Excy co-founder and CEO Michele Mehl joins Talking Business Now host Kelly Scanlon to share the story behind her company's 2014 launch and the lessons she's learned as she's steered it into a national brand.
The Seattle-based startup develops, manufactures, and sells portable, total-body exercise bikes. Mehl's mission is to eliminate barriers to people getting enough exercise—health conditions, injuries, and lack of time and space—so people can conveniently connect exercise to the circumstances of their everyday lives. The 14-pound bikes provide cardio, strength training, and full-body physical therapy cycling. The company also offers a mobile coaching application.
Excy (short for "exercise cycling") grew out of Mehl's own life circumstances, more specifically her personal fitness woes, a challenging work schedule as the owner of a PR company that helped launch brands such as Zulily and OfferUp into market leaders, and a family history of heart disease. As she thought about how to create a better, more convenient way to exercise for a healthier quality of life, she recruited her co-founder, Mike Rector, to begin prototyping a portable stationary exercise bike, one that offered the same quality of exercises people could find at a gym or spin class but that was portable enough to use anywhere.
An injury Mehl suffered shortly before product launch, though unfortunate, proved to be timely. Her badly broken leg required a rod, screws, and a plate, and resulted in a blood clot. Facing surgeries, months of wearing a boot, and a crooked leg for the rest of her life, the duo used the injury as inspiration to innovate the bike's design and create a product that has become essential to rehab patients and people with diseases and disabilities that keep them from accessing traditional exercise equipment and routines.
Today, the multimillion-dollar company employs dozens of associates and has been featured in Inc., MSNBC, The Huffington Post, the Sacramento Bee, the Seattle Times and several other regional and national media outlets.
Tune in to find out:
How to use Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms to glean important market data, not just funds.
Why she abandoned an effort to raise millions of dollars in venture capital and focused instead on an intentional, steady growth trajectory focused on her customers.
How she's used content marketing, especially video, as an effective tool to connect with customers and grow sales—and why content marketing requires a longtail approach.
Why being "all in" on the company doesn't mean compromising the people and things she values most.
The advantages of creating a "universal" product design.
Why inclusiveness has been key to Excy's success.
WHAT MICHELE MEHL IS TALKING BUSINESS NOW ABOUT
Connection, Not Perfection - listen in near the end of the episode to find out why she thinks this is so important.
CONNECT WITH MICHELE MEHL
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/excyfit
Twitter: https://twitter.com/excyfit
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelemehlexcy
RESOURCES
Episode Transcript: https://interrobangsolutions.com/exercise-bike-builds-strong-bodies-strong-business/
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