In The Press

Daytona Beach Sunday News-Journal - May 1, 1983

Woman Designs Own Exercise machine At Her Holly Hill Firm

Kathy Pihlaja was humiliated when she tried going to an exercise salon after a pregnancy to trim her 192 pound figure. "How could you ever do this to yourself?" seemed to be the question in everyone's eyes when they saw her overweight body. Even more disappointing was the exercise equipment which seemed to produce more sweat and strain than noticeable results. There are probably a million women who have had the same frustrating experience, mrs. Pihlaja thought.

The now shapely businesswoman decided to capitalize on this apparent need for a more rejuvenating form of exercise for women. "There was no pleasant way to exercise or even an attempt to provide exercise equipment made for a woman's body. So I spent a lot of time developing something from thin air," said Mrs. Pihlaja.

What she developed is called The Feminine Way Exercise Equipment. It consists of five motorized exercise machines that incorporate the concepts of physical therapy and isometric exercises to help tone and strengthen muscles without sweat sand strain, Mrs. Pihlaja said.

Starting about five years ago on the back porch of her home, the determined woman who holds a master's degree in public administration worked her way through he mechanics, design, manufacture and marketing of this equipment. "I knew what I wanted but he question I kept asking was how to make this work. It was no small feat," she said as she glanced over her 4,000 square foot warehouse in Holly Hills filled with several already constructed exercise machines. It took two years of weekends and nights after work as a counselor for Health and Rehabilitative Services here as well as plenty of patience and endless telephone conversations with several out of state machinists to transform her idea into The Feminine Way.

Her knowledge of tools and physical therapy came in handy, she recalled. "The way to most women's hearts is with candy and flowers but to mine it's with tools," she laughed. Area tool suppliers didn't take this blonde seriously when she would walk into their stores with a list of specific items she needed. but, after while, they realized that she really knew what she was talking about and began to treat her with respect, she said.

Besides her knowledge o tools, which she learned form her father, Mrs. Pihlaja had familiarized herself with therapeutic machines during a year of long confinement to a wheelchair at the age of 12. Through physical therapy and a strong mind, she managed to overcome a number of health problems including arthritis.

By late 1981, all the kinks had been worked out the equipment and The Feminine Way was ready to me marketed. Mrs. Pihlaja's firm, Allied Associates, Inc., now is busy manufacturing a d selling the five piece exercise set to people who want to open their own figure salon. the firm provides buyers with a complete roadmap for success including training employees to use the equipment and pointer on how to design and market a salon.

St Cloud State University Alumni Paper

She Makes It Fun To Be A Loser

Katheryn Pihlaja, a 1971 SCSU social science graduate, doesn't subscribe to the "no pain, no gain" theory of physical fitness.

In 1977 Pihlaja designed "The Feminine Way," a series of five motorized exercise machines designed to create a slim, trim figure for women — without sweat of strain. Combining elements of physical therapy and isometrics the machines provide clients with enough repetitions in two weekly 50-minute sessions to equal 14 hours of traditional exercise. Women wear comfortable street clothes, and are surrounded by curtains as they work out. "I once weighed 192 pounds, and my trips to exercise salons were humiliating, " Pihlaja, now a trim 120, recalls. "Everyone was forced to wear leotards and we were scrutinized by a salon staff with no understanding of what it's like to be heavy."

In addition to providing weight loss, The Feminine Way also can contribute to mobility. Pihlaja, who herself uses the machines as a substitute for medication to treat severe arthritis, says The Feminine Way is being used in clinical settings as an ai to physical therapy.

To manufacture the exercise tables, Pihlaja in 1978 founded Allied Associates, Inc., in the Daytona Beach Suburb of Holly Hills, Fl. Twenty Feminine Way salons have now been established across the country, including one at Front Wall Racquetball in St. Cloud, and negotiations are underway with firms in several foreign countries. A similar exercise system for men, The Exec-U-Toner, is in productions. Her primary motivation is not entrepreneurship, she explains. "I'm not that much of a businessperson. I just want to make people's lives better."

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