Adelaide couple Tobi Pearce and Kayla Itsines expect to earn $100 million in revenue this year from their Sweat fitness empire

ADELAIDE fitness entrepreneurs Tobi Pearce and Kayla Itsines expect to earn a staggering nine-figure sum in revenue from their health empire this year, as their company rapidly ramps up its local workforce.

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ADELAIDE power couple Tobi Pearce and Kayla Itsines expect to earn $100 million in revenue from their health and fitness empire this year, as their company ramps up its local workforce.

Sweat — the app and digital platform established by the couple at the start of last year — offers meal and workout plans and advice to a growing forum of women around the world, with social media a driving force behind the company’s phenomenal rise.

Ms Itsines — the face of the social media juggernaut — has 22.2 million Facebook followers and 9.6 million followers on Instagram.

Kayla Itsines and Tobi Pearce, who have built Sweat into a $100 million fitness empire. Picture: Instagram

Speaking at a South Australian Tourism Industry Council conference in Adelaide, Mr Pearce said the company currently employed 70 developers, project managers, marketers, nutritionists and other staff at its Glen Osmond Rd headquarters, with that number likely to grow to 100 following a recruitment drive.

“Last year we grew 86 per cent year-on-year in revenue, we are currently the world’s largest health and fitness app in terms of paying users and revenue, and this year we’re on track to hit $100 million, so I’m pretty excited about that,” he said.

“In terms of our reach and our marketing on social media, we run paid and unpaid campaigns, but we’re touching about 6 billion impressions per quarter.

“We’ve got a team of nearly 30 software engineers, which is probably a little unconventional for a South Australian business, but we do all of our software on site here. We do all of our localisation and translation here, in seven different languages.”

Since establishing the Bikini Body Guide fitness program in 2015, the couple have taken their popular boot camps around the world, attracting thousands of fans across the US, Europe and Australia.

Their digital platform offers tailored workout plans, dietary advice, yoga and post-pregnancy plans, and other fitness plans and advice tailored to women aged 20-35.

Mr Pearce said the company’s highly successful social media strategy avoided “vanity” metrics such as likes, comments and followers, and instead focused on forming emotional connections with consumers and “selling the dream” rather than hard selling products.

“I think a lot of the time people are really focused on vanity metrics — things that look really good on the outside but fundamentally may or may not actually have any influence on the bottom line,” he said.

“You could have 100 million fans but if none of them ever buy your product then there’s no real point.

“If your content isn’t considerate of the way that it makes people feel in an emotional sense then you’re not going to be invoking action in those users and obviously the action is them buying your product.”

Tobi Pearce and Kayla Itsines are engaged to be married. Picture: Facebook

Mr Pearce, now 25, said his entrepreneurial career started at the age of 18, when he established his first business from a spare bedroom of a rental house.

“I started off as a personal trainer, moved into running boot camps about 12 months later and I made my first million at 19, which was a really great moment,” he said.