A new connected fitness device is in town. Its name is Growl. Inspired by hardware companies like Peloton and Tonal, Growl creates boxing bags that attach to the walls of your home. Users can start an immersive, gamified boxing class from the comfort of their own home.
The team also seems to be taking inspiration from boxing classes like Brooklyn Fitboxing. We're just looking at the opportunity to offer users a similarly intense fitness experience without having to go to a studio and sweat it out in groups.
“The real purpose of this product is to transform the traditional punching bag, which hasn't evolved in over 3,000 years. We want to modify it in several ways to turn it into a fitness coach,” co-founder and CEO Leo Desremeaux told TechCrunch.
Growl is scheduled to start accepting pre-orders in April 2025, so there's still a long way to go. It will then take another year for the first units to be delivered to customers.
On the hardware side, Growl is divided into two main parts. It has a frame designed to be fixed to the wall with screws. Next, attach the boxing bag components to the frame. Most of the sensing intelligence is within the frame. The boxing bag itself is mainly made of foam and artificial leather, and has five or six accelerometers inside to detect things like punch force.
The frame contains a 4K projector, which is a key component of the device. You can project a human-sized coach onto your boxing bag or project various metrics onto your wall. Growl also uses projectors for the gaming experience (think Tap Tap Revenge on the boxing bag).
Using a projector is a smart approach since you're not drilling holes into your display. That means you can't break the display.
“That's the beauty of our technology: We primarily use light, but we never destroy light,” Desremeaux said.
On each side of the frame, there is a speaker and two cameras with infrared sensors. There's also an additional camera and some time-of-flight sensors near the top of the frame.
Cameras and sensors are used to calculate the impact zone and posture of the punch. An accelerometer on the back of the boxing bag is used to calculate the strength of your punches.
“A core feature of our product is recreating the physical presence of a one-on-one coach, as if they were physically with you,” Desrumaux says.
The company is working with several coaches to create a content library for launch day. However, note that you are not limited to boxing, as yoga, Pilates and strength training classes are also held.
Image credit: Growl
Growl plans to price its devices in the same range as Tonal devices. List price will be around $4,500, but most customers will likely choose the monthly payment finance option. There will also be subscription plans to access new content. The startup believes that the total cost should not exceed the cost of a premium gym membership.
The Growl team is well aware that the connected fitness industry is crowded these days. However, most of these companies focus on cycling, strength training, and rowing. And those companies are facing growing pains.
“The worst thing that happened to Peloton was the coronavirus pandemic,” Desremeaux suggested. “If you look at Peloton, at the time of its IPO in September 2019, months before COVID-19, they had 800,000 households in the U.S., were growing 100% annually, and had a profit of 50%.Hardware Our profit margin is 60%, our software profit margin is 60%, and our EBITDA is 0%, so we're essentially breaking even.”
During the lockdown period, Peloton launched several new products and invested a lot of money. “And in the end, COVID-19 was just a brief interlude. The market is back on its original growth trajectory,” he added.
Now, after a difficult reality check, Peloton appears to have turned the corner. That's why Desrumaux believes connected fitness remains an interesting industry, as long as you maintain financial discipline. This is his goal with Growl.
The company, which is based in Austin, Texas and Paris, France, has Sam Bowen, former vice president of hardware engineering at Amazon, Peloton and Tonal, as an advisor. The startup has raised $4.75 million in seed funding from various business angels including Skip Capital, Kima Ventures, Teamact Ventures, and former UFC heavyweight champion Cyril Gane.