Growl is building the Peloton of boxing

There’s a new connected fitness device in town and it’s called Growl. Inspired by hardware companies like Peloton and Tonal, Growl is building a boxing bag that you can attach to your wall at home. Users can then start immersive, gamified boxing classes from the comfort of their home.

It also looks like they were inspired by boxing fitness classes like Brooklyn Fitboxing — just spying an opportunity to offer a similarly intense fitness experience but without the user having to trek to a studio to sweat it out in a group setting.

“The aim of the product is really to transform the traditional punching bag, which is an object that is over 3,000 years old and hasn’t evolved since. We want to transform it in several ways to turn it into a full-scale, at-home boxing and fitness coach for the whole family for $150 a month,” co-founder and CEO Léo Desrumaux told TechCrunch.

There’s still a long road ahead, as Growl plans to start accepting pre-orders in April 2025. Then it will be another year before it delivers the first units to customers.

On the hardware front, Growl is divided into two main parts. There’s a frame that’s designed to be screwed to your wall. You then attach a boxing bag component onto the frame. Most of the sensing intelligence is located in the frame. The boxing bag itself is mostly made of foam and artificial leather, with five or six accelerometers inside to detect punching power etc.

The frame includes one of the most important components of the device, a 4K projector. It can project a human-sized coach onto the boxing bag and various metrics on the wall. Growl has also been using the projector for a gaming experience (think Tap Tap Revenge on a boxing bag).

Using a projector is a smart approach, as you aren’t punching a display, which means that you can’t break it.

“That’s the beauty of our technology. We mostly use light, and you’ll never break light,” Desrumaux said.

On each side of the frame, there’s one speaker and two cameras with infrared sensors. There’s also an additional camera near the top of the frame, along with some time-of-flight sensors.

The cameras and sensors are used to calculate the impact zone of your punch and your posture. The accelerometers behind the boxing bag are used to calculate the intensity of the punch.

“The core feature of our product is that we reproduce the physical presence of a one-on-one coach, as if they were physically there with you,” Desrumaux said.

The company is working with a handful of coaches with the aim of creating a content library for launch day. But note it won’t be limited to boxing as there will be some yoga, Pilates, and strength training classes, too.

Image Credits:Growl

Growl plans to price its device in the same range as Tonal devices. The full price is slated at around $4,500, but most customers will likely opt for a financing option with monthly payments. There will be a subscription plan to access new content as well. The idea is that it shouldn’t cost more than a premium gym membership in total, the startup said.

The Growl team is well aware that the connected fitness industry is crowded these days. But most of these companies have focused on cycling, strength and rowing. And those companies have faced some growing pains.

“The worst thing that ever happened to Peloton was the Covid pandemic,” Desrumaux suggested. “When you look at Peloton, at the time of their IPO, that is a few months before Covid, in September 2019, they have 800,000 households in the U.S., they’re growing 100% a year, they’re making a 50% margin on hardware, a 60% margin on software, and they have 0% in EBITDA. So they’re practically break-even.”

During the lockdown periods, Peloton launched several new products and spent a lot of money. “And then, in the end, Covid was just a brief interlude. The market returned to its original growth trajectory,” he added.

Now, Peloton seems to be out of the woods after a difficult reality check. That’s why he believes connected fitness is still an interesting industry as long as you maintain financial discipline — which is his aim with Growl.

Based in Austin, Texas and Paris, France, the company counts Sam Bowen, the former VP of hardware engineering at Amazon, Peloton and Tonal, as an advisor. The startup has raised $4.75 million in seed funding from Skip Capital, Kima Ventures, Teampact Ventures and various business angels, such as former UFC Heavyweight Champion Ciryl Gane.