958: Entering the Home Fitness Connection Lane | Aina Konold, CFO, BowFlex

Among the industries on which the pandemic was most known to have afflicted an extra helping of earnings chaos, most business analysts agree that the home fitness market is perhaps most deserving of special mention. Indeed, few sectors logged steeper gains and more precipitous losses during COVID’s comings and goings than home fitness—and perhaps few demanded more reflexive, in-the-moment, decision-making inside the management cockpit. At BowFlex (formerly Nautilus), that cockpit has been “manned” by CEO Jim Barr and CFO Aina Konold, both of whom entered the C-suite during the latter half of 2019—only to have COVID immediately upend their ensuing 2020 flight plan. Over the past 4 years, Barr and Konold have remained buckled in together as they have educated investors in anticipation of completing a long-awaited turnaround that they predict will arrive in the near future. Along the way, CEO Barr has demonstrated a willingness to address tough questions—just as has Konold, whose facility for disarming unwelcome news is perhaps worthy of envy among her CFO peers. Says Konold: “A lot of finance people unfortunately stop after sharing the bad news—and then the CEO, the board, and the rest of the executive team, are left thinking: ‘Okay, so what do we do now?’ It’s important to have those answers.” –Jack Sweeney