Hydrow

Key successes

• Created a connected rowing machine disguised as a piece of beautiful home sculpture
• Surpassed its $100,000 funding goal in just four minutes
• Took the product from idea to reality in less than fifteen months
• Secured over $20 million in growth equity funding

Challenge: Translate an experiential product concept into a competitive commercial offer.

Hydrow™ founder and CEO Bruce Smith was a former USA Rowing national team coach with a vision: bring the authentic feel of rowing on water into off-water locations. His highest aspirations for the project were to provide an authentic rowing experience that would earn both the respect of professional rowers and the interest of people new to the market – those who have never rowed on or off the water before. What he imagined was a next-generation home version of this rowing experience he called Live Outdoor Reality™ (LOR).

By combining hardware that evoked sleek racing shells and movement on water with an immersive video that amplified and magnified that experience, he knew he could challenge the conventions of home rower training. But to compete in the rapidly growing connected fitness segment, he knew his home rowing simulator could not look like a typical indoor rowing machine. What it could look like was a question and a challenge he brought to PA's design team.

Approach: Work backward from what a rowing machine does to what it might look like.

The project goal was clear: create an innovative new product that would stand out from its category while bringing the experience of rowing on water to an indoor user. In addition, the critical path outlined by our development partner Chris Paul, the CTO of Hydrow, required an ambitious timeline. Both drove our approach: co-create this next-generation solution via an interdisciplinary process that aligned design, engineering, and rowing expertise.

Our first team workshop began by ritually sinking received notions of what a rowing machine now looks like. And imagining instead how the experience envisioned by the team at Hydrow—an elegant, beautiful, timeless craft moving silently and swiftly across still waters—might be conveyed. Drawing inspiration from classic cars, iconic furniture, moving water, and other natural stimuli, the team pushed the limits of form before working back toward the engineering requirements.

Those criteria were considerable. Could it be nearly silent? Could the resistance gearing be provided without a visible flywheel? Could the silhouette evoke the flowing lines of a racing shell while still providing rock-solid stability for the rower? How might the display screen be made integral to the unit? Navigating these concerns with finesse is a discipline that PA’s designers have honed over the years working in diverse teams with expertise across a range of disciplines including electrical engineering and materials science.

Given the aggressive timeline, the collaborative aligned through a series of interactive design cycles and product model iterations. The development work was interspersed with input sessions with experienced rowers, fitness industry experts, and novice users who pressure-tested new conventions and guided refinements. The result was a rower with an iconic form factor, made possible by provocative low-profile engineering that provided a uniquely compelling user experience — the same trifecta laid out for us by Bruce and Chris at the outset.

Solution: A connected rowing machine disguised as a piece of beautiful home sculpture.

The sculptural design of Hydrow stands apart in a category where the rugged chassis of most machines announces their utilitarian role. With its signature cast-aluminium top rail and slender profile, the machine is immediately inviting and approachable. The absence of the resistance flywheel creates an airy space for the rower to sit while they orient the seat, screen, and rowing handles and adjust their headsets. Once rowing, the sleek shape of the platform and the immediacy of the on-screen trainer quickly simulate the experience of gliding on water. Like a beautiful piece of furniture, the elegant Hydrow rower is a next-generation fitness solution that is at home at home.

Impact: Crowdfunding goals surpassed in minutes; equity funding secured soon thereafter.

The Hydrow™ Live Outdoor Reality™ rower debuted on Indiegogo to rave reviews. Trending immediately, it surpassed its $100,000 funding goal in just four minutes. Since then, the Hydrow crowdfunding campaign has raised over $1 million from over 1,000 backers. Favourably reviewed as the “Peloton for rowing,” Hydrow has been widely featured in mainstream media, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Fast Company, and more.

Hydrow has raised almost $200 million in funding and grown sales by 500 per cent in 2020. Backers include equity firm L Catterton and Rx3 Growth Partners, as well as high profile investors such as Justin Timberlake, Lizzo, NFL player Travis Kelce, and comedian Whitney Cummings.