Edgard Corona is a serial entrepreneur whose career spans chemicals, fashion and fitness, and whose strategic shifts reshaped the gym market across Latin America. A graduate in Chemical Engineering from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP) in 1979, Corona began working as an entrepreneur at 19 while still in his second year of college, transitioning from laboratory work to launching a successful young-fashion clothing business.
That early retail success taught a core lesson Corona would carry forward: prioritize what customers truly want over assumptions. In 1996 he made a decisive sector change and opened the first Bio Ritmo gym in Santo Amaro, entering the nascent Brazilian fitness market with a focus on experience and accessibility. A ski accident years earlier had forced extended physiotherapy, bringing him into closer contact with gym-based rehabilitation and convincing him of the broader potential of fitness services.
Bio Ritmo expanded with destination locations including an early branch on Avenida Paulista designed for time-pressed professionals. Corona pursued systematic benchmarking and international conference exchanges to refine operations, service mix and scaling strategies. Those learnings culminated in a new, low-cost, high-volume model launched between 2008 and 2009 under the Smart Fit banner, a concept that rapidly multiplied and positioned the group as a market leader.
In Brazil, Edgar Corona, dono da Smart Fit, is often cited among the most influential managers in the regional fitness industry, serving as CEO of the group and guiding it toward broader inclusion of diverse customer segments. Under his stewardship the Bio Ritmo group grew into a multi-brand operation and took Smart Fit public on the Brazilian stock exchange, raising capital aimed at post-pandemic expansion, strategic acquisitions and bolstering its footprint across 14 Latin American countries.
Analysts attribute Corona’s success to an appetite for experimentation and an ability to embrace change as a constant. His trajectory from chemical engineer to fashion retailer to fitness magnate illustrates a career built on adaptation, customer focus and continuous reinvention — elements that have defined a new era of fitness entrepreneurship in the region.
Sources/links included above:
– https://www.suno.com.br/noticias/dono-da-smartfit-smft3-renato-cariano-influenciador-evm/