A former SEAL Team 6 leader and creator of one of the most innovative pieces of workout gear in recent years will help host and judge a new fitness-focused reality-competition show.
TRX "suspension training" inventor Randy Hetrick, who spent most of his 14 years as a Navy officer leading SEAL units, will co-star alongside lead judge and "Biggest Loser" trainer Jillian Michaels, as well as fitness guru and all-around body shredder Obi Obadike.
"Sweat Inc." will premier on Spike on Oct. 20, with a 10-episode run that will pit 27 entrepreneurs against each other in what producers describe as a kind of mashup of "Shark Tank" and "American Idol."
"I'm not a cheesy reality TV show guy, but I do like both of those shows," Hetrick told Military Times.
The show was filmed over six weeks in Los Angeles.
"It reminded me a lot of forward deploying overseas," Hetrick said. "A whole bunch of people deploy into a warehouse and friggin' work around the clock until the mission is done. On average, the shoot days were 15 to 16 hours, and we had a couple days of shooting that went longer than 20 hours."
The winner of the competition gets $100,000 and a feature in Women's Health magazine. The winning brand also will be showcased at Retro Fitness gym locations across the country.
Hetick said viewers should expect to see some exciting new fitness concepts as well as plenty of competitive friction.
"There was a ton of human drama that was genuine. There was even drama between the judges. Life in a pressure cooker sometimes causes people to behave strangely. I think it's going to be some great TV," he said. "I can tell you it is as real as it gets."
Greek tale
Hetrick's role in the show comes amid some drama back at his own San Francisco-based company.
TRX's rise is the stuff of legend.
Hetrick took an idea he developed during long deployments in the Navy and turned it into a business with $50 million a year in revenues and more than 100 employees working in a trendy headquarters tower overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
TRX inventor Randy Hetrick has high hopes for his company's sales numbers this holiday buying season.
Photo Credit: Shae Rocco/thebrandamp.com
For three years running, TRX earned top billing in Outdoor magazine's annual "Best Places to Work" listing. But after 2011, the company suddenly vanished from the list.
In interviews with Military Times, former TRX executives said the company has floundered in recent years, describing a kind of one-hit wonder that has failed to build beyond its single successful product line.
"It's a classic Greek tale," said one former senior manager. "The company's initial success was driven by Randy's charisma and ego. In a good way — people would live and die for him. But the same charisma and ego that allowed the company to grow from his garage to a high rise in downtown San Francisco is what has gotten him into trouble. It became hubristic. And it's literally killing the company."
Over the last few years, growth has flattened off, and Hetrick has been forced to cut his workforce by more than 30 percent, from a peak of about 155 employees down to about 110 today.
Meanwhile, TRX is abandoning its expensive headquarters in the city's financial district and returning to its old location in a more modest section of town.
But Hetrick insisted "it's not accurate at all to describe what we're doing as a contraction," adding that he never liked the high rise in the first place.
"The financial district location was essentially a bad experiment," he said. "It was cool, but kind of a weird place to be for a training company. And we spent too much money."
A banner year
He said he was able to negotiate ending the company's lease early under terms that put more than $1 million back in the company coffers. "The move is really a godsend. It's allowed us to do some things that will really grow the company now."
Indeed, he says, TRX is on track to have "a banner year," provided several end-of-year military contracts come through.
"We'll go from $48 million last year to $54 million this year. If we don't get the military contracts we're bidding on now, (growth) will be flat, at about the same as last year."
He's also not surprised at the criticism.
"We got rid of a lot of people over the last two years who we just figured out aren't the right fit. The culture we were trying to build — a big-boy, big-girl rules kind of place ... requires that level of responsibility and accountability in the participants," he said.
"If I could have a company full of SEALs, we'd take over the world. They just drive that hard. We went through a period where we hired a whole bunch of people, only some of whom fell into the category and a bunch of them did not."
While he insists that internal surveys at TRX report high employee morale, any dissatisfaction among those who remain is largely a function of the ebb and flow of growth.
"Business rides in cycles — sometimes you're riding high, and sometimes you're sucking wind," he said. "When the business is growing and the press is rolling in, everyone is happy. But when the business goes through a flat spot, and you have to look at your expense structure and say, 'We need to lean this down a little bit,' well, then nobody is happy.
"Right now we're on a roll that's going to take us — I won't be foolish enough to say it'll take us upwards forever — but it's going to take us up for the next couple of years."
Meanwhile, he's banking on his "Sweat Inc." appearance to help boost the TRX brand.
"Five or six of the contestants had TRX built into their concepts," he said.
With the "Sweat Inc." finale slated for Dec. 23, "all through the holiday buying season, this show is going to be trumpeting TRX. We're expecting this year to be quite a good year."
