Living and working better with fitness startup FitWood of Scandinavia
The air is thick with a steady buzz —it’s the sound of ideas being shared, relationships being built, and ad-hoc elevator pitches.
The optimism is bouncing off the walls at Tribe Tampere, the city’s newest startup platform and workspace for ambitious students and entrepreneurs on their come-up. The occasion is RekryStart, an all day recruiting and networking event put on by Y-Kampus. Around me, people have gathered into tight circles and pairs. The booths sprinkled around the floorspace represent some of Tampere’s most promising startups, hungry for talent.
“I’m actually working here at Tribe to practice my Finnish,” I say awkwardly to someone, free kombucha sample clutched against my chest.
Finally I spot someone I know: founder & CEO Matias Kukkonen, a former employer and occasional Kotipizza companion. I lock in and make the approach.
“Matias! Howdy.”
“Jason! Amazing,” he says simply.
It had been awhile.
Matias is the hardest grinder I’ve ever met. A retired professional poker player and once one of Finland’s fastest sprinters, he’s no stranger to the hustle. After founding his first company and dragging it bloodily through years of dark times, he’s transformed it into a prominent fitness supply shop in western Finland. On the side, he offers infrared saunas in a Finnish market dominated by tradition.
His latest venture is FitWood of Scandinavia, a boutique fitness startup trying to change the way the world does indoor workouts.
Matias’ face is tired, but the unfailing optimism I know him for is scrawled across it. He’s a man of multiple ventures — and soon, he tells me, multiple babies — but rarely have I seen him much the worse for wear. We chat a bit about what we’re up to now, and the company he’s dedicated himself to building for the past two years, the one closest to his heart.
As Matias will be glad to tell you, most home exercise equipment tends to be cheap and garish. It ends up in the garage or hidden away in some closet, inevitably forgotten after the guests leave and life trundles on. FitWood wants to change that, transforming exercise equipment into a feature or centerpiece instead of an eyesore. It wants to make indoor exercise equipment viable for image-forward, modern homes and workspaces without a full-featured gym of metal and mousewheel.
The cold winters of northern Europe produce an exceptionally hard variety of Nordic birchwood. It’s from this sustainable resource that FitWood’s birch is hewn, then CNC machined and hand-finished in Finland. The result is an equipment line with strapping good looks, designed with Scandinavian style and inspired by the region’s stunning and unspoiled nature.
By now the warm, bright smell of birch hangs over Matias like a winter coat.
Or maybe it’s the TROLLSTIGEN Wallbars towering above us, all clean lines and fresh paint. FitWood’s newest flagship, the TROLLSTIGEN is a reimagining of the Swedish Wallbars that have lined the walls in gyms in the Nordics and internationally for the last two centuries. They’re used to develop strength and mobility, and are popular among gymnasts, fitness educators, and athletes in the know. They are particularly useful for rehabilitation and developing coordination in young children, making them a great choice for busy, fitness-focused families.
The TROLLSTIGEN has much of the height and beauty of its namesake, the scenic route in Norway that VisitNorway.com describes as a “visual feast.” The Wallbars have gained well-deserved demand in Finland and internationally, and stand tall in the FitWood product line. The company also offers the SNÖBLOCK — a customizable step-trainer that doubles as a living room centerpiece, the culmination of FitWood’s in-sight-in-mind home training vision — and a small line of more conventional training instruments. These include the TROLLVEGGEN chin-up bar, their former flagship and still core product, ab wheels with uncharacteristic heft and style, gym rings, foam rollers, and stretching bars.
In 2018, FitWood is expanding its strategy to include a more robust focus on offices and workspaces. This intuition may be on the mark: workplaces and schools that encourage movement and wellbeing may enjoy a healthier and, therefore, more productive and engaged workforce. Healthy and happy people are the engine of startups and the knowledge economy, and upcoming talent increasingly demands sustainable and functional spaces, balance, and meaningful work. It’s this talent, young and old, that will drive the future of innovation.
If FitWood has anything to say about it, they’ll be driving with strong arms and supple limbs.
When I get to Tribe the next morning, the space is empty and quiet. The detritus of a gathering remains: half-filled cups and forgotten gloves, chairs seized and pointed haphazardly. The TROLLSTIGEN Wallbars are still there, though — a parting gift from birch-bearing, startup Santa. A freestanding whiteboard has been rolled in from somewhere, and is already filled with names and tallies, a pull-up leaderboard for Tribe regs and guests alike. I uncap the red marker and write a simple message: “NO KIPPING.”
In a startup world seemingly dominated by transformative tech, FitWood stands bravely analog. There’s no app to download or data to sync, no cables or input devices. Its objectives are to brighten every space its equipment calls home, and make daily training easier to integrate into a busy schedule anywhere. It’s in this way that Matias hopes to improve the health and lives of people worldwide.
It’s this final goal, he tells me, that makes fighting for each day worth it.
