John and Elizabeth, Lovers of Classical Pilates
As you read from Roberta and David, we (John and Elizabeth) have invested to become the majority owners of Gratz Pilates. We did this for several reasons, but mostly because we are huge fans of Gratz Pilates, and are very strong supporters of teachers and studios that teach classical Pilates. We are excited to partner with David Rosencrans and Roberta Gratz to better meet your needs and help take Gratz Pilates into the future successfully.
Our plan is to invest not only capital, but also our time to help Gratz. We will focus initially on two things.
#1 – Ensuring that Gratz remains a company focused on building exceptional quality apparatus.
#2 – Dramatically reduce delivery lead-times while keeping to an exceptionally high-quality standard.
At least for now, that’s pretty much it - we want to help Gratz deliver exceptional quality in a timely manner.
Earlier we mentioned that we’re devotees of classical Pilates. We’ve trained with many great, classical trainers and hope to meet many of you that train classical in the months and years ahead. We look forward to meeting you and learning more about what you are looking for from Gratz. Below is a little more background about us.
John has been a customer of Gratz for over a decade. John took his first Pilates training more than 20 years ago and got much more serious with Pilates when he started taking classes from a great, classically trained instructor in 2011. John has a cliché story with how he started with Pilates back then, a story that is like many others. He injured himself skiing. A back injury that led to several challenges including very painful sciatica. The treatment recommended to him at the time was surgery, but his doctor told him that surgery was not guaranteed to be successful. He told John most of his patients do well, but the surgery does not always succeed. He suggested that if John could strengthen his core, he might be able to recover and avoid the surgery entirely. He started Pilates training and within a handful of months his symptoms disappeared, and he has been a Pilates enthusiast since then. Today, he trains regularly with three different classical trainers in California. He plans to continue to train and learn more about classical Pilates. Elizabeth is also learning classical Pilates. We both love it.
We first connected with David Rosencrans when we learned how long it would take to have Gratz build and deliver the equipment we ordered for our home gym. Frankly, it was much longer than we had hoped. Also we heard from the studios we trained with that they too had to wait longer than they thought reasonable to get their apparatus. This all got us thinking, and we reached out to David, and from that initial meeting, we also met with Roberta. We started talking and that led to our investment. We very much look forward to working closely with both David and Roberta in the years to come, as well as all of you!
Our plan is to invest not only capital, but also our time to help Gratz. We will focus initially on two things.
#1 – Ensuring that Gratz remains a company focused on building exceptional quality apparatus.
#2 – Dramatically reduce delivery lead-times while keeping to an exceptionally high-quality standard.
At least for now, that’s pretty much it - we want to help Gratz deliver exceptional quality in a timely manner.
Earlier we mentioned that we’re devotees of classical Pilates. We’ve trained with many great, classical trainers and hope to meet many of you that train classical in the months and years ahead. We look forward to meeting you and learning more about what you are looking for from Gratz. Below is a little more background about us.
John has been a customer of Gratz for over a decade. John took his first Pilates training more than 20 years ago and got much more serious with Pilates when he started taking classes from a great, classically trained instructor in 2011. John has a cliché story with how he started with Pilates back then, a story that is like many others. He injured himself skiing. A back injury that led to several challenges including very painful sciatica. The treatment recommended to him at the time was surgery, but his doctor told him that surgery was not guaranteed to be successful. He told John most of his patients do well, but the surgery does not always succeed. He suggested that if John could strengthen his core, he might be able to recover and avoid the surgery entirely. He started Pilates training and within a handful of months his symptoms disappeared, and he has been a Pilates enthusiast since then. Today, he trains regularly with three different classical trainers in California. He plans to continue to train and learn more about classical Pilates. Elizabeth is also learning classical Pilates. We both love it.
We first connected with David Rosencrans when we learned how long it would take to have Gratz build and deliver the equipment we ordered for our home gym. Frankly, it was much longer than we had hoped. Also we heard from the studios we trained with that they too had to wait longer than they thought reasonable to get their apparatus. This all got us thinking, and we reached out to David, and from that initial meeting, we also met with Roberta. We started talking and that led to our investment. We very much look forward to working closely with both David and Roberta in the years to come, as well as all of you!
- John Riccitiello and Elizabeth Osterman
