05/30/2026
As we wrap up our 15th anniversary look back, it seems fitting to end with the most ambitious project we ever undertook.
In 2016, we launched fit815, a print magazine and online publication built around a simple idea: if we're going to talk about what we believe, we should be willing to put it in writing.
Every issue was mailed to 15,000 homes throughout the Rockford area. We wrote about fitness, certainly, but also about local businesses, community, leadership, healthy living, and the kinds of values we believed helped people build better lives.
It wasn't designed to convince everyone to join FitMe. Quite the opposite.
Our belief was that if you read it and found yourself nodding along, then we'd probably be a good fit for each other. And if you didn't, that was okay too.
The twentieth issue went to press in March of 2020, just as the world was shutting down. Because fit815 was supported by local advertisers, we made the decision to end the publication there. Twenty issues felt like a good number to close the chapter on, and we certainly weren't going to ask our local business partners to spend money when so many were simply trying to survive.
We remain incredibly proud of what it became.
The website still exists at fit815.com, and we've continued to add articles from time to time, but the magazine itself remains a snapshot of a unique moment in our history.
Looking back, fit815 wasn't really about fitness at all.
It was about putting our values into the world and trusting that the right people would find us.
And many of them did.
