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CrossFit Changed How They Communicate with Affiliates. Is It Working?
Over six months into CrossFit’s leadership and culture overhaul, affiliate owners share perspectives on changes for the community.
Last updated on February 5th, 2021
CrossFit made sweeping changes in 2020 following a public outcry around its former CEO’s actions. Out of the storm came new leadership and efforts to change the culture as affiliate owners grappled with the decision to remain affiliated with the brand.
BarBend spoke with affiliate owners about their previous struggles to connect with CrossFit HQ and CrossFit HQ’s recent efforts to create positive change in communication and community. Communication is especially salient in the middle of a pandemic when many need community but are often physically isolated.
Cory Richards
On June 27, 2020, Eric Roza masked up and flew from Boulder, Colorado, to San Jose, California, where he rented a car and began driving south. A tech entrepreneur who made his name and fortune with a data company he sold to Oracle for $1.2 billion in 2014, Roza, 53, had just spent, according to one source, $200 million buying CrossFit Inc., the largest fitness chain in the world, somewhat bigger than Dunkin’ and somewhat smaller than Domino’s. At its peak, you could have found one of the more than 15,000 CrossFit affiliates at most latitudes and longitudes around the world in Nuuk, Greenland; in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; in Païta, New Caledonia; in Gillette, Wyoming. Roza had big ideas that he believed could radically change the brand. And despite the Starbucks-level ubiquity of CrossFit boxes and the titanic role the company has played in the functional-fitness boom of the 21st century, CrossFit needed to change desperately.