Tech firm FORTË has launched a subscription-based streaming platform, offering live and on-demand boutique fitness classes anytime and anywhere.
Classes are broadcast by using technology that FORTË has developed and installed in their partner studios, enabling workouts to be shared worldwide.
After a class is streamed live, it goes into an on-demand database. The platform gives subscribers access to a library of content from boutique studios via their smartphone, laptop, iPad or television.
FORTË, headquartered in New York, USA, is partnering US studios Exhale, Aerospace High Performance Center, RIPPED Fitness, Flex Studios, Centered City Yoga, Body Space Fitness and Studio 26 among others. It plans to partner studios from other countries within the next six months.
Users pay a monthly or annual subscription fee to FORTË, which then revenue share to its partners. Studios are paid out each month based on the amount of minutes their classes are streamed. A monthly subscription costs $39 (£31; €37), with an annual charge of $288 (£231; €273). For a limited period an annual subscription will be $99 (£79; €94).
FORTË has targeted 50,000 new subscriptions by winter 2018 and already has non-US subscribers in England, Albania, Turkey, and Kosovo.
The platform offers workouts lasting anything from 5 minutes to more than 90 minutes. Content includes yoga, barre, boxing, pilates, interval training, jump rope workouts, HIIT (high intensity interval training), mobility exercises, TRX, kettlebell and dumbbell sessions, and meditation classes.
Lauren Foundos, FORTË co-founder and chief executive, said: “We are excited to revolutionise the fitness experience by empowering leaders in the boutique fitness industry to foster their communities and change the way that people engage in physical activity. We are giving people access to the hottest studio trends, delivering that content to our users live, raw, and unedited.
“It becomes a fully immersive, social, data-driven, real-time, and unparalleled interactive experience. We are champions of wellness; and we have set out to make people excited to work out, and ultimately stronger, happier, and healthier.”
FORTË also enables users both in-studio and remotely to sync wearables to the platform, which allows them to track their performance in real time on live leaderboards, as well as monitor their personal and overall achievements.
The company's co-founder and chief operating officer, Michael Yu, said: “Interactive technologies such as streaming, 360 videos, 3D, and the Internet of Things are all advancing at warp speed. We are proud to have built a scalable and extensible platform that brings these evolving technologies to fitness studios, allowing instructors to connect with people around the world in new and exciting ways.”
