we were making a brilliant recovery.
I was sitting here thinking, oh my God, this run is phenomenal writers. We’re coming back. We have tears. It was just crazy time in a great way. And then of course, we got hit by Delta and, then we kind of went backwards. And so, you know, we’ve been building the business, we’ve been doing a lot around programming.
We’ve onboarded, an entirely new class of fantastic instructors called group 32nd group 36 instructors. You know, we were poised and ready to go and we were going. And so what have we learned over the last 12 months where we’ve looked, we’ve learned. We poised on always ready, never to take a setback as a setback, but instead just a new opportunity to kind of rethink reimagine how we do do business.
You know, I’m very committed. The team is very committed to being here for each other, for our, for our colleagues, but also being here for the, our riders and our community. So however we can do that leading into being. Oh, being with our consumers wherever they are, whether that’s at home on the go, what would they, you know, Equinox plus apple they’re at home bike or with, as in a physical studio, we’re there for them.
And so that has been the definition of your, like all the defining parameters of the last time.
[00:07:24] Joe:
I think it’s very well said, poison at the ready for studios for, at home, for outdoors, whatever that that brings. And we’re still sort of figuring that out in many ways. maybe we’ll take each of those kind of pillars and go through them, when it comes to the studio. How many are open Now I know there was obviously Delta and then Alma Macron and different variants.
So how many studios are open now and what are you seeing from a kind of attendance membership perspective?
[00:07:56] Evelyn:
So we have about, 70 plus open the vast majority of our studios and our open. We still also have some outdoor activation. So, you know, that was one interesting pivot during the pandemic that. I think stay with us for the long haul. Actually, it’s a wonderful experience as long as the weather’s quite nice, also to be outside.
So we have outdoor activations, outdoor studios, if you like, which, we have not had in the past, we’ve got our indoor studios about 80, 85% of our portfolio is now open and active. and I will tell you, attendance is. clearly it’s not where it was pre pandemic, so I’m certainly wouldn’t go that far, but oh my gosh.
It’s building week by week, month by month, the setbacks where interestingly Delta had a very different impact on our business to Omicron. So Delta, the, you know, we’ve been building ridership, people have been coming back. The, DKV like following Delta, it was a little bit. The kind of ridership fell back very quickly.
So you suddenly have to Omicron and equally family. Within three weeks. So, so literally we’re now back at where we were pre army Cron. So, so we kind of got back much, much faster than we did when we first experienced Delta. So we’ve got classes that are wait-listed and then we’ve got classes that have a relatively modest number of riders in there, but, definitely riders are coming back and we’ve seen this in very significant numbers and we’ve seen, what’s been interesting is having launched our digital platform during the pandemic, and obviously seeing usage of digital, kind of go through the roof, which you would expect when you don’t have a physical brick and mortar alternative. What’s been really interesting for us is to see how those two platforms are blending. So, you know, we often talk about Omni channel.
We want to lean into this. We want to be where our consumers are. We’re still thinking very robust usage of solar at home and, you know, social content and fitness content generally on our Equinox. platform in tandem, we’re seeing this substantial growth as people come back into studios. And so oftentimes people talk about it’s either, or, and of course, I don’t believe that I, I believe that consumers for a very long time.
To come will want to live a blended life. And, you know, the brands that will thrive are those that lean into that. And, and I think that, you know, positioned SoulCycle very well because we have a very significant brick and mortar business. We also have a very significant digital presence. So I think, you know, w we’re in that sweet spot where we are.
[00:10:30] Joe:
Absolutely. I think, you know, the get to the omni-channel piece and it’s, you know, folks thinking about what that future looks like, but as you were going through the kind of height of the lockdowns, and then that, that on again, off again, restart restrictions. Are we allowed to do you know this or that? Do we have to wear masks?
Do we not? I think a lot of people kind of externally, not in the position of maybe someone has the insights right into the business, the same way that you do, or another operator would have saying gyms, aren’t coming back. This is, this is the end. It’s not going to be the same.
Was there ever a point where you thought that or all along, could you see this kind of, building demand or any time that the doors were opened, people came back or they were voicing that concern. How did you kind of deal with that in the, in those peak moments? I did look, you know, not favorable rate for the their kind of future of brick and mortar.
[00:11:24] Evelyn:
So I’ll say two things. And perhaps this is my experience in media, that, that, that held me in good stead for that my experience in fitness. So I’ve worked in media or had worked in media for over 30 years and, You know, w digital, whatever originally emerged in our world in the mid nineties, everybody said, okay, this is the, this is the death of media, right?
This is the death of print print won’t exist. And, print is very much alive and well, the challenge of course, is how you adapt and lean into. You’ve gotta be where your consumers are. And I keep on saying the same, same thing, but it’s like, it’s not one thing at the expense of the other.
It’s how do you leverage the opportunity is from every platform that your consumers want to access your content and your experiences through, and how do you make those work for the brand? And so, you know, when I came into SoulCycle, I came halfway through this pandemic. Let’s assume we are halfway through.
Maybe we’re not, but I came in a year ago knowing full well over 12 months. This is. You know, the fitness industry broadly The physical fitness industry had been hit very hard by the pandemic. I wouldn’t have joined. How do I thought, oh my God, that the end is. this business isn’t going to be around.
I joined because of my experience in media, which has actually these things happily healthily co-exist in fact, what actually happens through innovation and through disruption. It is the, it is the means by which we better serve our consumers because it forces us out of our comfort zone and it forces us to go the extra mile.
And so, you know, I’m a firm believer that. all those rise with the tide, whatever that wonderful expression is. And so the disruption and innovation that we’ve seen in fitness is a good thing. It’s good for consumers. It’s good for us. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us innovating and, we will all happily co-exist with each other.
It is. Physical at the expense of digital or digital at the expense of physical, that’s just not the way it works. And it has an immediate for the last 20 odd years. So I think the same is true of fitness for fitness.
[00:13:28] Joe:
Yeah. definitely that the, the future that, that omni-channel, whatever that looks like giving consumers choice obviously is, is going to play out, and is, is proving to be, the kind of path forward. And then to your point, poison at the ready as those things play out. And what exactly that looks like.
Maybe one more question specific to the studio side. If you look at the kind of traditional model, especially around boutiques, right? The utilization is such a huge part of that. And it’s paying that kind of premium price to come to SoulCycle for that, you know, as you mentioned, lights low, the music, the experience with the instructor and their.
You know, the rents and the overhead, the instructors themselves, the number of bikes in a room as the industry shifts. Do you have a sense for whether or not, or how that pricing model shifts or the, even the footprint of studio shifts? Have we gotten to, that point yet? Or it’s not clear.
[00:14:26] Evelyn:
Oh, my gosh. There’s kind of a lot of questions in that, so let’s try and unpack it. and if I don’t cover all of them, then. Tell me. so look, we’re fairly clear on the economics of the business. Oh, I mean, I’m certainly very clear on the economics of the Soul business. I know precisely how many riders I need walking into a door and clipping in to, to make sense of all of what is essentially real estate like, you know, our brick and mortar business.
And. certainly when we look at the trend and trajectory of riders coming back into, into, studios, it, it gives me no pause or no. Cause for concern in terms of is the brick and mortar business model. broken. It’s not what our business is, is dependent upon people. To your point, walking through the door.
It’s not like we, we do not have an all, you can eat model Interestingly, what I’ve seen in the industry over, I’m sure this predates my time here. It seems that more and more boutique fitness providers are kind of getting into the membership model. And I am seeing more and more kind of all, you can eat business models, emerging, and indeed SoulCycle launched it.
So Soul Renew which is a recurring. Essentially a payment plan. So you can unify and in 4, 8, 12, 16 classes a month, and of course we incentivize you to do so. I think that’s a really interesting business model because that gives you predictable and recurring revenue. It doesn’t necessarily increase your revenue.
What we have found is it does. Riding, engagement. So, so when people sign up for those things and we’re seeing quite a significant number of our riders signing up that it’s encouraging them to ride more frequently than they did prior. So it doesn’t necessarily drive ridership, but it does drive engagement.
And of course it delivers predictable revenue. Yeah. Quite nice. When I think about Soul and the future. I mean, you said it, that you were very kind at the beginning. You said Soul needs no introduction, but I will take a moment to just remind listeners that Soul is a phenomenal workout physically and mentally and emotionally.
It does all three things were called full cycle for a fairly specific reason. And so when I start to look at the business model, we’ve got. An incredibly passionate, committed audience of riders who ride with us frequently and are returning in increasing numbers, which is great. And I’m very interested to explore this space around particularly now, actually, as we all emerge from the pandemic, the pandemic has put an incredible mental strain on us as a society.
I think SoulCycle doors. I mean, as I say, I’m, I’m a marathon runner. I’m a Triumeq. I came across SoulCycle as a fitness enthusiast because it’s a phenomenal workout. What I learned very quickly as a consumer is it goes way beyond the physical and that’s the magic of Soul and the magic of our incredible instructor.
This is a amazing opportunity, a time where I feel both those consumers, but consumers, more broadly need more from us that we’re redefining the parameters of wellness And And I think that opens up a whole new opportunity for us, which is it’s like incremental. So, so when I look at the economics of our business today, I see a very robust business and very happy to say that, but I see huge opportunity for us to grow the brand and grow the engagement with our consumers, particularly given the fact that we’re SoulCycle and particularly given that we are operating in a period where consumers need more support than ever before, because of the two years that we’ve all just been through. I mean, I certainly feel it as a consumer as do many of our consumers.
[00:18:05] Joe:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more when you think about expanding potentially SoulCycle and how you’re reaching consumers and what you’re providing to them. It, it sounds a lot like a lot of us had the realization that fitness is central to mental health. It’s central to stress reduction. It’s central to connecting with others potentially.
Of course in-person, but even digitally at home, leaderboards and virtual high-fives and all those things. We’ve seen lots of different companies, Nike kind of getting in this, they launched a program called mindsets, which is a mental health mindful movement. Calm the meditation app is starting to get into the, what, what does that look like?
What does the exercise movement piece? Obviously, somebody like Peloton wants to push into meditation and mindfulness is, is that specifically what you’re talking about? Cause I think a lot of people, when they think of expanding, they’re like, oh, are, you gonna launch a different modality? Like strength training?
Are you going to launch a, a treadmill from Equinox, right? Or is it this content. meditation, mindfulness that that you’re, you know, kind of thinking about.
[00:19:11] Evelyn:
Well, it’s all of the above. I will say very candidly. We are an expert. Right now. And so looking at there are, and again, maybe it’s my media background. Now I’m a big believer in content and storytelling and compelling content. That’s, you know, that resonates with consumers, that the service and utility to whatever they need.
We’ve got to be very clear. What problem are we solving for and move into those spaces as opposed to, oh, I just kind of fancy getting into the meditation game. It’s like, look, what do our consumers need and want from us? Certainly from. Everything that’s tracking right now. there’s an abundance of opportunity because Soul stands for so much with our consumers and because our writers are so deeply engaged with the brand.
So all of those things, different class formats, different, experiences, music is very, very, very essential to the Soul experience. You know, we. To the beat of the music. We don’t ride to metrics. We ride to music. so that opportunity about how can we lean into the experiential space around something that’s so closely tied to the DNA of the brand.
And so really looking at all of the opportunities for us to better serve our consumers and our ridership.
[00:20:22] Joe:
We’ll be on the lookout, we’ll watch it. And as that kind of exploration takes place where it ends up, certainly, looking now more specifically at the at-home experience, we talked about launching the bike and that the kind of ridership or engagement has grown both through the Equinox plus app and platform. To the extent that you can, what does, growing and engagement look like? Are there any metrics we can put around that in terms of number of riders or sales or whatever figure you would point to, to say this is working.
[00:20:53] Evelyn:
Nope. Sorry. That’s a terrible thing to w we don’t talk about the numbers specifically. Like we don’t publish any stats that are specific to at home riders. How many there are, how often they’re riding. it’s I will say it continues to is a fairly, fairly nascent business. You know, we’ve been in this space.
I think we started building this two years. It predates me, which is why I’m hesitating. But, you know, too, we started this about two years ago. and we have a fairly significant number of riders who are, who have either acquired the at-home bike or indeed have subscribed to Equinox, plus, which is.
Fitness platform that curates some phenomenal fitness content. And so for us, what the solar home or our digital content strategy, if you like, what it’s done is it provided us an opportunity to super serve existing writers who were for whatever reason or enabled. All uncomfortable coming back into a studio.
But it also has acted as a gateway to the brand so that you know, we’ve been able to introduce many, many, many more thousands of riders to Seoul as a brand and to the Soul experience because they are accessing our content on the platform The same is true for Soul consumers who have been, have had access to this incredible wealth of fitness content across Equinox plus.
And so it really has been a. definitely an interesting business to watch, grow and evolve. it has been growing at pace and I’m sorry that I can’t get given a numbers to give context to that. but I very much suspect it will continue to, grow and evolve and I’m sure we’ll see. Twists and turns and pivots on our digital platform as we should.
I mean, the world is changing. We’re kind of feel as if we’re emerging from this pandemic at long last, but who knows what that new normal will be. And so that’s why I kind of say you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You want, you want optionality don’t you. And, and that’s what we’ve got, which is why I’m very happy that someday predating me, had the foresight to, to launch Equinox plus in the solar.
[00:22:55] Joe:
That it goes to the point, to the extent that the consumer wants this blended or omni-channel experience. It’s also beneficial for the brand to habit too, in terms of diversifying revenue streams. And I think that that’s kind of what you’re talking about. During the. Time of the pandemic. It becomes, how do we supplement the in-studio right.
This is another option. We want to continue to reach them. We want to provide this and then have some level of engagement, whether they’re using that exclusively or as a way of introducing people to the brand. Is there a preferred or ideal split? Like, is it, Hey, we’re doing this. And we think that the at-home bike will in platform will always be supplemental to the studio or is our ideal that it’s 50, 50 is the ideal that, that home overtakes the studio.
How do you think about that
[00:23:45] Evelyn:
That’s a really excellent question. We never actually talk about it in those terms. If I’m honest, again, I’m going to draw a parallel to my old world. So, I used to work many years ago. I worked in magazines when like, you know, magazines are still a huge thing. and we used to say that we wanted four revenue streams coming into our business and it was half of them was consumers buying our magazines either through subscription, 25% all through walking into the new stamp, 25%.
And we wanted the other 50% of our revenue to come through. Experiences products and services. So whether I used to on the essence, essence bronzer, a huge music festival, fortunately conference business in style, we bought a huge, very significant e-commerce platform. So we did use to articulate very clearly our aspiration to move from being a print led business, to being a. Omni channel brand offering, which is why I think there’s no such thing as new things, really in a way, because we’re having this Omni channel conversation right now. So I don’t have answers. We don’t have specific parameters where we say, oh, we want four revenue streams. We want it to be 25% each, but, but of course you’d never want to have overly over relying on one revenue stream because when that one revenue stream disappears, th that’s that’s quite problematic.
Because of the strength of the brand and the brilliant work that, my predecessors and the, you know, the original founders did was they just created a brand that has such resonance, that we’ve always had more than one revenue stream. Our retail and apparel business has always been a very significant proportion of SoulCycle.
And in fact, during the pandemic, when our studios were literally closed, our retail. Proved to be very resilient. So people really want that batch of, you know, that feeling of being continuing to be connected to the community with each other. You could still do that by buying a candle. I am currently smelling a beautiful grapefruit centered candle.
That’s the Soul fragrance, you know, so people were still buying a product. Apparel athleisure clearly has been one of the beats huge trends during the pandemic, but. Candle so that they, it is reminiscent of that studio experience. So fortunately for us all, we’ve always had a very sizeable chunk of our business, which is in other brand products and merchandise.
Of course, I’d like more, I’d like, I’d like our ruler lines of business, our digital business to be as robust as our retail business. And so, you know, you’d like two or three fairly robust revenue streams, so that you do have that diversity in your revenue mix, which just certainly doesn’t make you immune, but it gives you a buffer in the event that one of those revenue streams is compromised for any way.
[00:26:28] Joe:
I think that’s well said when you talk about thinking about diversifying it and it does in so many ways, come back to the power of the brand in the first place. And we’ve talked about that as it relates to the studios and the at-home. I think another area that I wanted to touch on was the instructors themselves.
Right? There’s so much of this experience is built around that talent. and now we’ve seen the previously it was the competition, right? In terms of just studio. SoulCycle was the preeminent studio. I think a lot of people in terms of like fitness instructors, aspired to be, you know, a SoulCycle instructor in many ways, that’s still true.
But now you just have a ton more competition from digital to in-person to, you know, them going off on their own. Right. And starting their own kind of personal brands. what has it been like to attract and retain talent now, when there are so many other kind of avenues them to pursue.
[00:27:22] Evelyn:
So last year in we recruited what we call the, we give each group number. So. So to fix the two six recruitment of instructors, it was our most heavily subscribed.
Training group ever in the history of Soul. And so of course I would say this right. I’m a one, a brand fan. I’ve been a big supporter of the brand for five, six years before I joined it. I’m now the CEO. So I’m kind of going to say this, but it’s true. We do have the very best instructors at SoulCycle. They are the magic of this brand and what I saw and experienced firsthand as we were going through auditions.
And because can you imagine doing auditions in the middle of a pandemic, we were having people were sending in video tapes of them and that videoing themselves on a bike. It was just extraordinary. The lengths that our. community, our friends, you know, people who wants to be a part of this experience, the magic of Soul, the creative lengths they went to, to send us their submission tapes.
And so on. So hand on heart, we have never had an issue. Recruiting instructors. I do believe, SoulCycle is the pinnacle for fitness instructors, who, you know, who wants to work in boutique fitness. And therefore we’ve never. I struggled this, you made this point yourself and you, you said it beautifully, like our instructors are the magic of Soul.
And, I want to quote one of our instructors in London, who I was chatting to. A while ago. And he said, there’s a little bit of Soul in all of our competitors. And I said, yes, but they are not. So, and so, you know, we just focused on what we do. we have an, a phenomenal team sitting outside my office, who, helpers acquire and identify phenomenal talent and train and support that talent.
And, thanks to them. They keep the magic of Soul alive every day.
[00:29:12] Joe:
I like that. And I think in many ways I kind of had it in my head and in my notes that when you look at this evolution of connected fitness, I, I don’t think any of those competitors or hesitant to say that, like, they really wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for SoulCycle in that boutique experience that they created that ultimately that’s what they were trying to replicate when they said, Hey, can we bring this experience into the home or can we recreate it digitally?
So I think that instructor. There’s a little part of that, that instructor in those brands that that’s certainly true. maybe changing gears as we get towards the end of the conversation, and this might be, like the, the, the bike conversation, right? You can’t say too much, but I kind of have to ask.
So there was kind of rumors that Equinox, the parent company was trying to go public and. Potential around what that might look like. Obviously prior to that years ago, SoulCycle was potentially going public on its own. where do things stand now? How do you think about continuing to operate?
Obviously again, to the extent that you can share, what does that roadmap look like? and is it kind of still kind of mapping the path towards potential IPO and, and, and going forward?
[00:30:24] Evelyn:
So I I’m extremely happy that Soul is, one of the brands within the Equinox group, Fort failure. you know, the Equinox group team are extraordinarily smart individuals and I’m sure they’re having lots and lots of conversations pretty much all of the time actually. I leave that to them. And so what I ha I can say is, you know, being part of the Equinox group has been. Extremely powerful for Soul. well, certainly over the last two years when their kind of economic landscape of our businesses, it’s clearly not been, what we’ve enjoyed, in previous years. And so having the support and backing all the group. has been, wonderful and has ensured that we’ve continued to be able to operate in the way that we have showing up for our consumers and continuing to invest in our business, in the digital platform.
And so on. those conversations, that group, the group. Long may that continue. And, I leave those conversations to, to, to those, to those individuals.
[00:31:25] Joe:
Fair enough. We’ll we’ll certainly we’ll put that on the, on the list as well of things to kind of keep an eye out for it’s ultimately it comes down to. Happens, you know, as the, the, hopefully right at this point, we keep saying, like you said, are we at the halfway point? Are we at the end? Are we at the beginning?
And no one, nobody seems to know, but hopefully sooner, rather than later, we’re able to turn a corner and get a sense of what normal looks like again. last question as we get you out of here, if we were to maybe jump ahead. a year or two. And we think about, we have in fact moved beyond the current state of the pandemic.
Do you have a sense for what you think SoulCycle looks like or what you hope that it looks like in that kind of back to normal state?
[00:32:13] Evelyn:
I don’t know how far forward to cast when I say this, but obviously seeing all of our riders who—there are still riders who were not back and haven’t been back for two years, either because that they’ve moved, or they have continued concerns around mask mandates. We still have mask mandates in a number of territories in which we operate.
So, certainly for the next six months, what I’m expecting to see is our latched riders and riders that haven’t been with us for a while will continue to return in the same kind of numbers that we’re enjoying right now, which I’m very excited about. I’d like to see more full rooms.
But as we think beyond that, like a further out time horizon, then really starting to see how Soul unlocks the power of: one, the community, and two, the Soul in SoulCycle.
As I’ve hinted, there are some very interesting developments underway in terms of existing class formats, but also in terms of new content offerings that enable us to super serve our consumers.
How we translate Soul into a multi vertical business is something that I certainly feel very excited and positive about. How long will that take us? Well, it’s a journey, isn’t it? We probably won’t reach the end of it for quite some time. But certainly over the next six months to three years, we will see a broadening out of the product and service offerings under the Soul banner.
[00:33:45] Joe:
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. A lot to look forward to on that front.
Would you point folks to the website to follow along, social media? What’s the best way to see what those offeings become, and keep tabs on where the brand is heading?
[00:34:01] Evelyn:
Social. Yeah, Instagram. We have an extraordinarily engaged group of consumers who continue to track what Soul is up to, even if they’re not actually back in the saddle with us yet.
So yes, as our plans unfold, follow us on Instagram. that’s where we you’ll see the magic of how the Soul offerings unfold.
[00:34:26] Joe:
Fantastic. We definitely hope folks check that out and follow along.
Thanks so much for spending a little bit of time with us today.
[00:34:32] Evelyn:
Entirely my pleasure, Joe. Thank you.