I take advantage of the convention's confessional tent-meeting vibe to approach dozens of instructors. Most work for gyms or offer a handful of classes in the margins of their "real" lives. But I also meet peripatetic entrepreneurs who teach Zumba full time, scuttling like hermit crabs from dance studios to rec centers to nursing homes. No one I talk to had considered a career in fitness prior to Zumba. Most had not planned to work for themselves. Explaining the curious turns their lives have taken, they unconsciously echo Warren Buffett's observation: The ultimate luxury is getting to do what you love every day.
On the four-hour drive between Zumba's Hallandale headquarters and Orlando, Perlman guides me through Zumba, A to Z. There are a lot of Zs. The company is constantly expanding its core curriculum with classes like Zumba Gold (for baby boomers), Zumbatomic (soon to be renamed Zumba Kids), Zumba Toning (body sculpting), and Zumba Sentao (choreography with a chair). There are different levels of instructor, including ZINs, ZESs (Zumba Education Specialists), and Z-Jammers (instructors of instructors). Zumbathons are classes and larger events where the money goes to charities.
I try to tease out revenue, but Perlman's not biting. ("Nine figures," he says, laughing. "So between $100 million and $999 million.") That said, if you accept the estimate of 100,000 instructors and use Zumba's claim that 85 percent of them pay $30 a month for ZIN, you start with recurring annual revenue of at least $30.6 million. Three and a half million pieces of apparel at an average price of $30 is another $105 million. That begins to give a sense of the scale of the company--though the picture is far from complete, missing things such as training and licensing fees, events, DVD sales, video-game licensing, and other revenue streams.
Perlman is especially chuffed at the rising profile of Zumba's music business. Its new CD, Zumba Fitness Dance Party, recently went platinum in France. "Universal, EMI, Sony--they're calling us and saying, 'Can we put this song we're launching out on the ZIN network?' " says Perlman. "Because they know 14 million people are going to hear it. We have artists saying, 'I don't need a record label. I'll just put my song up on iTunes, and Zumba can be my promotional vehicle.' "
But the industry most influenced by Zumba is still fitness. Its classes are a staple in the major chains: Curves, 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, and others. When negotiating those contracts, Perlman turned down offers of licensing fees, stipulating only that the gyms hire licensed Zumba instructors and participate in joint marketing. David Giampaolo, a Zumba director who is a founder of several health-club chains, predicts that 50 to 60 percent of exercise classes in gyms globally will eventually go Zumba. "Health clubs have been very good at speaking to the same type of person over and over again," says Giampaolo. "Zumba has opened the dialogue to a much wider audience. Their first motivation is enjoyment, so they do it. It's kind of like a miracle."
In March, the company took its first venture money, tapping Insight Venture Partners and the Raine Group. Outside investment is a natural evolution, as Zumba seeks to expand dominion over the worlds of music, fashion, and entertainment. Perlman describes some of the opportunities, including retail-stores-cum-fitness-clubs and the proliferation of fitness concerts. Other companies flood the Hallandale office with proposals for licenses and partnerships. The ZIN community is a fertile source of ideas.
The executive team views all these proposals through two lenses. One: Does it help the instructors? Two: Does it deliver FEJ-which is pronounced fedge and stands for Freeing, Electrifying Joy? It is impossible to talk to any Zumba staff member for more than 10 minutes without that vaguely Yiddish-sounding word popping up. If you understand FEJ, everyone tells me, then you understand Zumba.
In the Orlando Center, FEJ is so pervasive that it delivers a contact high. In a corridor off the hotel lobby, Vida Thorington, back for her fourth convention, greets friends with hugs and happy shrieks. ("Girl, you look so thin! How are you doing?") She spreads a pair of white cargo pants on a table and hands out marking pens. As her friends crowd around to sign the pants, Thorington, a clerk in a Cleveland natural-gas company for 28 years, tells me about two recent trips to Brazil: one to study the music, one to volunteer at Mother Teresa's shelter for women and children. She credits Zumba for exciting her curiosity about other cultures and giving her the confidence to explore the world.
"You see all those people wearing those crazy colors?" asks Thorington, waving to a scene that resembles Halloween in Greenwich Village. "That's what I had inside of me. Society tells you to walk inside the lines, but not here. There aren't any lines in Zumba. There isn't any right or wrong way.
"Zumba is where you get to be yourself," says Thorington. "It opens your spirit."
The digital version of this story, about Inc. Company of the Year Zumba Fitness, has been updated to report that Zumba's growth was 750 percent in the past three years, not two.
