On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Karina Kogan. Karina is the Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Pvolve, an omnichannel fitness company and method that Jen Aniston calls a “game changer”. We talk about growing an omnichannel fitness brand, authenticity in celebrity partnerships, leveraging networking & relationships as startups, and so much more!
Karina Kogan is an award winning marketing and technology executive with a track record of feuling transformational growth and digital innovation for disruptor brands.
Karina currently serves as Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Pvolve, an omnichannel fitness company that in 2023 announced a strategic partnership with Jennifer Aniston.
Karina has spent two decades working at the intersections of innovation and marketing with prior roles as CMO of Oura, SVP & Global Head of Product Marketing at Peloton, and SVP of Digital Media and Products at WarnerMedia.
Karina also holds board and advisory posts at Jackpot.com, FightCamp, among others.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Karina Kogan
I think as marketers, you have to understand culture and how people live in order to be relevant.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer.
Today, I'm welcoming to the show Karina Kogan. She is the Chief Commercial and Marketing Officer at Pvolve, an omnichannel fitness company and method that Jennifer Aniston calls a “game changer”.
Karina, welcome to the show.
Karina Kogan
Thanks for having me.
Chase Clymer
Alrighty. Omnichannel fitness company, that's a lot of technical marketing mumbo jumbo. What are you guys selling? What are you guys doing over there?
Karina Kogan
Yeah, okay. So, what makes us omnichannel? We manufacture proprietary and some patented resistance-based equipment. We pair that resistance-based equipment like resistance bands. We have one called the P.band that's really great for an upper body workout. We have a P.ball which is really You can use for your core and your lower body. We have a P.3 Trainer, which is a full body toner.
Anyway, we have all this wonderful resistance-based equipment and we pair it with functional movements for this method, this modality that's really unique. It's a low impact method. It trains you to move your body functionally the way your body is meant to move in your life, sort of in harmony with your body's biodynamics.
So we have this secret, not secret, signature, let me call it, it's far from a secret, signature method and proprietary equipment, and we sell that on our website. You could buy the equipment and you could also sign up for a membership, a streaming membership, and you could stream our classes and work out with the equipment from home.
That's our digital business.
What makes us omnichannel is, in addition to the Ecommerce and streaming capability, we also have a really fast growing franchise business in the boutique studio space. Meaning, you could actually go to a studio and work out IRL. You don't have to buy the equipment. We have equipment there, and you can work out with a trainer in the studio.
We have three corporate-owned studios, and the rest are franchised. We're all over North America. We actually have two in Canada and are growing. That's sort of what makes Pvolve omnichannel, this mix of brick and mortar experiences as well as our digital capabilities.
Chase Clymer
Well, that's amazing. Now take me back in time.
What was your journey like kind of leading up to and accepting the role at Pvolve?
Karina Kogan
I've spent the last several years actually in the health, wellness, and fitness space. I was actually with Peloton as the head of product marketing, overseeing all sorts of demand generating marketing functions from, gosh, I was at Peloton pre-IPO, so like from 2019 to post IPO and left at, I believe, the end of 21.
So I was at Peloton for a long time through a really exciting ride. I was also the first CMO at Oura, makers of the Oura Ring, which is a smart ring that measures various health metrics, including really, really exceptional measurement of your sleep.
Now I'm at Pvolve. I joined Pvolve very early last year, like in January, when the company was in conversations with Jennifer Aniston about coming on as a strategic partner in the company. I have since worked on a rebrand and the announcement of the partnership with Jen, and quite a bit of transformation for the business in terms of awareness and growth.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. I guess I have to ask and follow up on the Jennifer Aniston partnership.
Now, the company had been around before getting things figured out.
When did it make sense to approach Jennifer Aniston and kind of establish that partnership? How did that kind of work out?
Karina Kogan
You know what, the amazing answer to that question is? Pvolve did not approach Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston approached Pvolve. So, like, pinch me kind of story for our founder, but Pvolve had been around for about five years.
And during the COVID pandemic times, the dark days, Jennifer Aniston discovered Pvolve through word of mouth and started taking our classes, streaming. We call her a secret streamer.
She noted how different this modality is, how the approach is so sustainable and holistic, and it gives you all the physical, aesthetic results you want, but it also makes you feel really good and strong in your body. It works with any of the sensitivities that you might have, and she had actually suffered through a back injury.
Pvolve was actually, I think, a light bulb for her. I think that's why she called it a game changer, is what you noted at the top of the call. So she, as someone who had had fitness throughout her life, right?
We've grown up with Jennifer Aniston on our TV, and she's always looked pretty amazing and fit. And so she noted, “Wow, this is something different.”
And the story is that she actually… her team reached out to Pvolve via LinkedIn. Her management. Our founder, Rachel Katzman, thought she was being punked.
Chase Clymer
I would absolutely think I was being punked.
Karina Kogan
Yeah. Like, she didn't believe it. But, you know, we answered the message and then one thing led to another and this partnership was formed.
But I actually think what was amazing about this story is that when we talk about celebrity partnerships, or any partnership with a talent, whether it's an A-list celebrity or you're choosing an influencer, we always talk about how important it is for there to be sort of authenticity in that relationship, that the representative of your brand feel authentic to it.
And there's nothing more authentic than the fact that the talent was actually a customer and a user of your product and loved it so much that they wanted to get involved, as opposed to you going through a list on a spreadsheet and start making calls to see who uses the phone, right?
Chase Clymer
I think it's going to be a more beneficial relationship. Partnering with creators beyond just an influencer campaign is going to be a big trend that we see moving forward. It's building these deeper relationships, opening up the cap table, etc.
I don't know your deal per se, but it reminds me of another direct consumer brand. It's been around for a while.
Ridge Wallet just partnered with Marques Brownlee, who is a YouTube famous guy. He's got about 20 million followers on there. And I know that was just announced about a week or two ago.
So seeing these strategic partnerships between celebrities and existing brands is gonna be an interesting thing to kind of watch.
Karina Kogan
Yeah, there was, like, about a month ago, I think Marc Andreessen made a comment at some conference and it got picked up at a Wall Street Journal or somebody, whatever. It was written about quite a bit that he sort of predicted that the near future of consumer brands is gonna be celebrity led or personality led.
And I think you're definitely seeing that happen. I mean, just look at Ryan Reynolds. Whether it's Mr. Beast or George Clooney and Casa Amigos, I think you're seeing talent and influence really move businesses forward.
I do think there has to be an authentic relationship there. I really do believe that.
The example I like to use is during the NFL season, I think we were bombarded with commercials with State Farm commercials with Patrick Mahomes. They were really entertaining commercials and I think you watched them because the Chiefs were on a high.
But I don't think as a viewer of those spots, you were like, “Oh, he obviously must have really good taste in insurance. I'm definitely going to consider a state farm now because I imagine Patrick really did his research and made sure this was the right insurance company for him and his family.”
So I think there's a difference between when you're using talent for entertainment value to drive maybe buzz or engagement with your brand versus when you have a strategic partnership with a celebrity like Jennifer Aniston, where you know instinctively that Jen has great taste in fitness, that she knows.
She's not gonna say, “I believe in this product. I believe in this brand. I believe in this modality. I think it's a game changer,” if she doesn't feel that way, right? So I think there's a difference between those types of celebrity partnerships.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
Now, she wouldn't have gotten involved if she didn't believe in the team and the product and the story. So take me back. Talk to me about who founded the company.
What was that all about? How did things go? What's the origin story?
Karina Kogan
Our company was founded by a woman named Rachel Katzman. Her story is really a classic founder story, the kind you love where you see a need, fill a need, identify a problem, find a solution to the problem and say, “Man, there must be other people who have this problem! I should make this a business.”
And that's really what happened with Rachel. She was in her twenties, living in New York, going to all kinds of popular boutique fitness studios, working out a ton, working really hard to sort of achieve the body that she wanted.
Eventually, she started to not feel good and realized through a diagnosis that she had scoliosis. She wanted to maintain a fit lifestyle but kind of needed a different approach.
She discovered functional fitness and functional movement and realized, “Oh my God, I could get all the sort of results that I've been wanting and more through this method, but it works with my body in a way that doesn't hurt. It doesn't thrash. It kind of makes me feel better. It's more sustainable fitness.”
That light bulb for her was the spark that kind of started the company. She started to develop the equipment that comes with the method.
And the reason the equipment is so important versus just doing the movements is that the equipment builds strength so that you can… let's say you're doing resistance training while you're doing these dynamic movements. It's lighting up all those muscles. It's sculpting and toning your body and building strength while it's also building flexibility and mobility and stability in the body.
So you're getting a great strength training workout at the same time that you're really kind of expanding your range of motion.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
Now, how long was it just her until she started to hire a team? Obviously, until you came along and that was this bootstrap. Was she getting funding? How did that all play out?
Karina Kogan
She's very fortunate to have had a funder. But early on, she realized, “Okay, we're going to make a company. We need people.” She brought on our president, Julie Cartwright, who's been with the brand since essentially the beginning.
They obviously had to hire technology partners to build out the streaming membership and the Ecommerce website. They obviously had to find manufacturing and logistics partners to develop the equipment and help design it in a way that allowed them to file for these patents because our equipment is slightly different from some of the equipment that you could just buy, like generic equipment you could buy on Amazon.
I mean, we're still a very small company, and we're lucky to have partners along the way, agencies or vendors who come in, provide a solution to a very specific problem. We solve that problem.
We haven't had to necessarily build out a very large corporate structure. Now, the beauty of franchising is that we have this wonderful model, and we have this incredible partnership with Jennifer Aniston. There's a lot of interest by people who are curious about franchising or already deep into franchising to add Pvolve to their lives.
That's so exciting because, as you know, since COVID, we kind of live in this very hybrid world. Like you and I, maybe 10 years ago, we would have done this interview in person, right? I would have come to a studio, we would have recorded, we would have recorded together, physically together.
But now we live with hybrid work, hybrid medical care. Telemedicine. Hybrid retail. Sometimes you buy online, sometimes you go to the store. And the same is true of fitness. So what's really cool about Pvolve is the fact that you have the convenience of being able to do it from home, and we have this booming boutique studio business vis-a-vis franchising that allows you to do it in person.
So the company I think we started out as and the company it is today, this year we'll have our seventh anniversary in November. It's kind of like, just a wild growth ride.
Chase Clymer
Let's talk more about you.
I know when there are executive hires made, you're usually kind of coming in to solve some very specific problems, build some very specific systems. So what's your day-to-day like at the company? What are you kind of responsible for? What's in your wheelhouse?
Karina Kogan
I oversee all marketing functions: communications, brand, creative, demand generation or what is typically called growth marketing. I also oversee product and technology. So our engineering and product development resources sit on my team as well.
And then as part of the marketing mix, we obviously have our B2C, our consumer facing marketing function. And then we have our B2B marketing function, which supports our franchise development business.
So it's a diverse mix of responsibilities. For me, it fuels a lot of my professional kind of curiosities, because I've spent my career working at this sort of intersection of technology and media and consumer products.
But what's been really fun is the sort of brick and mortar side of the business that's been growing so much, something that I hadn't necessarily done as much in my career and now get to touch.
Chase Clymer
It's always rewarding to pick up new skills as you kind of advance your career.
Karina Kogan
Well, yeah. And you have to, right? If you don't, you become a bit of a dinosaur, you know? The world is constantly changing. Marketing is constantly changing. How consumers experience products is constantly changing.
I talked about the disruption that COVID has caused. Disruption, I mean, in sort of consumer habits. We went from a world that was slowly transitioning online, but then we all got locked inside and all of a sudden everything became digital.
And then we came back outside and we were craving IRL, but there was all this advancement, all this sort of kind of stickiness and innovation that happened online. And now we're in this very hybrid world that we probably would have got to eventually, but got to much more quickly.
And so I think as marketers, you have to understand culture and how people live in order to be relevant. For me, I'm always craving that. I always kind of, as Wayne Gretzky said, I'm trying to skate to where the puck is going.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Now, our audience out there, there's obviously quite a few listeners that are just getting started. They've got their first idea. Maybe they've set up their shop and they're already selling.
Is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think might resonate with the younger entrepreneurs that are just kind of getting their feet wet in this world?
Karina Kogan
Oh gosh, I don't know what would resonate necessarily, but I think that, right now I'm at Pvolve, which is a much smaller, scrappier, more startup culture than, say, Warner Media, which was owned by AT&T, you know?
I can say that when you're in very bootstrapped, scrappy startup mode, you're picking and choosing what you want to invest in very wisely. You have to make sure everything you spend your money on is going to have the most maximum ROI.
You don't have a lot of fat. Waste is scary. To make the wrong decision is scary, especially if you're spending your limited resources on it.
One of the things I've kind of discovered as being incredibly helpful in a startup environment is relationships, networking, and calling on the wisdom of others to give you advice and help you avoid mistakes that, if you don't ask the question, you might make. It could save you. Those conversations probably could save you from some pitfalls.
I found that building your network, having conversations, learning from others, and asking questions help in being able to avoid blind spots.
You're gonna make mistakes no matter what, but I found that to be beyond… Because it used to be, like, you sit in a big company and a lot of the time you're like, “Well, we'll just hire a consultant.”
But when you're 10 people, you're not hiring someone from Bain or McKinsey. You're going to get on LinkedIn and see if you could find somebody to give you 15 minutes of their time and tell you how they did it.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Karina Kogan
Yeah, I don't know if that's helpful advice.
Chase Clymer
Oh no, I think it is.
So if I'm listening to this and I want to check out a Pvolve class online or maybe even see if there's one in my city, where should I go? What should I do?
Karina Kogan
pvolve.com is the website. We have a seven day trial, so if you want to just watch the classes and look at them and see if they're right for you before you buy any equipment, you can do that.
Also, all of our equipment comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, meaning you can buy a bundle, use it, and if you return it within 30 days, you get all your money back. So it's totally risk free.
That’s probably the best way to experience it at home–get the equipment in your hands. It's harder to take the classes if you don't have some of the pieces.
If you want to do Pvolve in person, you can check out on our website. We have a list of locations. There are several that we're opening in the next six months and about eight that we're open now and several with grand openings coming, like I said, in the next 90 days.
So you can find it all on the website, pvolve.com.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. We'll make sure to link to that in show notes. Karina, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Karina Kogan
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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