Working in a workout at work
A pair of college classmates have scored with a sturdy mini-elliptical small enough to fit under a desk.
Todd Winters
Arnav Dalmia, right, Shivani Jain and their Cubii, a mini-elliptical cross-training device.
When Arnav Dalmia and Shivani Jain traveled from India a decade ago as freshmen entering the University of Chicago, they were strangers who happened to share the same flight and then a cab ride to campus. Later, as juniors, they would partner on the school's New Venture Challenge with a sharp-looking entry: a mini-elliptical cross-training device small enough to fit under a desk, allowing office-bound workers to burn calories while peddling away quietly at work. They came in second among more than 50 competitors.
In 2014, not long after graduating, Dalmia and Jain—both now 28 and married—started up their own company (along with classmate Ryota Sekine), called Cubii, and found a manufacturer in China to turn their original prototype into a market-ready product. They raised $300,000 in startup capital on Kickstarter, easily surpassing their goal of $80,000, then gave up a minority stake to raise more money from angel investors including Howard Tullman (former CEO of 1871) and Jai Shekhawat (founder and former CEO of Fieldglass).
Big names like Precor and Life Fitness make elliptical machines for health clubs, but "they were interested in selling only $3,000 machines for commercial use, not $300 machines that go under a desk," says Dalmia, who is CEO of Cubii (pronounced "Cube-ee"). "So we had the market to ourselves."
Cubii's products actually range in price from $250 to $400, and recently several Chinese-made rival machines priced as low as $100, led by a product called Desk Cycle, have appeared on the market that lack the weight and stability Cubii offers. The company, based in River North and now profitable and self-funded, is enjoying an impressive growth spurt as it has gained high visibility on Amazon, the QVC cable shopping channel and the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. Sales grew fourfold in 2018 to $10 million and are on track to exceed $20 million this year with a staff of just 18. "We think we can double again next year to $40 million in sales," says Jain, who heads marketing.
In the process, the firm's target audience is shifting a bit. Joy Shutters-Helbing, a sales administrator at Envoy Global in the Loop who commutes an hour each way from Aurora, has been using Cubii for four years. She considered briefly trying a treadmill at a standing desk in her office. "That's too distracting," says Shutters-Helbing, who has no time for regular health club workouts. "The Cubii is quieter and easy to use for an hour or two at a time to get my activity on track. Without it, I'd be very sedentary."
Recently, the machine has caught the eye of a medical rehabilitation audience. "Customers are calling us and telling us they are using it after knee and hip replacements," Jain says. "Since you don't need to stand when using Cubii, this has great appeal to senior citizens, too."
The company isn't done. Its engineers are working on other low-stress workout gear, including balance boards, for the office. Its marketing people are talking to Costco and Office Depot in a bid to widen the retail footprint. Foreign sales are blossoming in places like Australia, England and Germany. The downside is that tariffs on Chinese-made products have raised costs by 15 percent. "So far, we are absorbing that ourselves," Dalmia says.
