Spa/Salon Software Giant Zenoti Eyes the Gym Industry

Zenoti believes multi-location gym brands are currently underserved when it comes to software. The Washington-based provider wants to change that

Zenoti, a software platform powering some of the biggest brands in the spa, salon, and medspa sectors, is making a serious push into the fitness industry, targeting multi-location gym brands with what it says is a superior product.

The Bellevue, Washington-based company, whose platform is used by over 30,000 businesses including brands like Waxing the City and Massage Heights, believes gym brands are underserved when it comes to quality software solutions.

“The fitness industry is far underserved in terms of software,” said Zenoti co-founder and CEO Sudheer Koneru, who spoke with Athletech News during Zenoti’s annual Innergize Summit , held earlier this week in Las Vegas.

Zenoti is just getting started in fitness, but its clients already include CorePower Yoga and exhale in New York. Additionally, Planet Fitness has recently started to deploy Zenoti at its international locations .

As it pushes further into the fitness space, Zenoti will initially target large gym brands with multiple locations, where it believes its software can make the biggest difference.

“The largest brands and the smallest brands in fitness use the same software,” Koneru says, noting that’s not ideal because larger gyms have unique needs.

“There’s no concept of a company that only works with large players that designs their product for (those) enterprises,” he adds. “At Zenoti, we’re about brands that have multiple (locations). As we go into fitness space, they’re suddenly going to wake up and say, ‘Oh, wow, it’s so easy to run a business if you’re running it with Zenoti.’”

Fitness Push a Long Time in the Making

Zenoti’s entry into the fitness space represents something of a full-circle moment for the software brand, which was founded in 2010 by a group including Koneru, a former Microsoft exec, and his brother, Dheeraj Koneru, who serves as chief revenue officer.

The Konerus were gym owners before they became tech founders, growing a chain of spas and fitness centers in Seattle before they sold those businesses in the 2000s.

While Sudheer and Dheeraj initially wanted to create a software solution for the fitness industry, they started with spas first, eventually expanding into the salon/barbershop space and then medspas. After becoming a dominant player in those sectors, Zenoti is now ready to do the same in fitness.

The Zenoti Difference for Gyms

Dheeraj Koneru tells ATN that current fitness software providers don’t do enough to help gym brands grow their businesses, whether that’s basic things like offering fully automated billing or more complex operations like leveraging AI to turbocharge member acquisition and retention.

“What I’ve noticed in the fitness industry is that a lot of the businesses have gotten a little complacent. They don’t expect much from their vendor anymore. They don’t even call it a software solution to run their business, they call it a member-management solution,” Dheeraj says. “I think we have to help people reset their expectations of their vendors to say, ‘You’re going to support me in whatever I need.’”

Dheeraj points to a few foundational areas where current gym software is generally lacking, and where he says Zenoti does things better.

First, he says some platforms don’t do enough on the billing front to ensure things are running efficiently. This includes verifying bank account information before it’s time to collect membership dues.

“Our systems can actually validate bank accounts to make sure there’s enough funds in the bank account before we draw the money out,” he notes. “It sounds so basic, but other systems don’t do it.

Second, customer-engagement tools are also lacking in modern gym software, Dheeraj argues.

Zenoti offers tools like HyperConnect , which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help brands improve and extend the front-desk experience. HyperConnect is an AI-driven, integrated phone system that can answer frequently asked questions, transfer calls, and tend to other front-of-house tasks without human intervention.

“I think a lot of (gym) businesses have kind of given up on a software vendor solving the consumer experience for them,” Dheeraj says.

Data is also a key differentiator: Zenoti is building AI tools that help gyms predict when certain members are more likely to cancel their membership.

“It’s not just showing them, here are your collections, here’s your churn rate, memberships, etc., but going deeper to say, ‘If people are canceling, why are they canceling? What profile of customers is canceling? Can I predict for you, using AI, which members are most likely to cancel next so that you can prevent that from happening?'”

Targeting Multi-Location Gym Brands

As it begins its fitness push, Zenoti is confident it can convince enough gym brands to switch software providers.

Zenoti’s sales teams are initially targeting large gym chains and mid-size brands with up to 20 locations, seeing the biggest competitive edge in the multi-location space.

“The difference between our platform and others is stark,” Dheeraj says. “I can’t imagine a gym actually saying they want to switch solutions and choosing anyone but us. They may retain their current solution, but if they decide to change, I’d find it very hard to believe they’d choose anybody else.”

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