Quick Read — Interview with SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan

A new podcast I’m getting into these days, “The Interview”, from Forbes, published an interview with SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan a few days ago.

It was super interesting to hear the perspective of someone who has spent a career trying to create unique experiences in hospitality + travel, from Virgin America to Equinox to now, SoulCycle.

Highlights:

• Lesson learned from former boss, Richard Branson: “take care of your people, they’ll take care of your customers, they’ll take care of your shareholders”. Melanie shares a great anecdote about Branson’s tradition of buying the flight crew a round at the bar after every flight he took on Virgin.
• When recruiting instructors, SoulCycle does an American Idol-like recruitment across the country. For them, personality in instructors is key.
• SoulCycle’s approach is community & hospitality driven. They looked at the current offering in their space and tried to come up with an experience that is truly unique, an approach Melanie carried over from Virgin & Equinox. Sounds like this can be a controversial approach in capital intensive businesses (especially airlines).
• To create this sense of community & hospitality, everything is carefully thought through, from the lobby to the in class experience. They also have systems in place to, for example, let an L.A. studio know that a regular N.Y.C. “rider” (how they refer to customers) will be attending a class, so that that customer is greeted and feels at home, even in a new location.
• Relies on community feel as a differentiator; Whelan not worried about rise of in home offering Peloton because the community aspect is difficult / impossible to replicate in home.
• Launching new locations: SoulCycle thinks carefully about staffing, grassroots efforts, & giving community the feeling of ownership over the studio. At a recent opening in Philadelphia, she mentions customers telling her “we’ve been open 3 weeks”.
• About the app: Whelan is inspired by Starbucks innovation in offerings + tech. For example, their app gives you a reason to open the app every day, with payments, ordering ahead, and perks. Right now, SoulCycle’s app is a power booking tool, but in the future they will add content and try to move into a more frequently used position with their customers.
• Making customers loyal: Using customer data, they have gleaned the insights that after 3 rides, probability of becoming a regular rider goes up. They are now working on packaging that first 3 ride experience as an onboarding experience.

For me, the biggest takeaway is that, in hospitality tech, the product is not just your app or e-comm offering, but the entire end-to-end experience. For SoulCycle, so much of what is unique about their offering comes from the in-person experience, but they are leveraging technology along the way to make this possible and even more personalized / unique.