← Pilates Business Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sarah Glanfield
If you've been in the Pilates world for any length of time, you've probably heard of Gratz Pilates. The name goes hand in hand with Classical Pilates. It's what I learned to teach on. And if you're a classically trained teacher, you probably know the feel of a Graz reformer. Today, I've got a very special guest on the show. John is one of the new owners of Graz Pilates. He and his wife Elizabeth purchased Graz Pilates last year and his background might surprise you, he spent years leading some of the biggest companies in gaming and tech. But what's really interesting is that he didn't just acquire Graz as a business decision. He fell in love with Classical Pilates himself, experiencing firsthand the impact of the method, and decided to fully immerse himself in this world by taking on the stewardship of one of the most respected names in Pilates. So today we're diving into his journey, why he's so passionate about Classical Pilates and what's next for Graz. Well, hi there, I'm Sarah Glanfield. I'm a business and marketing strategist just for boutique fitness studio owners like you. If you're ready to be inspired and make a bigger impact, you're in the right place. All you need are a few key strategies, the right mindset, and some support along the way. Join me as I share the real life insights that will help you grow a sustainable and profitable studio. This is the Pilates Business Podcast. Welcome back to the Pilates Business Podcast. I'm Sarah and thank you so much for joining me today. I'm here with John Riccatello, owner of Gratz Pilates. He and his wife Elizabeth purchased Graz last year and I have been desperate to get John on the show to talk a little bit more and share with us what and why what Graz has been up to and why he purchased the company last year. So, John, welcome, welcome, welcome. It's been a pleasure to get to know you over the last few months.
- [02:09]
John Riccatello
Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [02:11]
Sarah Glanfield
7 and it's been fantastic. As someone who has been part of the Graz community since I first started teaching and actually even doing Pilates way back in 2006, 2007 in New York City. Graz is all I've really worked on throughout the years and so it's been great to watch and firsthand as you've really sort of taken the reins of the company and also see a lot of the studio owners that I work with get really excited about the new energy and commitment to the communities. And I'm sure that it has kept you busy this last few months.
- [02:45]
John Riccatello
I would say that that's very true. Elizabeth and I acquired grads last June. You know, we, we've been putting in, this is crazy to say, 16 hour weeks trying to get grots where we want to be. It's amazing. Sometimes I'm trying to leave the office at 6:30 or 7 and Elizabeth's downstairs packing parts. So we do everything from, you know, figuring out where our factory should be to dealing with customer for packing parts and everything in between. But we're really working hard for the classical Pilates community and that's why we're here. And we both love it.
- [03:17]
Sarah Glanfield
That's great. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how you and when you first discovered classical Pilates and what really kind of drew you in to that method?
- [03:26]
John Riccatello
Well, without carbon dating myself, it goes back decades. You know, mine, mine is, I think, a pretty common store among people with Martech Pilates. I have one of those ski accidents that if you put on television, you'd wonder if we survived. And I did. But I'm a big skier and I still ski a lot. And what happened was that I took a bowel tumble and ended up cracking a couple low vertebrae, two alturated herniating ideals. And while I recovered, you know, from that, okay, in a very minor surgical operation, I had sciatica so bad I could barely finish a grocery shop. So it was painful and difficult when I tried a number of things to address it, including taking advice from a great surgeon on, you know, what they could do for me with a very aggressive surgery. And they called me that. They weren't sure that was actually going to work. The surgeon, though, was smart enough to suggest that I could get my course strong enough, perhaps that would address the issue. And so I started searching for the right things. I eventually met. I did try Pilates before. I met a woman named Alicia Goyal in San Francisco. Now Alicia Stone. She's married, but she was my first classical instructor. And while I was painful for the first several sessions, I quickly became addicted. This is nearly two decades ago, and at times I was training more than seven days a week. It doesn't, I'd have a whole session on a Saturday or Sunday. And for me, from barely being able to walk for grocery shopping, within a couple of years, I ran my first marathon. So I'm not much of a runner. So that's a very big detail. And so I kind of did it to prove that I could. But I've been practicing classical learnings consistently since then. I had a break a little bit during COVID My instructor left San Francisco, moved to Seattle. I couldn't get anybody face to face. And so it was a bit of a off period for me. I tried a number of different things, but I'm back to training regularly at least three days a week. Believe it or not, the thing that gets in the way of training more than three days a week is company. Because it's very consuming for Elizabeth and I. We. We're just super busy with that, but. So that's what we're storying. And what it's worth. It's surprising. You'll imagine that following an injury like that, it wasn't the doctors that fixed me. It was Pilates that fixed me. It made. It may be stronger than it was before. And I'm wild dedicated to Pilates being a central part of my life.
- [06:12]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, yeah. Welcome to the club. I think everyone listening is. Yeah, it is. It is amazing to hear stories like yours and how powerful this movement practice really is. And sometimes I think as teachers, we often forget the impact of this work. And so I'm glad you shared your story because it does begin a journey of. For so many. Of so much more than just what happens in the studio on the equipment. So, yeah, for sure. Thank you for sharing that. So you didn't just fall in love with classical Pilates, so you went all in and bought the company that builds the equipment. So what was it that sort of led you to that point and make that decision? Can you share a little bit about that?
- [07:06]
John Riccatello
One of the things that I've done, you know, if I discovered glass and Pilates for me, was build home studio. I'm lucky enough to have enough space to have a gym, and my gym, you know, going back for a very long time looks pretty much like a grad show. It's what I originally learned on, fell in love with. While I've traveled the world and trained on virtually every of every Pilates manufacturer's apparatus, the feel is different. The. The sense of, for me, comfort, the ability to get deep into my core. There's something about Gratz apparatus that I think, and I can probably define it for if you like it, but I think just works better for a true practitioner of Joseph Pilates, classical Pilates, getting deep into the core, the way we want to move began talking about. And so Elizabeth and I found ourselves with a new home and rebuilding a studio back in 2022. And we put in an order for essentially the whole complement of grout separatists. And we were patiently waiting for it. They told us it'd be 40 weeks, which, okay, that's too long, but we'll wait at 40 weeks. We ever got back to us and we sounded, where's our Pontius apparatus? And they said it'd be 20 more weeks. At 60 weeks, we reset again. And they said they weren't sure where it was going to come, you know, for a number of machinations and a few phone calls. And we were on the East Coast. Anyway, we ended up visiting with Ben owner David Rosencrantz and his team at the factory in Philadelphia, in a way sort of looking for our work. What I could see was something both magical and difficult. The, the magic was the company has. Is still making the apparatus pretty much exactly as they did when they started building grass apparatus. The same durable construction, the same great design, the same great engineering. But so many of the other things in the business weren't working. They couldn't produce enough. They didn't have strong enough relationships with their vendors. They didn't. And apparently miserable customer support team and no tools, had no ERP system. It was a difficult situation. A company that wasn't long for this world. So Aliza and I went, you know, gave some serious thought and we thought, we both love classical flies in a way that I think many of your listeners would. But it's, it's, it's really important to them. And we have a deep affection for Roths. And we thought, we can't let this company fail. We stepped in and became the new owners last June. I'd say I thought it might be a little easier than it's turned out to be, but so far it's been super challenging for both of us. Rewarding for both of us. But really the point was a simple one. We love classical Pilates. We love Brach Pilates Gratz apparatus. And we wanted this company to thrive and serve the classical instructors around the world in the way they should, not the way they had been. And so it was not a dollar as ROI equation. Although we're not looking forward to take a little financial bath on this, although we have some. The, the principal point was we want to return Grox to be better than it's ever been before for the plotties community. So that's what we're after. It's important to us. It's personal tools.
- [10:40]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, it sounds like it's really meaningful and personal to you. And you know, Graz is a company that's you know, kind of rich in the history of the classical Pilates world. And so it's wonderful to hear that you have got such a, you know, a deeper purpose and meaning to being at the helm and leading it forward. And I know one of the things that, you know, Graz has really focused on in the past is that craftsmanship, is that quality. Can you talk a little bit about how you continue to maintain that in as you're, you know, evolving the company in all the different ways that you are today?
- [11:20]
John Riccatello
So I would actually say our ambition is not only to maintain it, but to improve it. So while so many things weren't going well for graphs when, when we interfaced with the company and fired up acquiring it, one of the things that was great is looking back over history, the company never really got connected to what I would call value engineering. And what I mean by that is company after company that if you look at American manufacturing or if you look at what you find in the food aisle of your grocery stores, it seems like they packaged and repackaged and tried to figure out how to take 5% of one part of it or make the canopy on a Cadillac just a little bit lighter because, you know, why not? You can save $10 per apparatus. There's a certain sophistication in doing that. Glax had none of that sophistication. And so one of the amusing parts of it is, while I would say critically, it very much ran like a 1960s wood or metal shop, but it also meant they never embraced or I would describe as sort of modern process of making gross margins go up. And so it probably contributed in part to their bad state. But they make a very expensive to manufacture set of apparatus. That's the good part. They never screwed with the design. They also can't tell you from an engineering perspective why the designs are as good as they or what the tolerances should be. And I find, for example, the batch manufacturer that we get from our spring suppliers, there's too much variance from one set of springs to another. And it's a function of the manufacturing process. And we can improve on that and tighten it down so that there's a more consistent delivery for our customers that we've been able to achieve in the cloud or the measurement on the inside of reformer edge to edge is 22 and a half inches. No one ever bothered to say what's reasonable to all is there with an 8 inch is a 16th image is a 32nd of an inch. Now, we had a wonderful head of engineer ops Working exactly that issue right now. So there's the variances are tighter, the delivery is better and then when we can find ways to improve something, we're well. And so whenever we're going to go through evaluation error, we're going to go through quality engineering to keep looking for opportunities to tighten something down to improve its performance. Now, historically, people use B operates for decades. I know, you know, I train three days a week with Amy Berger in, in Philadelphia and she's trading on equipment that she bought secondhand that is close to 30 years old. It's still great stuff, but it doesn't mean there aren't opportunities to tweak on the positive. And so we're going to continue to do that.
- [14:12]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, my reformer that I have sitting just outside this room here is I've had for over 10 years and it's had, it's used multiple times a week. So yes, it is equipment that stands the test of time. And it sounds like you're balancing, you know, staying true to the designs and, you know, the, what makes the Graz so graz and also innovating for, you know, what today's world can offer to help maintain that for the foreseeable future. So it's great to hear. So why don't you give us a quick update on, you know, you know, you've been at the helm now for, you know, a few months and tell us a little bit about what you know, you've, what people, what people might have see as changed in that time, improvements you've made, things that you've done to perhaps, perhaps share what a little bit about that.
- [15:06]
John Riccatello
The first thing that we wanted to tackle was actually the hurdle that caused us to try to acquire a company to begin with, which was lead times. You go back to June of last year, June 24th, when we completed the transaction. Glasswood's averaging about 18 months for delivery. But it was a tough situation because they couldn't deliver any faster than orders were coming in. And so what was happening was it was like a perpetual 18 months and if anything ever went wrong, it was longer. And so, you know, personally, I think that's, I know, patently ridiculous. That's just longer than anyone should have to wait. Craftsmanship is one thing, but we weren't so slow because of craftsmanship. We were so slow because we didn't have enough space to manufacture, because we didn't have high quality craftspeople in business, because we weren't effectively paying our suppliers on time. So when we did need friends, we were last in line to get them. And so we came in and first I would have got current with suppliers and so they would deliver for us and then net them and talk them through what we needed. We also began hiring. One of the problems with hiring prior to our arrival was that we didn't offer bouncing. So it was an hourly wage for people on the bathroom floor. But there was no health or vision or medical or any of that stuff. And see, it was very hard to recruit good people because good people have choice. And within about seven or eight weeks of acquiring the company, we put a great health program together. Everything from, you know, medical and vision to disability and all the things you want if you're a company. And then enabled us to start recruiting. And so we slightly more than tripled the size of our team since June of last year. And we brought in leadership in areas we've never had leadership before, like operations and engineering and engineer operation, that type of thing, which allows us to scale intelligently and do things better on the factory floor. What that's resulted in, you know, as I trip like lots of crafts, you know, on the woods, wood, metal shop, upholstery, assembly, finishing, and slightly more than actually almost 4x production recently. 3. But it's up from that. And what that's enabled us to was to start to deliver a lot faster. Now what's amusing is we've done very, very, very little on marketing to sort of drive demand almost not since the acquisition made our website a little bit better and we've done some smart rings on SEO on the web things, but we're not spending a lot of money on it. And the community's responder, so the orders are up about 3x as well, which makes chasing that faster lead time weirdly harder than it otherwise would be. But we still brought lead times from 18 on the largest apparatus for 6 and for the smaller apparatus for 3 months. And our ambition you know, later this year is to bring everything in under three, which I think is reasonable, you know, for someone to plan. It does take several weeks to actually build these things. If you continue with the high craft orientation the company has, and we are going to continue with that. It's been rewarding. But then when you climb up the volumes and the orders come in faster, there's so many things that we're having to chase and we're not yet organized around the systems we need to support our customers in the ways that we truly want to. We have a much better customer service team than we used to have and they're delightful and knowledgeable. And helpful, but they're also bearing and we're in the process now of implementing our first ERP systems and customer relationship management systems so that we move beyond post it notes for getting back their customers, which are a little hard to track, to having good systematized data to be able to support our customers the way they deserve.
- [19:22]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have to say congratulations first of all on, you know, that's a huge accomplishment to bring down that lead time so significantly. And I know, I hear firsthand how thrilled studio owners are and teachers are when they discover that actually it's not going to take many, you know, years to get their equipment. And so I really appreciate, I know it's been a lot of work and you've made, you know, a lot of changes in a short period of time. Quite some. Quite radical bringing tripling your workforce is a big deal. Right. And so a lot of, a lot of, a lot of things.
- [19:59]
John Riccatello
Well, it's great to have a partner like Elizabeth. She's. She drives so much of it. She's for example, the key driver, an important thing, whether it's the health side, health insurance side or grinding or shipping and many other things on the factory floor. She's as recognized down there as any other people that are alert on the factory floor.
- [20:20]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah. Amazing. You make a good team for sure.
- [20:24]
John Riccatello
We work hard at it.
- [20:25]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, you've obviously got some things that you're still, you have some aspirations still that you've yet to achieve in terms of some of the things that you would love to see Graz kind of evolve towards. Can you tell us a little bit more about your kind of the vision that you have for Graz, you know, beyond those aspirations and goals that you've set so far?
- [20:54]
John Riccatello
Sure. I mean, I think, you know, I'll not make this a half an hour answer because it clearly be. But you know, one of the things that I care deeply about is. We care deeply about is the success of the Classicalizer instructor. In particular those that own. It's a tough business out there and I'm glad, Darren, for what you do to advise this committee because they give me helpful advice. One of the things we did recently or I wrote the most recent blog on why Classical and I won't sort of walk through that. You can read it in 10 minutes. It's on our blog. But it talks a lot about why and I tried to bring down the story into something you could encapsulate in a few minutes. Talking to someone versus reading an entire book which so Many have already done. And why that's important is I think it's a message in there that I think a lot of people could use to their own benefit on their own websites. People understand why classical and help people trade up from contemporary Pilates or other forms of exercise they're doing. So part of it is about really driving home the message that classical Pilates is truly special. And the one thing I think we hit on hard and the glob with not just what people already know but just triple emphasizing just how important the bond is between the student and the teacher. That hands on connection to a teacher and the opportunity to pursue the mastery of Pilates over years or decade is truly special. So that's one thing that we get Our vision is really about making sure that that's underscored globally in ways that I don't think it has been. And in the absence of messages like that perhaps has left us wheeling a little bit with the onslaught of contemporary and other things in a political market. Another part of this is Wood river keep solving problems like right now when most customers outside the United States order from grass. It's a miserable situation order magnitude of goods from almost anybody in the United States. A customer in France we might ship it to a seaport or an airport. They can clear customs. There's all sorts of technical forms they have to fill out to get it through custom. We typically organize our own shipping from the port to their studios. We want to be able to establish while operations in most of the major markets we support they can order it and it shows up in their scpio and they don't think about it. And so we're working very hard on that side of the operation. Another thing that we want to build out is a much better wholesale support. So they can if they need reupholstery or they they need support or they need maintenance that that can be afforded to them very quickly and easily. Now we partner with great firms like in Apply Crow Maintenance and others to do that. But the connection is still difficult and it's still unclear for most studios around the world how they would get what they need. And so part of what we want to do is just make those things better and simpler so that they don't have to worry about my business to set up their. We just pop them, we deliver, it works. You know, beyond that we do want you know, for most people around the world when they order basket they don't know about studio. They have no way of seeing it. And so in fact if you're More grass studio there's many, many out there, but not everyone has a direct connection. So we're working on a lot of different things like setting up QR Studio network reference points or if you will like almost showroom situations. A lot of things that are that we intend to promote as we move forward. But year one so June of last year to June of this year is primarily druff two point fixing, manufacturing of pistol fixing, customer service. And there are many things that will happen after that that align to the some of the points of vision I just shared.
- [24:56]
Sarah Glanfield
Wonderful exciting times for sure. For sure. Now perhaps as a studio owner who might be listening to this, or a teacher who might be listening to this who is perhaps in a place where they are thinking about investing in new equipment for their current studio or opening a studio and investing in equipment, you know, that is one of the biggest decisions they make is to purchase equipment. It's a big financial outlay. And so you know, when someone is thinking about a full set grats set up for their space, you know, what advice would you give them in terms of timeline, how to think about that investment, and so on.
- [25:39]
John Riccatello
First off, it is a big commitment to open a studio and open I had the pleasure to speak many times a week to prospective studio owners that are opening their first studio. Every one of those conversations is both eye opening and delightful for me. It also sometimes is a little scary if they haven't thought through all the aspects of running a business. And Saran, I'm glad you have your business out there and your podcast listeners would probably know that seeking advice is a smart thing to do. But so aside from you know, planning on, you know, we're six months in for a complete studio easily I'd probably faster than that in months to come. I find a lot of these conversations that I have leave me wishing I had more time to help a lot of them have a you know, they they're we're going to buy, you know, enough apparatus for example to teach the wouts or to teach classes of three, four or five at one time and they haven't identified yet who the other teachers are going to be. And frankly if you're looking at a lead time that's actually takes more time than getting live apparatus from Grotesque. And nor nor have they thought about where Break even might be for their business in terms of the number of hours they need to train themselves and the number of hours might do instructors that they hire or partner with. And so you asked about sort of the how they should think about It, I think about it as a great investment as long as they have a plan. And that plan needs to take into understanding how they're going to do this, what they're going to charge for, how they're going to attract and retain customers. And it's funny, when I ask the question like retaining customers, I'm even providing a great hour session. I almost did nothing back. And there's a lot more to running a business than just offering the program. And so I enjoy the conversations because I think a lot of prospective city owners leave those conversations probably more worried than they might have when they got on. But it's, it sets them sometimes on a journey of asking more questions of smart people like you that can help them and you know, talking to who, talking to their mentors and really thinking through how this is going to work, how they're going to get their first even so they're going to retain those students, how they're going to offer a supplement or program between individual instructions and duets and group sessions and frankly, sometimes workshop rabbits they need. It's interesting how often they think about really well a reformer or cad conversion reformer or catalog and they leave out a lot of the small bits and pieces that are so unique to the K's world and that will help set them apart. A lot of are afraid to order things like studio wall units or guillotines, which are so unique to the practice that it actually often ends up being the apparatus that makes people want to combat.
- [28:42]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah.
- [28:43]
John Riccatello
So, I mean, there's a lot there and I, I find it exciting to talk to them and I'm glad you're doing what you're doing.
- [28:48]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, well, and I, I, I have to second that. You know, we have conversations here at Spring three with, with people who are looking to open studios, you know, weekly at right now. And you know, the very first question I ask is the same one that you do, which is what? Let's, let's talk through what your goals are. Your plan is, what are you thinking about, what they want this business to look like, and then let's make sure it's financially viable with that. And they sit really nicely together. And when you do that, go through that exercise, it is very enlightening usually for the newer teacher or newer studio owner or teacher, because it really helps to understand where they might be missing some information or hadn't thought through certain things. And I always like to make sure people are prepared before they make the big decisions and commitments, you know, and make sure they have everything they need to Proceed and have that plan in place. And so we look at the numbers and then we also look at, okay, well how are you going to get your first 10 clients, 20 clients, depending on where business model and their business, what they want their business to look like? And then we look at, okay, and what are the other best practices that you need to implement in order for you to not be working the same number as you're working, number of hours as you're working? John.
- [30:10]
John Riccatello
As long as they think there's, there's always a cohesive plan. There's, there's a, there's a good way. If somebody wants to do a studio, maybe it's part of their home and it's 20 hours a week and they want to have another life that they're pursuing that can work great. They probably don't need five reformers for that if they're working on their own. You know, some people are smitten by their business success and they get out there, you know, with a small complement of apparatus and then they find that there's a lot of demand for what they offer and maybe start expanding. And I've seen many, many, many studios, stories like that. But it's important to think through the goals and have a plan and then kind of get somewhere at least taking logic a little bit.
- [30:52]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah, yeah, it's really, is important. It's really important. Well, I'm glad, I'm so glad that you're really focused on that as well and that, you know, we have some collaborations and some more resources coming to, to the community on all of those things for sure in the pipeline. But, you know, as we kind of wrap up this conversation, I just, I really want to say thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. And you know, I personally, just as a member of this community and someone who is, you know, just like you, you know, adores the classical Pilates method, believes in it and you know, practices every single week. I'm glad that you're at the helm and I'm excited for where you're going to take rats next.
- [31:36]
John Riccatello
So thank you and thank you, Sarah and your listeners out there. Elizabeth and I are every day in Philadelphia. We're there to help if we can. And until then, until we meet, have a great rest of your day.
- [31:48]
Sarah Glanfield
Yeah. Thank you, guys. So I'm going to link to the show notes in the show notes to if you want to get connected to Graz and learn a bit more about what equipment they can, they have available and to offer you and talk to some of the brand new amazing folks over there. If you're interested in learning a bit more about what is possible when it comes to equipping your studio with Graz, it will all be in the show notes. But thank you so much John for joining us.
- [32:14]
John Riccatello
Thanks for having me.
- [32:15]
Sarah Glanfield
If you're listening in and you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow teacher or studio owner who might might also benefit from listening in to some of the insights and tips that was shared today. And I really appreciate it. If you could go ahead and rate or review this podcast, it would mean so much to me and help to get this out there into our wonderful community. Did you love this episode and want more? Head to spring3.com and check out my free free resources that will help you run a profitable and fulfilling studio business. And before you go, one last reminder. There is no one way to do what you do, only your way. So whatever it is that you want to do, create or offer, you've got this. Thanks again for joining me today and have a wonderful rest of your day.
- [33:13]
John Riccatello
Sat.