The Stack: How Salesforce, Oracle & Shopify are Transforming Fitness, Wellness & Spa Retailers
From agentic AI to digital storefront tools, three of the world’s top software companies are helping fitness and wellness businesses level up
This story is part of “The Stack,” a weekly column that takes a deep dive into the ways tech companies are shaping the future of fitness and wellness
The fitness, wellness and spa industries are experiencing a surge in demand, driven by a growing focus on personal health and well-being. To meet this evolving landscape, retailers in these sectors are increasingly leveraging advanced tech solutions to enhance customer experience, streamline operations and also drive growth.
Leading the charge are companies such as Salesforce, Oracle and Shopify — each offering distinct platforms and technologies tailored to the unique needs of this dynamic market.
Salesforce: The Customer 360 for Personalized Wellness
Salesforce, a pioneer in cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM), empowers fitness, wellness and spa businesses to build a holistic view of their clients, often referred to as “Customer 360.” Their offerings focus heavily on personalized engagement, data-driven insights and automation. The solution has become a game-changer in the market.
At its heart, Customer 360 is creating personalized customer journeys. Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud enables businesses such as fitness centers, spas, yoga studios and fitness equipment retailers to create intelligent customer journeys by delivering tailored communications via email, SMS and other channels. This is crucial for sending personalized class recommendations, appointment reminders, promotional offers and post-service follow-ups.
Salesforce is also enhancing service and support functions. With Service Cloud and the newer Agentforce AI capabilities, businesses can offer 24/7 customer support, answer queries in natural language and automate routine tasks like class scheduling and other activities. This frees up human staff to focus on more complex, personalized interactions. Equinox, for instance, uses Agentforce to provide a personal AI fitness concierge experience.
In a case study about Equinox, Salesforce described Agentforce as the “agentic layer of the Salesforce Platform,” which will help Equinox members “pursue their fitness goals by making their online experience efficient and personal.”
“Members will be able to ask fitness and amenity questions in natural language through the Equinox Plus app and receive instant answers from Agentforce,” Salesforce stated in the case study. “Scheduling a class — a task that used to take up to 10 steps via their previous chatbot — will feel like talking to a friendly Equinox customer service rep.”
Eswar Veluri, chief technology officer for Equinox, said when you “have hundreds of thousands of members, each one’s need is different. What we’re hoping to do with Agentforce is provide that one-on-one anticipatory service, that recommendation, that coaching tip, solving a problem, solving an objective, more easily, at scale.”
Sales Cloud, meanwhile, helps manage leads, track client interactions and identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities for services such as personal training packages, spa treatments, or premium memberships. Salesforce also offers unified data and analytics. The company’s Data Cloud (including Tableau and CRM Analytics) brings together data from various sources, providing a comprehensive understanding of customer behavior, preferences and engagement. This allows for data-driven decisions on service offerings, marketing campaigns and operational improvements.
Finally, Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud facilitates online sales of products (e.g., supplements, activewear, beauty products) and extends online shopping experiences to physical locations through features like “Endless Aisle.”
Oracle: Comprehensive Retail Management & Hospitality Solutions
Oracle offers a robust suite of solutions under its “Oracle Retail” umbrella, designed for comprehensive retail business management. While not exclusively focused on fitness, wellness and spa, their retail and hospitality solutions are highly adaptable to these sectors, emphasizing operational efficiency, omnichannel experiences and inventory management.
Oracle helps businesses level up their omnichannel operations. With Oracle Retail, businesses can manage sales across various channels — online, in-store and mobile — ensuring a consistent customer experience and unified inventory. And it works to maximize merchandising and inventory management functions. Oracle’s solutions optimize purchasing, inventory tracking and supply chain management for products sold in retail spaces within fitness centers, spas or wellness clinics. This is crucial for managing supplements, apparel or beauty products.
Regarding point-of-sale (POS) systems, Oracle’s “Micros POS” systems are widely used in hospitality and retail, providing integrated hardware and software solutions for processing transactions, managing staff and collecting sales data in physical locations. The company also helps businesses strengthen their loyalty and reward programs. Oracle solutions can facilitate the creation and management of loyalty programs to enhance customer retention and encourage repeat business. Oracle also provides tools for analyzing sales data, customer behavior and operational metrics to identify trends and optimize business strategies.
Under the hood, Oracle uses advanced AI and machine learning to sharpen demand forecasting, offer more personalized recommendations and manage fraud detection within retail operations. It also allows for integration of POS hardware and software, and provides a unified system for in-store transactions, including mobile POS solutions.
Shopify: The E-commerce Powerhouse for Digital Presence
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform that has become a go-to for fitness, wellness and spa businesses looking to establish or expand their online presence. The platform simplifies the process of setting up an online store, managing products and processing orders, making it accessible even for smaller businesses.
Shopify provides user-friendly tools and customizable themes to quickly launch professional-looking online stores for selling fitness apparel, wellness products, spa gift cards, or even online course access. Shopify also allows businesses to sell across multiple channels, including their website, social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and physical locations using Shopify POS.
The platform also automatically syncs stock levels across all sales channels, helping to prevent overselling and stockouts and it offers built-in marketing tools and integrations for email campaigns, social media marketing and loyalty programs to drive traffic and sales. Shopify also provides a seamless checkout process with various payment options, aiming to reduce cart abandonment. For fitness and wellness businesses offering recurring memberships, online classes, or product subscriptions, Shopify helps with that too.
Salesforce, Oracle and Shopify each bring unique strengths to the fitness, wellness and spa industries. Salesforce excels at deep customer understanding and personalized engagement through its CRM and AI capabilities. Oracle provides robust, integrated solutions for managing complex retail operations, inventory and point-of-sale. Shopify stands out as an accessible and powerful e-commerce platform, enabling businesses to establish and scale their online presence with ease.
By leveraging these sophisticated technologies, retailers in the fitness, wellness and spa sectors can enhance customer experiences, optimize internal processes and ultimately drive sustainable growth in a competitive and evolving market. The common thread across these platforms is the increasing reliance on cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics to deliver more personalized, efficient and interconnected services.
But these tech providers on not resting on their laurels. This year, each is working on new ways for businesses to create better experiences for their customers, guests and clients.
For inquiries and tips related to “The Stack,” please reach out to [email protected]