Story excerpt provided by Forbes
Written by Karsten Strauss
Serial entrepreneur Blake Squires was contemplating what to do next. In 2010 he was in the process of selling his company, digital content platform Findaway World, and was wondering what new project he should devote himself to. Squires’ wife, Michelle, an educator and aerobics instructor, suggested addressing obesity.
“That challenge from my wife was rattling around in my head,” says Squires. That rattle turned into a company—MOVABLE, offering wellness programs designed for groups that include simple activity monitor devices.
In surveying the market, Squires felt that activity monitors available from companies like Nike, Jawbone or Fitbit were products design for individuals who had already committed to an active lifestyle. In that market focus, Squires and Co. felt a large portion of consumers were not being addressed.
“We felt that these devices were missing the primary category – the 68% of people that are overweight or obese and are driving $150 billion a year in obesity-related medical costs,” Squires explained. “We said, ‘everybody’s missing the mark here.’”
The Cleveland-based MOVABLE (yes, all caps) was designed to turn wellness and exercise into a group activity, and at its heart is a worn activity monitor, MOVband, which is simple to a fault, only indicating distance moved, numbers of individual movements and time of day. The device – released a year-and-a-half ago – can be connected to a computer and the data assembled on a dashboard where a user views his or her history of activity. Groups of people – offices, company departments, students in schools – set goals to literally move more. It doesn’t matter how, just move more. “We’re trying to inspire that extra walk at the lunch hour,” Squires said.
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