Some positions are hard to hold: Just ask anyone who’s done a Solidcore class. They’ll likely also acknowledge the dimly lit workout space, the focus on slow-twitch muscle fibers, and the notable absence of showers (that last one is the source of much debate).

The boutique fitness space is hypercompetitive, but this premium-priced strength training brand (a single 50-minute class is upward of $37 in some markets) has proven it has staying power. Entrepreneur and philanthropist Anne Mahlum founded Solidcore in 2013 with $175,000 and sold it to private equity firm Kohlberg & Company for $88.4 million in 2023.

So how does the brand walk the tight rope of expansion, partnerships, and diversification to avoid that next-day soreness and regret? Revenue Brew spoke with Solidcore executives and an industry expert to work out how it’s building a flexible, yet ambitious, expansion strategy.

It’s all in the core

Before Bryan Myers was CEO of Solidcore, he occupied a role that was arguably just as essential: customer. Drawing on his experience in business expansions from his time at Sweetgreen, he took the helm at Solidcore in 2021.

“As a client, I loved Solidcore. There was no place else where I got that kind of workout,” Myers said. “From a price point standpoint, I just couldn’t get it to work. It felt like the pricing actually didn’t want me to be committed to the brand.”

So Myers changed the play: Solidcore went from a package model to a membership model. Myers said that the jump from approximately 20% recurring revenue to 60%–70% has helped service the company’s expansion goal of over 250 US stores by 2028.

Keep reading here for Solidcore’s plans to go global.—BS

Sustaining a business focused on one hero product—the Burberry trench coat and Levi’s 501 jeans, for example—is no small feat. It’s an even bigger feat when that singular product spurs consistent year over year growth (and $100 million in revenue in 2024). But that’s the story for Bogg Bag, the lifestyle brand known for its perforated rubber bags made from EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate).

“For some of our customers, it’s aspirational. For some of our customers, it’s attainable,” said founder and CEO Kim Vaccarella. “They want to make life a little bit easier, so Bogg Bag is the perfect vehicle for that.”

Humble beginnings

Vaccarella launched Bogg Bag as a side project in 2008 out of a personal need for an easy-to-clean beach bag. Taking inspiration from her kids’ Crocs shoes, she sought out a factory to create bags made from a similar rubber material. Vaccarella placed her first large order for 1,200 units, but a manufacturing error caused black streaks all over the bags. She shelved the products and paused the brand.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Vaccarella used that batch of bags to donate supplies to victims and was surprised to later hear back from those people about how much they loved the bags.

“All the people that had received them started emailing me, and they’re like, ‘Where do I get more of these bags? I want them for gifts. I want to buy them for everybody in my family. This bag is the greatest bag I’ve ever had,’” she said.

Vaccarella then went back to the drawing board, found a new factory, and started introducing new Bogg Bag sizes in 2016. She slowly scaled the business while continuing her longtime job in commercial real estate. (She retired in 2018 to focus on Bogg Bag full time.)

Read on for how the company navigated Covid.—LI

Agentic AI is the way of the future—at least, that’s what tech companies are constantly telling us. However, many of the employees tasked with deploying it within organizations aren’t sure they’re ready to meet the moment.

A new report from Harvard Business Review, sponsored by telemetry provider Cribl, is the latest evidence of this disconnect. According to the research, a near-universal 96% of respondents—all of whom were in the HBR audience and “from organizations considering, piloting, or actively using agentic AI and who are both involved in their organization’s agentic AI decisions and familiar with telemetry”—report that agentic AI is expected to be important to their organization going forward.

But a mere 23% actually have a strategy for utilizing the technology.

Arranging your tech stack to address the needs of agentic requirements is essential, The AI Lab CEO Ryan Kurt said in comment in the report.

“Without the right infrastructure, you’ll hit a ceiling,” Kurt said. “There is absolutely no way to break through it unless you have the data scaffolding, the governance, and the integrated workflows that you need.”

Moving forward. We’re over a year into agentic AI’s widespread usage, and the technology’s adoption has continued to present challenges for IT teams. The new HBR research shows that implementing agentic AI isn’t just difficult, but also expensive—only 7% of respondents said that costs are coming in under projections, while 47% claim the costs are higher than expected.

Keep reading for the importance of considering the telemetry gap.—EH

A founder weighs whether to take a public stance (Founder Brew)

KRG Fuel and Energy CEO Marie Hunter discusses the pressure founders face to respond to world events—from employee expectations to customer accountability.

You said you’re concerned about Mythos—we talked to the experts (IT Brew)

“Functionally, what [LLMs] change about security dynamics is the velocity of exploit development and the cost of the discovery of vulnerabilities,” Expel Director of Threat Operations James Shank says.

How the WNBA brought on new blue-chip sponsors amid CBA negotiation uncertainty (Marketing Brew)

The WNBA’s 28th season in 2024 was a break-out one, marking the pro debut of several bona fide superstars as fans and sponsors rushed the league.