Zumba Fitness CEO Alberto Perlman is celebrating 20 years in the business, and he attributed the company's success to its ability to adapt with the times.
Prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the company had already made it through some trying financial times during the 2008 Great Recession before having to figure out how to navigate the last 13 months.
"Our mission at Zumba is to help instructors change more lives, and so we built technology to help them, whether it's to learn new moves, new choreography, create assets for their classes, to marketing assets," Perlman told Cheddar. "When the pandemic hit, in 60 days our tech team had developed a platform for them to teach online, and we had our instructors migrate to teaching online."
And, just six years after its 2001 launch, the company circled back to its retail roots and began selling clothing. Today, the company has grown its apparel line and even added shoes.
"We started apparel because our instructors were asking to wear the brand, and we started seeing lots of momentum and lately what we've seen is, I mean we sell million of clothing items, but our biggest item right now is shoes," Perlman said. "We've developed the perfect shoes for dance fitness."
With music being such a major part of Zumba's functionality, the company has collaborated with several music artists to create tunes specifically for the business in the Zumba music lab. It's just one of the efforts the company has pushed as it looks to remain competitive and relevant in the fitness industry.
