Three Sages Founder Greg Commins on Fighting Stress

Three Sages is a restorative wellness platform that delivers highly differentiated, nature-based content experiences where people live, work, and stay. Curated playlists are integrated within existing customer-facing digital offerings or via our immersive video-on-demand touchscreen displays in the built environment. We’re currently business-to-business (B2B) with an eye on direct-to-consumer (D2C) in the next 12 to 18 months.

When I looked at the incredible growth in the mindful movement and wellness tech spaces, I saw an incredible opportunity at the intersection of both those multi-billion dollar markets to bring to market an industry’s first product that could deliver immersive restorative experiences B2B and D2C. 

The world is more stressed than ever before, even pre-pandemic, and there is a lack of options to support our daily recovery to truly bring balance to our lives. There are hundreds of apps and gadgets, but nothing that could anchor a space for restorative practices like a Peloton bike would do for a home workout. Without recovery, we cannot live our best lives, so I founded Three Sages.

The Three Sages team is made up of wellness industry experts, athletes, weekend warriors, technologists, and sales and marketing leaders. Backed by more than a100 years of combined experience and having worked with iconic hospitality, fitness, and lifestyle brands, we understand what it takes to build products that can deliver a true holistic restorative wellness experience.

We have three main partners and a few advisors: myself (founder and CEO), Justin Campbell (head of sales), and Jeff Lawton (head of tech). I worked with Justin for a few years in a previous job, and we worked really well together. When I left to start Three Sages, it was only a matter of time before he joined me, which he did 18 months later. Justin was introduced to Jeff via a mutual contact in the industry, as we were looking to bring in a technology partner instead of using third-party developers. Jeff has decades of experience and also owns a crossfit business, so he knows the industry well. The three of us have been collectively building Three Sages over the past two years together.

Wellness is evolving. More people are focused on restorative efforts. It’s not just about hardcore fitness. Why? Because the world is more stressed than ever! We try to ground ourselves in nature, but urban dwellers don’t have access to it. And still, there is no widely available restorative wellness product to support mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing where we live, work, and stay. We bring a tangible product and immersive experience to communities via our touchscreens and curated playlists that deliver nature-based restorative content where people live, work, and stay. Our content platform makes programming restorative wellness scalable and cost-effective for organizations, and in the future, it will be the “must have” connected home wellness solution for daily recovery and restoration. 

We are currently B2B with an eye on the D2C market starting the third quarter of 2022. Our primary markets are hospitality, corporate wellness, and multi-family residences. Secondary markets include health clubs, senior living communities, and student recreation facilities. We are also in early-stage conversations with divisions of the military in the US. 

Our “big play” will be D2C, but instead of raising capital to support building out expensive showrooms and stores in all the major cities, we decided to focus on the B2B play first, targeting clients who could give our brand, content, and screens exposure to that D2C market. Installing at high-end hotels, corporate wellness programs, and apartment communities gives consumers the opportunity to test our content and screens, and in time, we plan on converting them to “home” clients.

Currently, most connected equipment companies skew towards fitness, and most meditation and yoga companies are only app-based. Yes, Mirror does double down on yoga being part of Lululemon, but they are still seen as a “fitness company.” No company has built a cost-effective, scalable screen and physical product that can support daily recovery. We are not a fitness company. We want to be your daily retreat, helping you recover and restore after a run, bike ride, hike, hard day at work, or stressed day at home on Zoom calls. We are the first company to solely focus on a restorative wellness connected piece of equipment.

This pre-seed round will be used to support our research and development efforts for our current B2B offering and early-stage development on a D2C prototype. We will also use the pre-seed funds for marketing and public relations to put us in a strong position as we enter our seed round in the first quarter of 2022.

I have put everything into this company. I sold my house four years ago to bootstrap the business. It was important for me to also put “skin in the game” and not use someone else’s money to prove there was a market for our product and ability to get traction. Now that we have a proof of concept, traction, and an impressive list of clients, we are seeking investment to support our growth. We have proven even in these difficult times that we could not only survive but thrive. Our goal is to bring balance to millions of people’s lives, and we are confident more than ever that we can do that.

Right now, we are focussing on the next 18 months to establish ourselves in the restorative wellness category and bring our D2C screen to market. In our business model and financials, we do have a road map over the next five years to achieve $100 million and more in revenue, so an acquisition of $400 million to$500 million is possible in that time frame if all goes to plan. If we aren’t acquired in the next five years, we plan on growing the business and possibly look at going public. There are a few potential acquirers for Three Sages across various industries — Google (smart homes), Amazon (link to Halo), Peloton (add to their product line), real estate management and developers (Blackstone, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, and the like), apparel companies (Nike, Under Armour, and the likes — extension of their app and similar to Lululemon play with Mirror), and a few more.