Pilates Business Podcast

Gratz Pilates: An Inside Look with Co-Owner John Riccitello

• Seran Glanfield • Season 22 • Episode 211

Share episode

If you're in the Pilates world, you've likely heard of Gratz Pilates—the gold standard for classical Pilates equipment. But what happens when someone from the tech and gaming industry takes the reins of this iconic brand?

In this special guest episode of The Pilates Business Podcast, host Seran Glanfield welcomes John Riccitello, co-owner of Gratz Pilates, who, along with his wife Elizabeth, purchased the company in 2023. But this wasn’t just a business acquisition—it was personal.

John shares his incredible journey of discovering classical Pilates after a major injury, how it transformed his life, and why he and Elizabeth stepped in to ensure Gratz continues to thrive. From reducing equipment wait times to expanding customer support, John gives us an inside look at the exciting changes happening at Gratz and what’s next for the company.

Tune in to hear:

  • John’s personal Pilates journey and how it led to owning Gratz Pilates
  • The challenges and innovations behind running a legacy Pilates brand
  • How Gratz is improving craftsmanship, delivery times, and global availability
  • What studio owners need to consider when investing in equipment

If you're a studio owner or passionate about classical Pilates, this episode is a must-listen!


Got a question for Seran? Add it here 👉

~~~
GRAB YOUR FREE RESOURCE 👉 The Studio Owner's Guide to MASTERING REELS


📲 Follow Seran on Instagram @seran_spring_three

❤️ Loved this episode? Leave a review - your review helps spread the word about the show and I read each and every one!

🎧 Never miss a new episode! Be sure to follow or subscribe to stay up to date


Work with Seran:

🌟 Join the Thrive Business Coaching Program and get smart strategies that drive growth (and profit) in your boutique fitness studio

🌟Enroll in the Marketing Intensive and get everything you need to finally master your marketing and stand out from the competition


Speaker 1:

If you've been in the Pilates world for any length of time, you've probably heard of Graz 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.

Speaker 1:

Well, hi there, I'm Saren 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 Graz 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.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Simon.

Speaker 1:

And it's been fantastic as someone who has been part of the Gratz community since I first started teaching and actually even doing Pilates way back in 2006, 2007 in New York City. Gratz is all I've really worked on throughout the years, and so it's been great to watch 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.

Speaker 2:

I would say that that's very true. Elizabeth and I fired bots last June. We've been putting in this is crazy to say 60-hour weeks trying to get us where we want to be. It's amazing. Sometimes I'm trying to leave the office at 6.30 or7 and Elizabeth's downstairs packing parts. So we do everything from figuring out where our factory should be to dealing with customers downstairs packing parts, so we do everything from, you know, figuring out where our factory should be to dealing with customers 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.

Speaker 1:

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?

Speaker 2:

Well, without carbon dating. Myself, it goes back decades. You know mine, mine is a, I think, a pretty common story among people that practice Pilates. I have one of those ski accidents that, if you put on television, you wonder if we survived. Um, and and I did um, but I'm a big skier and I still ski a lot and um.

Speaker 2:

What happened was that, um, I took a bad tumble and um, I ended up cracking a couple low vertebrae l2, l3 and predating adults, and while I recovered, you know, from that, okay, grabbing my other surgical operation. I had sciatica so bad I could barely finish a grocery shop. So it was painful and difficult, and I tried a number of things to address it, including taking advice from a great surgeon on what they could do for me with a very aggressive surgery, and they told me that they weren't sure that it was actually going to work. The surgeon, though, was smart enough to suggest that I could get my course solved 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 Doyle in emphasis for now Alicia Stone. She's married, but she was my first classical instructor, and while I was painful for the first you know several sessions I quickly became addicted. This is nearly two decades ago and at times I was training more than seven days a week.

Speaker 2:

You know sometimes I'd have a double session on a Saturday or Sunday For me from barely being able to walk for grocery shopping, within a couple years I ran my first marathon. I'm not much of a runner, so that's a very big detail. I kind of did it to prove that I could. But I've been practicing classical karate consistently since then. I had a break a little bit during colded. My instructor left San Francisco and moved to Seattle. I couldn't get anybody face-to-face and so it was a bit of a off-fairy 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, believe it or not, the thing that gets in the way of training more than three days a week is the company, because it's very consuming for Elizabeth and I.

Speaker 2:

We're just super busy with that. So that's really the story. And when it's worked, it's surprising to imagine that I'm following an injury like that. It wasn't the doctors that fixed me, it was Pilates that fixed me. It may be stronger than it was before and I'm wildly dedicated to Pilates being a central part of my life.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, welcome to the club. I think, is 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?

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I've done, you know, after I discovered Glass and Bladis for me, was build home studios. I'm lucky enough to have enough space to have a gym and you know my gym you know, going back for a very long time looks pretty much like a garage showroom. It's what I originally learned on, fell in love with. Well, I've tabled the world and trained on virtually every Pilates manufacturer's apparatus. The feel is different the sense of, for me, comfort, the ability to get deep into my core. There's something about Graz apparatus that I think and I could probably define it for a few people, but I think it just works better for a true practitioner of Joseph Pilates, classical Pilates, getting deep into the core and it emphasizes the way we want to move the gun properly. 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 ground apparatus and we were patiently waiting for it. They told us it'd be 40 weeks, which you know. Okay, that's too long, but we'll wait. But 40 weeks later, we arrived at Bapulus and we resized and where's our quantized apparatus? And they said it'd be 20 more weeks. At 60 weeks we resized it, whereas our quantized apparatus and they said it'd be 20 more weeks. At 60 weeks we resized again and they said they weren't sure where it was going to come. We had a number of machinations and a few phone calls and we were on these toasts anyway.

Speaker 2:

We ended up visiting with Ben or David Rosencrantz and his team at the factory in Philadelphia in a way way sort of looking for our work. What I could see was something about magical and difficult. The magic was the company is still making the apparatus pretty much exactly as they did when they started building Gratz 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 have a fairly miserable customer support team and no tools. They had no ERP system. It was a difficult situation. The company that wasn't long for this world.

Speaker 2:

So Osorio and I gave some serious thought and we thought we both love Festival of Flies in a way that I think many of your listeners would, but it's really important to us and we have a deep affection for Robs 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 Bratz Pilates, bratz 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 them. And so it was not a dollars are alive equation, although we're not looking forward to taking a little financial bath from this, although we have so far. The principal point was we want to return Grottes to be better than it's ever been before for the Pilates community. So that's what we're after. It's important to us, it's personal tools.

Speaker 1:

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 Gratz 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 as you're evolving the company in all the different ways that you are today?

Speaker 2:

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 Graf's when we interacted with the company and hired her to acquire 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. 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 package and repackage and try 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 operolus. There's a certain sophistication in doing that. Wax had none of that sophistication, and so one of the amusing parts of it is well, I would say critically, it very much ran like a 1960s wood and metal shop. But it also meant they never embraced what I've described 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 screw with the design. They also can't tell you from an engineering perspective why the designs are as great as they are or what the tolerances should be, and I find, for example, a batch manufacturer that we get from our spring suppliers. There's too much variance from one set of springs to another. 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 past.

Speaker 2:

The measurement on the inside of a former edge-to-edge is 22.5 inches inches. No one ever bothered to say what's reasonable tolerance. There was an eight minutes is a sixth image is a 42nd uh of an h. 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 will, and so whenever we're going to go through value engineering, 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 branch operations for decades. I know I trained three days a week with Amy Berger in Philadelphia and she's training 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.

Speaker 1:

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, these, it is equipment that stands the test of time and it sounds like you're balancing you know, staying true to their designs and you know the what makes the grots so grots 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, what people might have seen as changed in that time improvements. You've made things that you've done to perhaps share a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

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 LeadTones. Comes Back to June last year again in 24, when we completed the transaction, glatzwood'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 kind of 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 springs, we were last in line to get them, and so so we came in, and first thing we did was we got current with suppliers and so they would deliver for us and then net them and talk them through what we needed.

Speaker 2:

We also began hiring. One of the problems with hiring prior to our arrival was that we didn't offer benefits, 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 want to work for a company. And that 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 engineering operations that type of thing which allows us to scale intelligently and do things better on the factory floor. What that's resulted in is lots of craft people on the wood, metal shop, upholstery, assembly, finishing and slightly more than actually almost 4x our production Basically, as I said, three, but it's up from that and what that's enabled us to do is to start to deliver a lot faster.

Speaker 2:

Now what's amusing is we've done very, very, very little on marketing to sort of drive demand almost nothing since the acquisition. We've made our website a little bit better and we've done some smart rings on SEO and the web. We're not spending a lot of money on it and the communities were slumber so the orders were 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 six and for the smaller apparatus for three months. Our ambition later this year is to bring everything in under three, which I think is reasonable for someone to plan.

Speaker 2:

It does take several weeks actually to build these things. If you continue with the high craft orientation the company has and we are going to 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 go out with 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 buried and we're in the process now of implementing our first ERP systems and customer relationship management systems so that we will be on post-it notes for getting back to our customers, which are a little hard to track, to having good, system-adjusted data to be able to support our customers the way they deserve.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely Well, I have to say congratulations. First of all, 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 years to get their equipment, and so I really appreciate. I know it's been a lot of work and you've made a lot of changes in a short period of time, some quite radical. Bringing tripling your workforce is a big deal right and so a lot of things.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's great to have a partner like Elizabeth. She drives so much of it. She, for example, is 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 on the factory floor. She's as recognized down there as any other people that are on the factory floor? Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 1:

You make a good team, for sure. We work hard at it. 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 grats kind of um evolve towards. Can you tell us a little bit more about your kind of the vision that you have for grats um? You know, beyond the those aspirations and goals that you've set so far?

Speaker 2:

sure I mean I think you know I'll not make this a half an hour answer because it could easily be, but you know, one of the things that I care deeply about is we care deeply about is the success of the classical Pilates instructor, in particular, those that own CVS.

Speaker 2:

It's a tough business out there and I'm glad, jaron, for what you do to advise this committee because they give me a lot of advice. One of the things we did recently I wrote the most recent blog on why classical and I won't 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 uh, the story into something you could encapsulate in a few minutes talking to someone, versus, uh, reading an entire book with so many, and I don't know if you've 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.

Speaker 2:

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 in that blog was not just what people already know but just triple empathizing. Here's 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 decades is truly special. So that's one thing that we get our visions 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 the political market. So Woodrum keeps solving problems, like right now when most customers outside the United States order from RAS. It's a miserable situation. Remember you order a bag of coffee a bit from almost anybody in the United States, a customer in France. We might ship it to a seaport or an airport. They've got to clear customs. There's all sorts of technical forms they have to fill out to get it through customs. They typically organize their own shipping from the port to their studios. We want to be able to establish file operations in most of the major markets we support. In fact, they can order it, but it shows up in their studio and they don't think about it, and so we're working very hard on that side of the operation.

Speaker 2:

Another thing that we want to build out is a much broader wholesale support. So if they need reupholstery or they need support or they need maintenance, that can be afforded to them very quickly and easily. Now we partner with great firms like Inapply, chrome 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 big list to set up there. We just hop on, we do whatever it works. You know.

Speaker 2:

Beyond that, we do want you know. For most people around the world when they autographs, they don't know about studio. They have no way of seeing it, and so if I, if you know, autograph 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 to our studio network, reference points or, if you will like, almost showroom situations. A lot of things that we intend to promote as we move forward, but year one so year of last year to year of this year is primarily just two points Fixing manufacturing and fixing customer service. And there are many things that will happen after that that align to some of the points of vision I just shared.

Speaker 1:

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, that is, one of the biggest decisions they make is to purchase equipment. It's a big financial outlay, and so when someone is thinking about a full set Gratz set up for their space, what advice would you give them in terms of timeline, how to think about that investment and so on?

Speaker 2:

First off, it is a big commitment to open a studio and I have the pleasure to speak many times a week to respected studio owners that are opening their first studio. Every one of those conversations is both eye-opening and delightful for me. Every one of those conversations is both eye-opening and delightful for me, and also sometimes it's a little scary if they haven't thought through all the aspects of running a business. And, saren, I'm glad to 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 planning on, you know we're six months in a complete studio. He's the way I'd probably faster than Matt and most of us to come.

Speaker 2:

I still have a lot of these conversations that I have Leave me wishing I had more time to help. A lot of them haven't. They're going to buy an apparatus, for example, to teach the welch 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 actually takes more time than getting Blythe, apparatus and Grotsner 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 that instructors that they hire or partner with, and so I you asked about sort of 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 like returning customers aren't even providing a great hour session.

Speaker 2:

I almost did nothing back and there's a lot more to running a business than just offering the program.

Speaker 2:

And so I enjoy the conversations because I think a lot of the prospective city runners leave those conversations probably more worried than they might have when they got on. But it sets them sometimes on a journey of asking more questions of smart people like you that can help them, and talking to their mentors and really thinking through how this is going to work, how they're going to get their first evens, how they're going to retain those students, how they're going to offer a supplemental program between individual instructions and duets and boot sessions and, frankly, sometimes for chopper rabbits they need it's interesting how often they think about really well a reformer or a CAD conversion reformer or catalog, and they leave out a lot of the small bits and pieces that are so unique to the Pilates world and that will help set them apart. A lot of people are afraid to order things like studio wall units or gitzes, which are so unique to the practice that it actually often ends up being the apparatus that makes people want to come back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot there, and I find it exciting to talk to them and I'm glad you're doing what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and I have to second that. You know we have conversations here at Spring 3 with people who are looking to open studios. You know, weekly, 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 do you 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 run, go through that exercise. It is.

Speaker 1:

So 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 you know 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?

Speaker 2:

number of hours as you're working. Working, john, as long as they think there's there's always a cohesive plan, there's a, there's a good way. If somebody wants to do a studio um, 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 um. You know, some people are smitten by their business success and they get out there, you know, with a small compliment of apparatus and then they find that there's a lot of demand for what they offer and they start expanding and I've seen many, many, many students' stories like that. But it's important that they do the goals and have a plan and then that kind of gets them where they're at least making logic a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's really as important as 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 the community on all of those things for sure in the pipeline. But, you know, as we kind of wrap up this conversation, 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 GRATS next. So, thank you.

Speaker 2:

And thank you Sarah and her listeners out there. Elizabeth and I are every day in Philadelphia. We try to help if we can and until then, until we meet, have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 1:

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 Gratz 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 Gratz. It will all be in the show notes. But thank you so much, john, for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening in and you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow teacher or studio owner who might also benefit from listening in to some of the insights and tips that were 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 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.