Nerio Alessandri is moonlighting as the world’s wealthiest -- and perhaps best dressed -- personal trainer.
Sporting a blue blazer and chinos, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Technogym SpA is demonstrating his company’s top-of-the-line Kinesis Personal Vision machine, whose sleek combination of aluminum alloy arms, cables and polished steel panels allows users to perform more than 200 exercises.
Alessandri, 57, makes it look easy. I’m quickly struggling against the resistance when I take hold of the handles and he instructs me how to manipulate the cables. A few bicep curls and chest presses later I beat a tactical retreat before my sweat drips onto the immaculate wood floor of Technogym’s lobby-cum-showroom.
The company’s gleaming headquarters in Cesena -- a city near the Adriatic Sea and about an hour’s drive from Bologna -- reflects the world’s booming healthy-living economy. Largely the preserve of bodybuilders in the 1980s, it’s now part of mainstream culture, with boutique gyms, cycling studios and yoga classes an inescapable part of modern life.
It’s big business. The fitness and mind-body industry was worth $542 billion in 2015, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Lululemon Athletica Inc. founder Chip Wilson now ranks among the world’s 500 richest people, while startup Peloton Interactive Inc. has scored a $4 billion valuation thanks to the popularity of its internet-connected home-fitness equipment.
Alessandri is a godfather of this new economy.
“Technogym was a pioneer in combining technology and equipment to drive fitness performance to create a best-in-class branded product in a crowded equipment market,” said Brian Wood, a managing director at Imperial Capital. “Peloton is absolutely an offshoot of what Technogym did.”
Thirty-five years after he built his first piece of equipment -- a hack-squat machine -- in his father’s garage, his focus on fitness has made him a billionaire. His stake in Technogym, whose shares have surged 46 percent in the past year, comprises about three quarters of his $1.3 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
On Thursday, Technogym reported that revenue for the six months ended June 30 rose 8.3 percent from a year earlier at a constant exchange rate, helped by strong growth in the U.S. and China.
Still, Technogym can’t afford to take a breather. There’s a constant need to innovate to justify its premium prices, and new competitors abound. Peloton is moving into treadmills, Technogym’s biggest product line. In an online world, the hottest workout products are as much about the content they provide and communities they host.