Dustin Johnson watches the fourth-hole tee during round three at Masters Golf … [+]
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PGA Tour golfer Dustin Johnson is the latest professional athlete to invest in OxeFit, a company that manufactures and sells advanced fitness training systems.
Johnson participated in OxeFit’s recently concluded Series A1 round with $15 million in equity commitments. In all, OxeFit has raised nearly $35 million in funding since Mohamed “Rab” Shanableh and Peter Neuhaus founded the company in January 2020.
OxeFit expects to raise an additional $20 million in funding in the coming months, according to Shnabla. The company plans to use funds from Round A1 and the upcoming Round primarily to expand the company’s reach through employee hires and sales and marketing of its XS1 consumer product, which hit the market in December 2021. The company also has a product, XP1, launched in April 2021 geared toward professional sports teams and facilities Rehabilitation and college athletics programs.
OxeFit received a small amount of early seed funding from Lydia Partners, a venture capital firm that Shanableh founded in 2020. But since then, the company has sidestepped funding from other venture capitalists and instead called on athletes and sports medicine professionals as investors.
Other investors in OxeFit include Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, Galen Ramsey of the Los Angeles Rams, Jason Witten, free agent and NFL recipient Des Bryant, former baseball player Matt Kemp and Toronto Raptors forward Thaddeus Young. James Andrews, a renowned orthopedic surgeon who has worked with many professional athletes, is also an investor in OxeFit and helped design the product.
“We took an early approach rather than the traditional project model of making sure that athletes and sports medicine (the community) are connected early in the life of the company,” said Shanabel, the company’s CEO. “It’s a big check on technology.”
He added, “That was probably the best thing we did, to be honest with you, because they were very active all the way down to the design principles.”
Startups often flirt with high profile athletes as investors because they can draw attention to a product or service. Some of these companies compensate athletes and give them royalties without the athletes having to invest their own money, but Schnapple claims that’s not the case with OxeFit.
“I have now noticed that a lot of[startups]are starting to try to add celebrities, and their way of doing that is, ‘Let’s buy as many celebrity names as we can so they can get behind the product,’” Shanableh said. “Just to be clear, I didn’t pay anyone famous a penny. one. Not a single name has been announced and it hasn’t been announced after they got their dime from OxeFit. In fact, they have all invested and paid to be a part of OxeFit. This is the main differentiating factor.”
Johnson became familiar with OxeFit late last year when he heard about it from Kolby Tullier, one of his trainers. Johnson and Tollier are partners in a fitness and training center in Jupiter, Florida, that has two OxeFit XP1 products. Johnson also installs the OxeFit XS1 in his home.
“My trainers can do an exercise and send it to my machine preloaded there,” Johnson said. “The technology is so much more advanced than anything I’ve seen. I think it’s a great machine. You can do all kinds of different things on it, and I love the feedback it gives too.”
The XP1, which is intended for commercial use by professional teams, training centers and college programmes, has a 43-inch touch screen and can seat up to £500. Meanwhile, the XS1 is primarily used in home gyms and has a 32-inch touchscreen display and can handle up to 250 pounds.
Both products have integrated strength panels and sensors and use artificial intelligence to customize workouts and provide real-time data. People can do strength training and cardio on machines. Cardio exercises include simulated rowing, paddle boarding, and kayaking.
The XS1 has a starting cost of $3,799, down from the initial entry price of $5,999 when it launched last December. People also have to pay a $39.99 monthly subscription fee to access the workouts. Among OxeFit’s competitors in the home fitness sector are Tonal, which raised $250 million in a Series E round in March 2021 at a valuation of $1.6 billion, and Tempo, which raised $220 million in its Series C round in April 2021.
Peloton is another fitness startup that has benefited greatly from people exercising at home during the coronavirus pandemic. But in recent months, Peloton has revealed that its sales have fallen dramatically, and the company has replaced its CEO and co-founder, John Foley, with the ex-Netflix.
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Private companies like OxeFit, Tonal and Tempo don’t have to disclose their sales numbers or any other financial data, but Shanableh acknowledged the trend of more people returning to exercise in gyms. That’s why OxeFit started selling XS1 products to gym chains like Planet Fitness
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Al-Shanabila declined to say how many units the company sold, but said it was “in the thousands.” He added that the company generated “several million” in revenue, without sharing details.
“We are expanding rapidly,” Shanableh said. “We have more incoming orders than we can fulfill. We are growing as fast as we can without significantly disrupting our business.”
