Do you really need a fitness mirror?
Tell you more about the smart fitness mirror
It looks like a full-length mirror until you open it, and then it will project a coach on the screen, who will take you through everything from boxing to strength training.
Gym Mirror is a high-tech fitness product. Its CEO and founder Brynn Putnam said that Mirror is an "interactive home gym". It looks like an ordinary mirror, but it shows various types of fitness courses. .
"This is the first time that the basic components of a great studio-diversity, personalization, and community-are brought to the most convenient place: home." Putnam said, basically, the goal is to put the gym ( And fitness classes) to your living room (or wherever the product is placed).
You can also sync Bluetooth, a heart rate monitor or Apple Watch, and the mirror will track your ability to achieve, maintain, and restore your target heart rate zone.
Specifically, using the corresponding smartphone application, you can choose one of thousands of courses to try, or take one of the 50 weekly courses in real time with other mirror users. There are a variety of exercise methods to choose from, including aerobic exercise, strength training, boxing, barbell, Pilates, yoga, stretching, prenatal and postnatal and aerobic dance. The course lasts 15 to 60 minutes.
Imagine that you can complete training and the same courses in the gym through the fitness mirror factory without leaving home. Stay away from crowded people, away from noisy environments, and away from people you don’t like. This is exactly what the new interactive home gym Mirror can do. Arrived.
Kailee Combs, Mirror's vice president of fitness, said that in addition to installing high-tech Internet mirrors in the home is cool, mirrors can also be used as a teaching tool to help people learn the right way to exercise. You don’t have to look at your smartphone app or computer screen to check your training plan, just look in the mirror.
Combs also said: "Form is very important, followed by its motivational effect. You look at yourself in the mirror and look at yourself as you train hard. It will push you to become better or work harder."
The founder of Combs and Mirror, Brynn Putnam, were both dancers, so they spent years standing in front of the mirror, staring at their bodies, trying to achieve perfect technique and lines.
Putnam hopes that their device will help people build healthier relationships with mirrors. Putnam said: "Most people in our society look in the mirror and find something to find faults, but our purpose is to give you time to look in the mirror and make you feel good about yourself, because the mirror makes you stronger. A healthier tool."
3. How to use fitness mirror
When you start the device for the first time, you have to answer some questions about any injuries or restrictions (such as pregnancy) so that the system can provide you with other exercises during the exercise.
The instructor in the mirror will show you what you want to do. If you need extra things, such as dumbbells or bracelets, the app will tell you in advance. The mirror will tell you how long the next set of exercises will take. If you Very anxious, you can even skip it.
The video in the "mirror" is very clear and looks like a hologram. During each exercise, there will be a timer on the screen to tell you how long each action can last. If you are injured, the mirror will suggest you to make changes in the bottom corner. The device also has a mirror connected to the mirror. Heart rate monitor so you can see how hard you are training.
Each coach even has its own unique personality and method, just like you see in real life. In addition, coaches are also very diverse, with men and women from different races and nationalities.
The device itself will also give you a prompt on the screen, such as "Good job"! If your heart rate exceeds the target you set up the device, it will remind you; if you are lazy, it will make you speed up.
The screen will also tell you how many calories you have burned, which is undoubtedly very important for bodybuilders. For those who don't use a monitor, the mirror will calculate the calories you burn based on your weight, age, and maximum heart rate.
After the workout, you will receive a summary synchronized with the app, which you can check at any time. It will display visual graphs of your BPM, exercise duration, calorie consumption and average heart rate.
4. Disadvantages of fitness mirrors
The biggest disadvantage of "Mirror" is the high upfront cost. Its upfront cost is very high. The actual price is US$1,495. In addition, you also need to pay US$39 a month to purchase its courses and certain features. You are in possession of it. It may cost at least US$2200 for the first year.
In addition to the cost, there are some technical failures when using the mirror. For example, although it is easy to connect the built-in heart rate monitor to the mirror via Bluetooth, it is a bit cumbersome to pair wireless headphones with it.
In addition, it will experience some intermittent buffering (the mirror connection requires a stable Wi-Fi connection, at least 10 megabytes per second); even with a large number of courses and various instructors, the mirroring experience will become Repeat.
Some bodybuilders who have experienced mirrors said that although mirrors provide almost everything a bodybuilder needs, nothing can compare to a living coach and a living class.
It is undeniable that the new trend of home fitness is bound to become the common direction of China's home fitness exploration. A new type of "interactive home gym" like fitness mirrors provides a solid exercise, but now it seems that this type of form needs more perfection, and truly "grounded" interactive exercises still have a long way to go.
In 2021, the long-standing technology circle of Qianji finally ushered in a new topic product-smart fitness mirror, and dozens of products of different brands emerged on the market overnight. After a group of fitness experts and celebrities have clocked in and planted grass, this online celebrity product has been questioned by public opinion. But while the domestic public is still arguing about whether this is an IQ tax or not, an MBC TV drama series has given us a different perspective-the project that the company boss desperately wants to keep. Is it really a fake demand?
Although the smart fitness mirror products have not officially landed in the country's market in reality, the decision-making process portrayed in the play is not inferior to reality. As the core of the fitness mirror product experience, providing users with high-level training courses and creating a sense of companionship and immersion are key propositions that manufacturers must solve and are in line with the trend. Technology only allows the hardware itself to operate effectively and realize its functions, but the real soul of fitness mirror products is still the fitness content itself. To use the lines in the play, if there is no good content experience as a support, "it only takes three days, it will become an ordinary mirror."
It is said that art is derived from reality and is higher than reality. This drama, filmed at the end of last year, perfectly predicted and reproduced the hotness of the smart fitness mirror, and hit the key to breaking the product market-the need to give users the motivation to persist in using it. To achieve this kind of home fitness experience with a sense of companionship and immersion, it is not only necessary to form at least hundreds of hardware and software technicians, but if coupled with exclusive coaches and content production teams, this will definitely be a team of nearly a thousand people. A large team, this is an important asset for any company.
More importantly, the global smart fitness market is a high-potential market that will reach nearly US$50 billion in the next five years. Considering that hardware products enter the home, they will not only be expected to generate revenue through continuous content payment, but also The potential of the "third screen of family wisdom" will gradually be released. As the president of a technology group, naturally, he will not sell this future Taurus product to others by the subsidiary company just because of the company's temporary difficulties. This is a ticket to the future!
Why is everyone talking about smart fitness mirrors
From the drama back to reality, the "Hundred Mirrors War" has already set off an upsurge in China. After 618 ignited the consumer market, it has recently attracted public attention again. As mentioned at the beginning, whether "IQ tax" has become the core of the dispute. To quote a media person's point of view, how to complete self-certification to the public through user experience for a brand-new product with a price of several thousand yuan is actually the essence of many media heated discussions. In many media reports, the utility of AI intelligence, the quality of fitness courses, and the matching of tracking services have become the most frequently mentioned topics.
Among the dozens of products currently on the market, the more advanced brands such as FITURE, Gudong FITMORE, and LITTA all boast that their products have functions such as AI intelligence and self-made courses. Taking FITURE as an example, they not only self-developed and launched an intelligent motion tracking system that can realize motion capture, real-time error correction, data analysis and other functions, but also rely on the production capacity of 5,000 courses per year achieved by the film production specification content workshop and the top coaching team. . From this point of view, FITURE has some differentiated advantages compared to other manufacturers in the current market.
It is understood that FITURE's courses currently cover 13 major content categories including yoga, stretching, aerobic dance, etc., which can effectively meet the needs of family users of all ages. In addition, FITURE is also launching third-party cooperative courses through cooperation with PURE, Golden Ballet, Tai Chi Zen and other IPs to continuously expand the content category. In addition, FITURE also connects user tracking services and communities online and offline through member-specific health advisor services + offline stores. In the words of the relevant person in charge, under the "hardware + content + service + AI" model, FITURE defines intelligent fitness with interactive content.
It can be said that the doubts encountered in the current stage of the smart fitness mirror are actually an inevitable experience of a new product category. Imagine a market that has just emerged for a few months. In any case, it is difficult to say that the initial user education and infrastructure construction process has been completed. In this regard, some people in the industry said that the essence of smart construction is still content services, and the ability to continuously output high-quality content is not overnight. But the home scene created by smart fitness is indeed the general trend. The opening of new scenes also promotes the development of the entire fitness industry, and now it can let the bullet fly for a while.
The founding team of Fiture was originally an unmanned driver. The algorithms and systems for motion recognition and capture are very familiar to them, not difficult. And I believe that for other fitness mirror teams, motion capture technology is not difficult, but other things are difficult (wait a minute).
In addition to Fix, there are many domestic brands of fitness mirrors that will be launched in 2021, and home fitness smart hardware will usher in a wave of outbreaks in 2021-2022. Fiture is a very representative company, and basically what it thinks about Fix is what it thinks about this track.
I think that home fitness must be a very important and extremely valuable track, but the logic of this track has just begun to be verified.
Fitness Mirror is one of the exploratory products that have been verified abroad but have not been successfully verified in China. It is a kind of lazy inertial thinking to judge by cutting leeks.
I have asked many practitioners who do smart hardware and algorithms, and I have also contacted some other home fitness project leaders. For the "Home Fitness Intelligent Hardware" project, the difficulty and focus is not the algorithm of "motion capture recognition and correction" that everyone is concerned about, but the "content", "data" and "operation".
If I were to evaluate, I must look at such projects from these three dimensions.
Simply write a few angles for thinking:
In terms of content: How is the content and the professionalism of the coach? More or less types of content? How is the experience of the content?
Data: What is the user base? Based on which user data will the project be optimized? How fast is the iteration? Compared with similar home fitness products such as treadmills, rowing machines, bicycles, etc., what is the improvement in experience and retention? Compared with offline fitness venues, what are the improvements in experience and retention?
Operational aspect: How about the retention of users? How long do users spend? Compared with products like keep, what are the advantages and difficulties of operation? Compared with offline fitness venues, what are the advantages and difficulties of operation?
Divorced from the above evaluation dimensions, I think it is difficult to make a high-quality evaluation.
Two. product experience
At the end of October 2020, I experienced Fix. The part of the experience included physical fitness and movement tests, built-in fitness games, community interaction, courses, etc. The overall feeling was amazing.
(There should be a picture of my experience of Fiture here, but I don’t have one)
For example, the action test is based on the evaluation ideas of FMS, but it has been used to a large extent according to the equipment characteristics of the home fitness hardware. When I use the product, I am seriously thinking about the design logic of each evaluation action. In terms of the evaluation action, the designer's ideas coincide with me. I think there are still capable people in the company. This company understands fitness and C-end needs.
When I was experiencing it, the granularity of the motion capture and correction of this piece of Film was not so meticulous. From my point of view, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the details of the action, and the granularity of the action can be refined by one or two levels, such as: how to step on the foot, how to hold the hand, how to support the body, and how the coach uses it. More precise and more popular slogans guide users through the air, show errors in more details, correct and optimize, and so on. But overall, this product is intentional. The product team has been debugging and optimizing the fineness of the action, and later versions should be iterated and optimized gradually.
This company was established in mid-2019. That is to say, when I experienced it, this product was made in one year. At that time, the company only took the angel wheel of 5 million US dollars. It can be said to be quite shocking to be able to achieve this level.
Based on the above observations, I once considered joining this team... but in the end I didn't enter. I also feel sorry to this day.
Three future development
Regarding the price, Fixture’s products are priced at 8000+, and the products follow a high-end route, positioning lifestyles rather than fitness, so from the perspective of "normal people buy it is not worthwhile" and "fitness enthusiasts will buy it" angle analysis, the conclusion is drawn I am afraid it is mostly negative. I personally believe that these perspectives restrict the thinking logic of the evaluator, and also narrow the possibility of home fitness equipment that the company can carry.
In the field of logistics, there is a "last mile" problem. As for home fitness, I think there is a "last 1 meter" problem.
For all home fitness products, it is not difficult for users to place orders on e-commerce or other channels. The difficult thing is how to get users to start the products after they buy them home. Before users buy, brands actually have countless ways to reach users. As long as the money is enough, they can reach users countless times. But after the user purchases, the brand is actually powerless to reach the user.
So there is dust among treadmill buyers, and ashes among bicycle buyers.
From the perspective of the product designer, what should be considered is whether it is possible to reach the user again after the product arrives home.
I think that good course product managers can use smart hardware platforms to spend their courses. There are too many possibilities for these hardware to carry them.
I have imagined many times how to move my content to home smart hardware, and how to make amazing action details correction and training optimization.
Home fitness must be a very important and valuable track, but the logic of this track has just begun to be verified.
Four, buy it or not?
Finally, this product is not worth buying. I think users who meet the following conditions can consider:
1. I originally planned to buy a home fitness product, but I don't know whether I should buy a treadmill, a bicycle or a rowing machine. Then you can consider this product.
2. The family area is greater than 80 square meters, and there is more than 5 square meters of space for mirror movement.
3. Relatively high income, not bad money, and have a certain pursuit of quality of life.
If the above conditions are not met, it is basically not the target customer of this product. Outdoor running, gym fitness is more suitable for you.
If the above conditions are met, I think you can buy directly.
"What kind of experience is it to move the gym to home?" "Real 1V1, mirror teaching is more professional". These attractive advertising slogans are derived from a new type of smart product that has become popular recently-fitness mirror .
Under the guidance of the AI coach in the fitness mirror, if the action is not in place or done wrong, the mirror will have error correction prompts. In addition, AI motion capture, self-developed courses, and customized fitness programs have all become selling points of such products. However, the prices of smart fitness mirror products currently on the market are not low. The reporter found that the price ranges from more than 2,000 yuan to more than 8,000 yuan on the e-commerce platform. But behind the high prices, there are still 3,000 fitness mirrors sold in a single day.
Compared with offline gyms that were slightly deserted in the past year, the hot sales of home fitness smart products such as fitness mirrors and sports somatosensory games have not only carried more people's fitness enthusiasm, but also made people foresee a kind of fitness industry. New business form-Home Cloud Fitness.
Although it lacks the exercise atmosphere of group fitness, products such as fitness mirrors do create a more private, safe and highly personalized fitness space for consumers. Compared with going to the gym, fitness can be achieved by opening the mobile APP or the aforementioned mirror. The simple and flexible features also win the favor of more fitness enthusiasts for the form of home fitness.
From cloud viewing, cloud tourism to today's cloud fitness, many life scenes we are familiar with seem to have undergone technical reshaping in the context of the Internet. This may be affected by the epidemic, but in fact it is also a sign and an inevitable trend under the gradual maturity of technological development. Many changes in the intelligent age are directed towards making people's lives more convenient. Technology is reshaping people's daily life, and people's constantly updated needs are also forcing the development of technology.
However, many people think that this may be a new round of IQ tax. In their view, the high-priced fitness mirrors cannot urge people to quit inertia like real coaches. They are likely to be piled up in the corner after a few days like treadmills and fitness rings. Some people still have a sense of distrust of the current AI technology, worrying that the error correction function is relatively tasteless.
Whether the expensive fitness mirror is an IQ tax or the next new frontier, more effects will have to be verified by time. But one thing that cannot be ignored is that behind its huge consumption data, more and more people are paying attention to and demanding fitness. This is in line with the current trend of national fitness, and it is also worthy of advocacy.
According to the 2021 Mass Fitness Behavior and Consumption Research Report, the average annual total consumption of mass fitness in 2021 is 5670 yuan, an increase of 35% compared to 2020. It is worth mentioning that 89% of respondents believe that smart sports and fitness are necessary. The specific requirements for the intelligence of fitness equipment fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory are mainly "software + content + diet + health" management, presenting a trend of integrated product and service development. A total of 47% of respondents expect fitness equipment to be equipped with fitness guidance, smart fitness, and smart health management functions.
Based on this, it can also be seen that smart fitness products still have very broad development prospects, and cloud fitness that matches them is also a valuable and important existence, but more exploration and attempts about it have just begun.
Just like that piece of fitness mirror that is not cheap, if you want to gain market and consumer recognition, behind the high price, there must be a use value that can compete with it. To maintain this value requires not only the blessing of technology, but also the supervision of the market.
Of course, for consumer groups, they still have to choose a fitness method that suits them wisely. Compared with various products, being able to persist day after day is the greatest value of fitness.
What is the hottest outlet in 2021? Smart fitness will definitely be one of the answers, and this track is widely regarded as a platinum track worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In the past two months alone, three related companies such as FITURE fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory, Aidong Fitness, and Super Gorilla have completed financing of more than 100 million yuan, and the total amount of financing in the first half of the year exceeded 2 billion yuan. Among them, FITURE, which has set an industry record as the "fastest unicorn", attracts the most attention. They are also known as the originator of the domestic fitness mirror boom.
It is understood that, including FITURE, the smart fitness field has gathered more than 500 manufacturers that have launched or will soon launch smart fitness terminals, and more than 10 new fitness mirrors were released in May alone. In addition to these hundreds of players who want to compete on the smart fitness track, giant companies including Huawei, Samsung, Haier, etc. have also entered the game. A "Hundred Mirrors War" seems to be a foregone conclusion.
Integration ability is the key to the success or failure of manufacturers fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory in the "Hundred Mirrors War"
The boiling of the smart fitness track is not only driven by capital power, but also inseparable from the upsurge of national fitness. According to the "2020 China Fitness Industry Data Report", the number of fitness users in my country has exceeded 70 million. Among them, does the increase brought by home fitness play a relevant and important role? The sales of fitness mirrors, treadmills and other fitness hardware driven by the home economy have played a positive role in the popularization of national fitness. Data shows that the incremental users in the past year accounted for as much as 60% of the users who intend to continue to exercise. Some industry analysts predict that, driven by new technologies and new demands, China's sports and fitness industry will exceed a market size of 200 billion yuan in 2022, a 14.3% increase compared to 2020.
In the face of such a large market dividend, it is no surprise that the smart fitness track is unanimously optimistic, and all walks of life have also come up with their own solutions. If we specifically screen more than 500 smart fitness terminal companies, we can find that some people have chosen a new form of product represented by fitness mirrors along the path of FITURE, and some people have chosen to implant smart fitness functions such as TV, Among the existing categories of hardware such as set-top boxes, there are still people who are willing to add more professional fitness content and user service ecological construction on the basis of hardware products...It can be said that on the eve of the fitness industry taking off with the help of science and technology, this "Hundred Mirrors War" "In fact, it is a battle of routes.
In this regard, some people in the industry believe that whether it is a fitness mirror or a smart screen, the key to winning the market is to seize another wave of growth brought about by the new scene of smart fitness. In the new scene represented by the home, only by taking the lead in defining the "smart terminal" and making the best product experience around the user's needs for fitness content and interaction, can it attract the most users and become this "Hundred Mirrors War" The ultimate winner.
Precisely because it realizes that the key to market competition will be how to satisfy users' experience demands for fitness, FITURE fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory has established a new model of "hardware + content + service + AI" from the beginning. According to reports, the FITURE team has applied the AI technology of autonomous driving and drones to the smart fitness mirror, and independently developed the "FITURE Motion Engine" intelligent motion tracking system, so that the FITURE magic mirror can have L4 level of intelligence. Interaction level. In addition, coupled with the professional team's annual output of 5,000 courses of fitness content and personalized and customized user services, FITURE provides users with a complete interactive content service solution.
From this perspective, the integrated solution capabilities brought by the original model constitute the competitive moat of FITURE, especially the interactive content has a generation gap advantage compared with competing products. This is why even though FITURE launched the magic mirror product only half a year ago, it can quickly gain recognition from users and capital, and become the "fastest unicorn" on the smart fitness track, and it is also the first smart fitness mirror with large-scale users. Vendor. In addition, FITURE is actively expanding its fitness content library and opening up new scenarios through cross-industry cooperation, striving to continuously enrich the user experience. Public information shows that FITURE has successively launched relevant cooperation with WeWork, Rosewood, Weilai Automobile, etc., and well-known brands such as PURE, NEIWAI inside and outside, Disante, Puli Hotel, IHG have recently become their partners.
Smart fitness needs to be fully implemented in the landing scene to achieve popularization
It is understood that FITURE fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory focuses on content and scenes in cross-border cooperation. In this regard, Zhang Yuansheng, the co-founder and president of FITURE, once introduced in an interview that through these cross-border brand cooperation, FITURE's goal is to enable the fitness content library to cover the different needs of people of all ages, and enable the FITURE magic mirror to be integrated into In all aspects of users' lives, whether at home, at work, on business trips, or entertainment, they can get interactive content fitness experience anytime, anywhere, so that users can have a healthier and higher quality lifestyle.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, in recent years, the national fitness consumption demand has been escalating. At the same time, the problem of user needs that cannot be fully satisfied by the existing fitness model has become increasingly prominent. Recently, an editorial in the "People's Daily" also pointed out that "the existing problems at this stage have affected the healthy development of the entire industry." In this regard, Zhang Yuansheng believes that the fitness industry in China has gradually separated from the traditional service industry and is in a stage of urgent change. Traditional fitness service formats and models need to break through the previous "venue thinking", evolve towards intelligence and fragmentation, and achieve further popularization through new landing scenarios such as home, business and retail.
It is precisely because of insights into these new development trends in the fitness industry fitness mirror factory that as early as the beginning of its establishment in 2019, the founding team of FITURE decided to create an intelligent fitness terminal with the ultimate experience in a new scenario. This may be why, from the very beginning, FITURE fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory chose to be different from the mainstream thinking, and built a fitness service ecology around its smart terminal "FITURE Mirror". Therefore, on the one hand, FITURE fitness mirror factory and gym mirror factory continues to pull the scene through cross-border cooperation with NIO, NEIWAI inside and outside, Disante, The Puli Hotel, IHG, etc. Children's courses cooperated with ballet will be launched in the future with Tai Chi Zen, CASTER and other cooperative courses in order to continuously enrich the categories of fitness content.
From the perspective of the entire industry, many subsequent smart fitness companies and fitness mirror factory are currently trying to develop scenarios. In addition to traditional homes and gyms, hotels, real estate, communities, and office spaces have basically become new smart fitness mirror scenes. choose. It is not difficult to see that although FITURE still has an "intergenerational gap" in terms of technology and content, there is actually a consensus in the thinking of various manufacturers-that is, the innovation and connection of the scene will help the popularization of fitness mirror products and even smart fitness. , And ultimately promote the continued expansion of the entire market.
Although smart fitness mirrors priced at thousands of yuan have not been quickly accepted by the public, with these trendsetters led by FITURE fitness mirror factory, they continue to improve the product experience of smart terminals and continue to promote the innovation of landing scenes. The billions of dividends will eventually be realized. In this budding emerging market, as to whether FITURE fitness mirror factorycan finally be crowned king as a leader, there is still another scene of the midfield battle, and it needs to be handed over to time.
