As an elite trainer to several World Champion martial arts fighters, Ed Zouroudis knew the necessity of accurate and regular body composition measures.
“Nobody lives and breathes a weight cut more than a professional fighter coming into a Title Fight, so part of our training regime was to monitor their body composition to ensure the fighters were maintaining skeletal muscle mass and only dropping body fat,” said Zouroudis. “For this reason, I was using a competitor’s products and thought it was a great tool that could be made a lot better.”
A greater product was only the beginning. Zouroudis saw there was a huge commercial market for this tool. He perceived a real need for holistic overview data. Both the end user and club owners needed to obtain the most valuable metric in their business — the health status of their members. So, in 2015 he and Kelly Weideman started Evolt IoH (The Internet of Health), an innovative wellness company that is powering connected and digital health.
“From understanding the market demand, I embarked on a journey to produce a digital-based body composition analyzer that could provide gyms with tools that would help with their coaching models, engage new members via automated challenges, track progression in real time as well as lowering attrition by keeping the members accountable to themselves to achieve a positive outcome,” said Zouroudis.
What Zouroudis saw in the market all those years ago has proven true. As of 2023, Evolt now operates in 39 countries. It has produced over 3 million health reports for people across the world. Evolt has pioneered an automated transformation challenge feature and sophisticated reporting tools which have revolutionized the industry. In addition, scans in the last 12 months increased by 1.2 million and 2022 saw a growth of over 50% in new businesses rolling out the Evolt 360 machines.
Through all that growth, Evolt continues to work diligently to provide its partners with data that will help them accomplish several things: upsell services, lower attrition, attract new members and engage existing clientele. Evolt continues to improve its technology by providing additional tools to business owners with solution-based products. Other nutrition solutions will be offered to business owners to enhance their business earning potential alongside the automated transformation challenge feature.
This starts with taking a science-based approach to developing Evolt products. Zouroudis noted they are medical grade and FDA, Therapeutic Goods Administration and Conformité Européenne registered. “In less than a minute, our body scanner machines provide a non-invasive measurement of more than 40 health parameters including data on lean muscle mass, subcutaneous fat, visceral fat and segmental analysis to help identify imbalances,” he shared.
In fact, Zouroudis noted Evolt has developed a new metric for measuring health — a Bio Wellness Index (BWI). It’s calculated based on the integrity of lean body mass versus total fat mass and visceral fat mass, in addition to considering the age and gender of the individual. The data it gathers is something metrics like BMI don’t do.
“I really believe BWI should be the new yardstick by which people measure their health,” said Zouroudis. “Everyone’s bodies are different so we should be using a measurement that takes this into account. We’ve already seen our customers praise BWI for helping keep their clients motivated and focused on the things that are going to keep them fit and healthy.”
Over the last few years, the company has seen it can go a step further. Zouroudis shared the nutritional and supplement suggestions their machines can offer are proving very popular with users. “Customized nutrition is a crucial tool to ensure gym goer’s results, so being able to quickly provide data that helps trainers develop custom meal plans and recipes is of huge benefit to our customers and their clients,” he added.
The impact on clients and members is what brings fulfillment to the dedicated Evolt team and its founders. Zouroudis shared how seeing success stories of their technology being used to showcase achievements, as well as shifting the focus from body weight obsession to an overall internal view of the make-up of a body’s weight, are what he loves most about being part of the Evolt revolution.
“Through education, our mission is to improve the health and well-being of an individual by helping them to understand their own body composition in their health journey rather than relying on a basic bathroom scale that just shows overall body weight,” said Zouroudis.
The goal of Evolt goes beyond simply changing one client’s perception or giving clubs another revenue stream. While those are incredible impacts — as Zouroudis said, new technology is always good when trying to differentiate one’s self from the competition — the mission of Evolt is further reaching. Like its expansion into over 10 new countries in the past year, its mindset is global: Evolt is aiming to make the world a healthier place.
With a wealth of experience in the health and fitness industry, Zouroudis is co-leading Evolt into 2023 with no intention of slowing. It will continue toward a positive health impact on a global scale. “Things are moving fast at Evolt,” he said. “I look forward to leading an amazing team through 2023 to further success.”
