2.6Industry

Health & Wellness

Studios, clinics, and programs providing fitness, nutrition, wellness, spa, and complementary health services to individual consumers.

8
Segments
37
Verticals

Overview

Health & Wellness covers the consumer-facing businesses built around fitness, nutrition, recovery, and wellbeing: gyms and fitness clubs, nutrition and weight management, supplements, personal training, spa and massage, yoga and Pilates studios, recovery and performance studios, and alternative and holistic health. It is a large, fast-growing consumer theme often called the wellness economy.

The category is fragmented and franchise- and membership-driven, with private equity active across gyms, boutique fitness, med-spa, and recovery concepts. In federal data it is scattered across fitness, personal-care, and health classifications; fitness, supplements, and diet centers are captured under this heading, while spa and massage and holistic care sit in adjacent ones.

Market snapshot

Market size
~$60B
Growth
~2%CAGR (2017–22, nominal)
Companies
~40,067 firms
Firms by employee count

86.1% of firms have fewer than 20 employees: 34,494 micro-businesses, below most mandates.

The investable universe5,573 firms with 20+ employees
20–99
4,59983%
100–499
70113%
500+
2735%

The ~$60B here is led by fitness, which covers gyms, boutique studios, and sports and aquatic facilities (~$36B), with supplement retail (~$21.6B) and diet and weight centers (~$2.4B) alongside. That fitness core is the wellness economy an investor recognizes: recurring-membership businesses that franchise and roll up. The 2017–22 growth reads muted because the window straddles fitness's pandemic trough, when gyms were shut through much of 2020–21, not because underlying demand is soft. What still sits outside this figure, coded elsewhere, is spa and massage (personal care), holistic and chiropractic care (health practitioners), and the newer recovery-studio category. Read ~$60B as the measurable core, with real services still uncounted.

NAICS 456191, 713940, 812191. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses; U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census.

Business model & economics

Revenue model

Memberships, sessions, retail product, and program fees

Key economics

Revenue per firm
$1,499,288
Revenue per employee
$78,311
Employees per firm
17.5
Recurring revenue
Moderate–High

membership and subscription models

EBITDA margin
10–25%
Capex intensity
Moderate

Characteristics

  • Mixed cost base: payroll is 24% of revenue: the fitness majority runs on membership and labor, the supplement-retail slice on product COGS
  • Deep strategic-buyer pool: 273 firms exceed 500 employees, so a scaled asset has trade buyers
  • Franchise- and membership-driven, recurring-revenue models.
  • A structurally growing consumer wellness theme.
  • Scattered across federal classifications, so only partly sized here.

NAICS 456191, 713940, 812191. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses; U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census.

M&A deal context

Deal activityHigh

Who’s acquiring

  • Boutique-wellness franchise platforms
  • PE-backed wellness consolidators
  • Multi-concept operators

What’s driving deals

  • Private-equity roll-ups across fitness, med-spa, and recovery.
  • Membership and franchise economics.
  • Structural consumer demand for wellness.

Segments in this industry

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