About The Inventor
Mike Farley, the inventor of the TorsoPlex is a Certified Personal Trainer and Certified Sports Nutritionist. Mike’s incredible career as a competitive bodybuilder spans more than 10 years from 1973 until he retired in 1983.
In 1982 Mike moved to Venice, California to train for the 1983 Mr. America contest and of course he trained at the famous Golds Gym. Mike has competed in more than 20 bodybuilding contests, placing 4th in the Mr. Jr. American, 6th place in the Mr. American, 2nd place in the Mr. Western American, 1st place in Mr. Badger State, 1st place JR Wisconsin, 1st place Mr. Wisconsin. At 59 years old, Mike still finds the time to train 5 days a week.
In 1983 Mike was hired as a personal trainer at the Jeff Launders One on One club in Los Angeles. In fact this was the first personal training facility in Los Angeles. Mike worked there till the spring of 1991 when decided to move back to Milwaukee, WI.
Through out Mike’s career, the one exercise machine that was missing in the fitness world was an abdominal machine that work your lower abdominals and obliques. Mike’s favorite abdominal exercise is the bicycle maneuver.
Mike decided that he would spend time and develop an abdominal machine that could duplicate that movement. In 2003 he built his first prototype, from there he kept improving it until he came to the machine you see on the website.
Mike applied for a patent on March 23, 2005 and received the patent Feb. 12, 2008. The next challenge is to test the market and see if this ab machine was as good as he thought it was. So, he sent a video to Hawthorne Direct. Hawthorne Direct is a producer of infomercials.
The next day, Mike received a phone call from the Marketing director of Hawthorne Direct. Hawthorne wanted Mike to bring the machine to the studio located in Iowa. Hawthorne also stated there is a private plane waiting for him at Timmerman Field in Milwaukee.
Mike's first thoughts, Hawthorne must be impressed with this machine to pay for a private plane. Hawthorne also stated that we get hundreds of products a month. However, the minute we played this video presentation, we wanted to see this machine in action.
Mike was not convinced yet, so he decided to check out another infomercial company to get their reaction. He contacted a company by the name of Infoworx, which is located in Boca Raton, Florida.
Ron Perlstein executive producer & CEO of Infoworx thought the TorsoPlex was unique and would be the ideal product for an infomercial. Ron Perlstein also stated we turn down 99 percent of the products presented to us. However the minute we saw the video we knew you had a product that was infomercial material.
Mike decided it was time to test the health club market to see what members thought about the machine. So, Mike contacted a friend of his that owned a health club in Milwaukee. He ask him if could bring in this new abdominal machine that he developed.
Mike received the okay; he had a sign made up stating that on Saturday morning, a new core class is starting with this new abdominal machine. A Couple days before the class Mike brought in 10 machines so members could get a sneak peak at the TorsoPlex. The only area available was the spinning room. On Saturday morning, 16 people showed up for the class.
Mike ran the class for a couple of months to get a true and accurate account of the amount of members taking the class. Mike also kept a record of how many members were participating in the spinning class. At the end of the 4-month period, there were four times more members taking the core class than the spinning class. Mike is very excited about the numbers. The reason for such excitement was the fact that almost every health club in America has spinning classes.
Mike also pointed out that every month there is some feature article about trimming your waist or how to sculpt your abs in the popular fitness magazines. That gives you an idea of what people want to accomplish. Everyone wants that six-pack waistline and that includes women.
Before Mike went the investor route, he wanted to be absolutely sure that this product would make money in the infomercial arena. After all these years of testing the market and making sure this machine was a winner he has decided to seek outside funding from investors. The monies will go to produce an infomercial, buy product, DVD video training class, models, and testimonials.
Once the infomercial airs, Mike wants to concentrate on getting a core class started in every health club across the United States. He also wants to start a certification program for instructors. Mike points out that there are more than 200,000 spinning class instructors.
The health club industry is a huge market with more than 31,000 clubs in the United States. Mikel Enterprises and TorsoPlex can add a significant amount of Jobs to this industry. Adding a commercial version Torsoplex, instructor certification program, DVD's, Torsoplex apparel, that's a huge amount of income the Torsoplex can generate. Mike wants to introduce the Torsoplex to Universities, military bases, personal fitness centers, chiropractor offices, wellness centers.
