Announce aking Stock with Pimm Fox and Carol Massar on demand by our Bloomberg Radio Plus app. Free for iPhone and Android devices. Caro ll right, it's a new year. Time for resolutions and things like looking good and if you don't, well, then you want to look good and one company that can maybe help you do that is Retrofit. The company's CEO, Jeff Hyman joining us here in studio. Normally in Chicago. Good to have you here on Bloomberg Radio. Jef i, Carol. How are you? Caro ey, I'm doing well. How are you guys doing and remind us what you do? Jef eah, we're doing great because January 2nd, this is kind of when it all happens, right? Caro his is your time, right? Jef his is our time. Seventy-five percent of Americans make resolutions and most of them will be off the wagon within two weeks. So, this is our time. Caro kay. Jef hat do we do? Retrofit is a data driven weight loss company. So, we operate under the premise that you can't manage what you don't measure and so we help our clients lose weight in a very smart and sustainable way. Our average client loses about 20 pounds and we do that by providing them with . . . Caro wenty pounds in six months, a year? Jef t depends on the client. It could be anywhere between 3 months and 12 and we do that by providing them with their own team of experts who they meet with via Skype video conference. So, it's essentially personalized counseling and then we also provide them with wireless tracking devices, a wireless scale, a wireless pedometer that send that data to their team so they can analyze it and hold the person accountable. Caro t's like an entourage. Jef retty much. Prim ut, Jeff this is not . . . can I just . . . really is this going to be like an individual consumer product or service. Isn't this the kind of way where you go into corporations and you basically you're selling look, the idea of healthier employees mean lower healthcare costs which means that the premiums aren't going to skyrocket and this is going to be a good thing for everybody. You get healthy and the company doesn't waste money. Jef o, it's really both. We started with a consumer service and so people just sign up on their own. They go to retrofitme.com and they can put in their credit card and sign up. Prim ight. Jef he fastest growing piece of our business is our employer piece, our business to business. So, we are adding large companies like Google and salesforce.com and the NFL Players Association and the reason that companies are getting involved to your question is that we help them reduce their healthcare costs so they can pass on the savings to their folks. Prim o they get to measure that because they say, all right, so we're going to sign up x number of people and they got to put in all this, what? Personal and data into some kind of system so that they can learn whether the work force is healthy? Jef ll the data from the individual employee is totally confidential. Prim kay. Jef hat's not shared with the employer. What the employer knows, however is that the average overweight employee costs them about $1500 extra per year. It's based on a long term study that Duke University did. So half of that is increased healthcare costs, half of that is increased absenteeism and productivity. So, if I'm an employer and I have say, 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom were overweight. This is a tens of millions of dollars a year issue and so . . . Prim ut you would know that looking at data that was compiled and confidentially kept. Jef orrect. Prim o, you could see, I'd like to see the average weight of all my employees. Jef orrect. We show all the aggregate data online instantaneously. So, if I'm head of HR, head of benefits, a CFO, I log in, I see in aggregate how many people have logged in, how many have weighed in because we provide them a wireless scale whether they're sleeping, how they're doing and so this provides essentially another measure or metric for the company, a wellness metric. Caro ou're talking about privacy so a company might not know what my specific metrics are but they have the group as a whole. How can they utilize that then in terms of policies? Jef es, so the company would never know your information. Then we have . . . Caro ou say that when there's lots of leaks. Jef o. We've had . . . Caro n our general world. Jef eah, in general, of course. So, how would the company use it? Well, if a company knows for example that its employees are struggling with a particular issue; a bigger issue for many of our employers is stress. Stress management which of course has huge connections to over eating and therefore weight. They could help put programs in place to manage that. We'll actually provide them with free webinars and content to help their folks to manage stress. Sleep is another one. Lack of sleep has been proven to be correlated with weight gain. Prim on't you need a carat for this to work? Jef o, some companies that we work with are starting to put a carat in place and others are actually starting to put a stick in place and others use both, a combination. So, the carat that we're seeing most often is that the employer is saying, look, if you're going to be an over weight smoker, I am telling you now that by 2015 your premiums are going up. If you want to avoid that increase, here is a program to kind of help you do that. Other companies are putting a stick in place so it really depends on what the company wants to do. Caro ut you definitely see more corporate interest? Jef uge. It's the fastest growing piece. Prim eff, a little bit more on your background on how you came to focus on this idea of applying technology to trying to get your mind around and your strategy around dealing with healthcare costs. Jef o the way I came to this was actually pretty typical. So, I gained a pound a year from the time I graduated business school. So, I'm about 20 years out, you do the math. So, it crept up on me over the years. By the way, that's the average American. Gains about a pound a year from the time they turn about 25 or 30. I tried everything. I tried every diet and I would lose weight and gain it back. Lose weight, gain it back just like so many people and I finally went out to one of these destination weight loss resorts with my family where in the matter of a week I basically concluded that everything I thought I knew was wrong about weight loss and about dieting. I had bought into the same misinformation. So, I came back from that experience. Prim ut like you were would be an example? Caro eah, what's the misinformation? Jef o, the number one thing that people do in this country to lose weight is skip meals. Prim kay. Jef hat's the number . . . if you ask people, what's your plan? Prim ight. Jef ell, skipping meals is probably the worst thing that someone can absolutely do. It shuts down your body. Your metabolism just stops. Prim ight. Jef o that's just one example. Prim kay. Jef o, at one of these resorts which are pretty expensive unfortunately. You get to work with these amazing experts and so that's when the light bulb went on and I came back and started working on creating Retrofit. Prim hat were you doing at the time though? Jef was working at a private equity firm. Prim kay. Jef n Chicago. Prim o, this became your own start up? Jef t became my obsession. I knew there was a weight issue in this country. You know, 68 percent of Americans are overweight and 95 percent of dieters fail and so it just occurred to me that there was an opportunity to kind of reimagine weight loss. Caro eff, how much of you do you say, gosh! Thank God, my timing because people now all have wearable devices on. I've got one on right now, a jaw bone that's kind of monitoring some things that I'm doing, but there is that going on. There's also companies that are much more concerned about those rising healthcare costs and they want to know what employees are doing and just kind of the whole world or at least certainly the United States is much more focused on wellness. Jef eople underestimate the role that luck and timing play in start up companies. We started about two and a half years ago and at the time I could not have anticipated like you said employer's interests in what Retrofit is doing. That was not . . . Caro ecause that's crucial to your success. Jef t wasn't even on our radar . . . Caro eah. Jef . . two years ago. These wearable devices were just starting to hit the market. Skype was just starting to penetrate the market which is what now we now use to communicate with our clients for video conferencing. So, all these things have kind of conspired in a perfect storm and then you overlay that with the obesity epidemic in this country and a great company can be born. So, luck and timing play a very big part. Prim ow many people you got doing the program already? Jef e have thousands of people on the program. Caro ow many thousands? Jef et's say mid thousands. How's that? Mid single digit thousands. Prim kay. Caro kay. Jef e've signed about 100 companies with that are now rolling it out to their employees. Prim hat's the best . . . what's the most . . . well, you said Google for example? Jef oogle is probably one of our better known clients. Prim ow do they sign up? They call you or can they sign up online? What is that also technologically advanced? Jef es, so it's all done online. So, employers will promote it and roll it out to their people. Not just their employees by the way but spouses, dependents, partners, all of whom are on the healthcare program. Prim ut how do they get access? Is there a website that they will be going to? Jef es. They will be. We set up a customized website for the employer. By the way, the employer doesn't pay for any of this unless they want to. If they choose to, they can subsidize the cost of the program but if they don't want to that's totally fine too and so companies will come to us and say, I want to roll out a weight loss program . . . Prim ight. Jef . . and it's up to them if they want to pay. Caro hat about competition? There's the Weight Watchers out there. There's Jenny Craig. There's lot of different well known established brands that when people think weight loss they think of those companies. They might not necessarily think of Retrofit first. Those are companies that could kind of do a similar thing. Jef o, it's a huge market. $50 billion a year are spent in the U.S. trying to lose weight so it's not a win or take all market . . . Caro eah. Jef . . for starters. Caro r you don't mind a small piece of that pie. Prim e has been in private equities. Jef f we had a small . . . Prim nd you've raised money, right? Jef e've raised venture capital. Prim think more than $15 million. Jef e've raised . . . Prim raper . . . Jef es. Prim ight? Jef raper Fisher Jurvetson. Caro eah. Jef s well as just last week, Cambia Health Solutions which is the biggest health insurance the biggest health insurance company in the northwest U.S. These companies have realized that there's an opportunity to really reimagine weight loss and to use technology which is maybe not the core competency of some of the established companies. Caro ight. Jef o, as an example. Today we introduced Retrofit group. So we are basically reinventing group meetings for people that want to do weight loss in a group meeting environment, but now you're doing it online. So we're using GoToMeeting where you're meeting with a group of people online and communicating that way and the things you can do are incredible. You can have meetings at night and on weekends, things that maybe a retail location might not lend itself to. Caro o very flexible. Jef nd convenient. Caro ou've got 20 seconds. You've got a well known investor J.B. Pritzker. Jef es. Caro e's an investor and he's also a customer. Jef client. Yes. So J.B. is fantastic. He has been very supportive. He runs the Pritzker1 Venture Capital Group in Chicago. I'm not going to disclose how much weight he's lost,1 but it's a very meaningful amount. He tweets about it, he Facebook's about it, blogs about1 it, he has referred many other clients. And what's notable is he's a guy. Fifty percent1 of our clients are men, which is five times the industry average. Guys love Retrofit.1 Caro lient first and then investor? J.B. Jef nvestor first and then client. And1 then DFJ wasn't a client first and then decided to invest.1 Caro nteresting stuff. Jeff thank you so much. Happy New Year.1 Jef hank you guys. Appreciate it. Caro eff Hyman, chief executive officer1 at Retrofit joining us here at Taking Stock. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol1 Massar here with Pimm Fox. Announce aking Stock, weekdays at 1 PM Eastern. In New York on Bloomberg 1130. In Boston on 1200 AM and 94.5 FM HD2. Or on1 Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel 119. Copyright 2014 Bloomberg LP.