Xponential Fitness, Irvine, California, has appointed Sarah Luna, who had served as president of its brand Pure Barre, to a new executive role as president of Xponential Fitness, the company announced on Jan. 12.
Xponential Fitness is a curator of franchised fitness brands Pure Barre, Club Pilates, CycleBar, YogaSix, StretchLab, Row House, AKT and STRIDE.
In the new position, Luna will drive efficiencies across all eight brands and Xponential departments, lead projects and partnerships for the parent company, and manage efforts with the executive team to achieve their growth plans, the company said.
Stepping into Luna’s role as president of Pure Barre will be Regan Stokes, who had been Pure Barre’s senior vice president of operations.
At 34 years old, Luna will be one of the youngest women to serve as the top executive of a global fitness company, according to Xponential. She started her career as a professional dancer and Pilates instructor before receiving her MBA at Chapman University in 2012. She was hired at Equinox in 2013 to run its Pilates department in its Los Angeles and Orange County clubs but also was a Jazzercise franchisee from 2014 to 2016.
While teaching a Pilates class, she met Anthony Geisler, the founder and CEO of Xponential Fitness. Geisler hired Luna in 2015 as national sales director and eventually senior vice president of operations for Club Pilates, where she opened hundreds of studios and developed and led the sales process that all Xponential brands use to this day. Upon Xponential’s acquisition of Pure Barre in 2018, Luna was promoted to president of that brand, where she led a nationwide studio refresh and conversion to ClubReady’s operating system. She also unified and streamlined studio operations for increased performance across all locations, which now total more than 570 around the world.
“We could not be more pleased to welcome Sarah Luna to the Xponential Fitness executive team,” Geisler said in the announcement. “Over the past five years, she has worked tirelessly to make sure Club Pilates and Pure Barre excel in the boutique fitness space. The 1,100+ successful studios that exist today between both of those brands is a byproduct of her excellent leadership skills and savvy strategy. She will be an invaluable asset in driving all of our brands to the same level of success over the next decade.”
Luna called it an honor to take on the new role of president at Xponential Fitness.
“Above all else, I want our franchisees to succeed and represent the best of the best in the boutique fitness industry,” she said. “Despite the challenges brought about by the pandemic, our owners have exemplified creativity and resilience over the past year, and I’m excited to work more closely with them and bring out even more of these positive qualities as we tackle new, loftier goals and initiatives across all our brands in 2021.”
Founded in 2017, Xponential Fitness now has about 1,700 studios under all its brands. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the company experienced growth in 2020, opening new locations in Saudi Arabia, Australia and South Korea with more studios in development in Spain, Germany, Singapore and the Dominican Republic. Xponential also debuted online workouts across all of its brands last year through its proprietary streaming platform called GO, bringing premium classes directly to consumers’ homes as a complement to the studio experiences the brands provide.