Making sleep part of performance.
Sleep had strong member interest, but it remained an overlooked part of regeneration—both inside Equinox and in the broader wellness conversation.
Equinox partnered with Sleep Number, a performance-bed company focused on sleep quality, to build a series around sleep and meditation.
The goal was to make sleep feel relevant to training, focus, and everyday performance—not separate from them.
Why sleep belonged in the Equinox ecosystem.
We first had to reframe how sleep content was relevant to members and to the Equinox brand, then identify what new experiences that relevance could unlock.
Equinox pillar
Movement, Nutrition, and Regeneration were core to the brand. Sleep was an important part of regeneration, but difficult to experience inside the club.
Audience interest
Social polls and member-app surveys showed existing member interest in sleep, giving us evidence that the topic was worth developing.
Tier X coaching
Sleep coaching already existed as a premium Tier X service. The partnership could introduce more members to its value.
Trend reading
Wellness culture celebrated food and exercise while often treating sleep as lazy or unproductive. That tension fit Equinox's appetite for challenging convention.
A fitness brand entering unfamiliar territory.
With a brand built around movement and physical performance, sleep pushed Equinox into a different kind of member experience.
Make the partnership experiential, not just promotional.
The partnership centered on sleep, meditation, and manifestation. Beyond a traditional microsite, email, and in-club media, we added formats that could make a dense topic more tangible.
Balance information-heavy content with a visual experience.
The partnership needed a microsite to host the content and promote Sleep Number.
Because many of the core pages were text-heavy, the rest of the experience needed to be visually led and structurally simple so the entire flow stayed balanced.
Use the new topic as a testing ground.
Sleep, audio content, and the downloadable e-book were all new territory for this partnership, so we tested across design, copy, and content to watch for changes in engagement.
Designing for an in-club handoff to digital.
I believed QR codes would be a useful way for members to move from digital signage into experiences like audio meditation. The approach did not receive stakeholder approval at the time.
A broader content ecosystem created more ways to engage.
The new offerings expanded what could circulate through the club, app, and member communications. That created a more connected ecosystem across editorial content, audio meditation, and live experiences.
A new format came with practical constraints.
Adding audio was new, and the implementation had to work within limited build time and technical support.
The player needed to work naturally with the app experience.
Members should not have to learn a novel media pattern.
The content needed to travel beyond a single page.
We needed a solution that did not depend on a heavy custom build.
I compared available options and narrowed the field to Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. I chose SoundCloud because it gave us a way to test the format without prematurely branding an undeveloped Equinox podcast channel.
Turn dense editorial content into something easier to retain.
The series included six distinct article types: an introduction, three audio-supported articles, an interview, and a workout article with yoga moves.
To avoid ending with another long text-heavy experience, we compiled the key sleep information into a downloadable e-book.
I designed the content in segmented, bite-sized sections to improve comprehension and retention.
Extend a five-move routine into a fuller physical experience.
The nighttime yoga routine only contained five moves, so we looked for ways to make the event feel richer before and after the class itself.
Working with the Spa team, we added mini massages, while Sleep Number contributed embroidered pillowcases for attendees.
The experiment helped open a path to EQX Talks.
The Sleep Number partnership helped make audio content a credible format inside Equinox. That thinking later continued through EQX Talks, where experts discuss topics from sleep routines to meditation in live and recorded formats.
This project became another example of an Equinox partnership that connected physical and digital experiences—from imagery and microsite design to technical research and live programming.
