Exploring Life & Business with Dale & Elizabeth of Sweats & The City & Orro

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dale & Elizabeth.

Dale & Elizabeth, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We were originally set up as blind roommates in 2015 in NYC and quickly fell into friendship. Having never met before move in day, we immediately found that we had a lot in common, with one thing being the booming NYC fitness scene. After many nights of coming home from work, cooking dinner together and discussing the workout classes we tried that day, we realized there was a gap in the market. We wanted to create a space where we could review and share the workouts of NYC, as it was something we had been searching for. A few months later, Sweats & The City was born: an all-encompassing blog and IG featuring in-depth reviews trusted recommendations and the truest tips on all things fitness, health and wellness. We eventually grew an Instagram account of 111k+ followers, a website with over 500 studio reviews, and a Facebook community of over 40k people. And several years later, when the pandemic hit and we needed to pivot to virtual, we created an app, ORRO. ORRO features an extensive live and on-demand library of workouts and self-care classes taught by hundreds of our favorite instructors and methods. We essentially took 6+ years of industry expertise and hand-selected a highly curated roster. The app is meant to celebrate all the amazing individual methods out there while offering our community variety and a curation of workouts they can trust and do anywhere, anytime.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In March 2020, when the world shut down (including all the fitness studios we were reviewing) we knew we had to pivot quickly. At the time, we weren’t sure what this would look like or for how long, but we knew our goal would be the same as always: to show up for our community and offer them support. It all started with a daily “live workout schedule” posted on our Instagram story every evening. We had instructors submit the classes they were teaching on Zoom or IG live and would organize it in a spreadsheet, so our audience could see which live workouts were happening the following day. This schedule was circulated amongst thousands of people (corporations were even sending it to their employees!) and we kept it up for months. As Instagram workouts started to dwindle and instructors began creating their own methods (as many had lost their studio jobs) we created Sweat with Sweats: a virtual platform providing a curated variety of live and on-demand workouts – with the goal of bringing back a sense of connectivity – and allowing for movement together. This allowed our subscribers to take classes from all the different instructors and methods for one price.

With the fitness world forever changed, we worked hard to listen to our community and understand our follower’s needs for over a year. In January 2022, taking all of this feedback into account, we launched ORRO: a highly revamped, rebranded version of our original platform. As the gold standard of boutique virtual fitness, ORRO provides a virtual platform for wellness rituals, going beyond your typical workout platform – and offers both iPhone + Android apps as well as an elevated, easy-to-use interface. ORRO’s weekly schedules and on-demand library are made up of hand-picked, live fitness classes, meditation sessions, sound baths + so much more. Following the success of the out app, we recently expanded into food and recently launched a healthy prepared meal delivery service: Nourish by ORRO. This menu is free of gluten, dairy and refined sugar, all hand-selected by us, and packed with nutritious ingredients to nourish from within. And it’s delivered straight to your door; like meal prep without the prep.

We truly believe – that with both ORRO and Nourish – our extensive industry research and personal experience has allowed us to provide products that help our community establish a daily routine (centered around both physical + mental health) and become their best selves!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Sweats & The City & Orro?
For the first year following our launch of SATC, it was just the two of us, while we also worked our full-time jobs. It then got to the point where we felt we needed to invest 100% in the brand in order to achieve our goals. We mapped out our finances, created a timeline, and meticulously planned, and were eventually able to quit our jobs to do SATC full time. Fast forward three years, and we now have a team of 5 and are looking to expand further!

Our goal is and has always been to cultivate a strong community while sharing what we love. Whether it’s a new beauty product, restaurant or instructor, we’re proud to uplift and inspire our community daily.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
You can follow @sweatsandthecity + @orroapp, start a free trial of ORRO here, and check out our healthy meal delivery here!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sweatsandcity.com/
• Instagram: @sweatsandthecity