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I recently had the… pleasure of learning about Remedy Place’s ~$12,000 massage roller.

I snorted (ungracefully) and assumed (a dangerous game) we’d surely reached the limit of our at-home wellness delusion. Surely.

Alas. Last week, Remedy Place surpassed its own lofty aspirations with this new $15,000 product: 

That, my friends, is an at-home cold plunge pool.

The thing (singular, thanks to my remarkable self-control) that bothers me about these products is the unchecked rise in wellness as a status symbol.

Because let’s be honest, ice baths have no business looking like that. They’re not hot tubs you lounge around in for hours, entertaining your fancy friends. They’re 5 to 10-minute exercises in discomfort. Stick them in the backyard already. 

The aforementioned $12k massage roller is similarly ridiculous, although Remedy Place didn’t seem to have quite as big an aesthetics budget then. The point is, we’ve reached a new level of peacocking when it comes to at-home wellness.

And parallel to this is the simple fact that we are inherently social beings. Nothing makes us smugger than inclining our noggins at incoming others as we leave a gym class or wellness session, as if to say see how well I, too, look after this body, this ~temple.~ 

The level of smugness generated by sitting alone in an ice bath doesn’t come close. No matter how much it screams Scandinavian minimalism. And there are only so many times (0) a sane person can post on Instagram about flopping around on their $12k massage roller before they become laughing stock.

So when the novelty wears off, these people will be back at their local bougie wellness club, which they can presumably afford (see: prices above). 

And for those who shelled out their entire discretionary allowance to join the at-home wellness elite, there’s always Swimply: Airbnb for private wellness equipment. Everyone loves to awkwardly rock up at some dude’s door to help him pay off his new gently used ice bath.

but let’s now touch on wellness + community 

The other thing (I did try) is that wellness activities, including exercise and cold therapy, don’t appear to move the wellbeing needle on their own.

I refer to lululemon’s recent report¹ which found that despite ~90% of us taking more action to improve our physical, mental, and social health, we actually don’t feel any better.

Except for those who took part in group wellness and fitness activities, or found a ‘sense of belonging’ through them. Then, overall wellbeing was boosted by up to 20%. 

In other words, they weren’t in their private cold plunge pool alone.

We keep coming back to the same thing: human connection and community are crucial for wellbeing. There’s a reason why Roman society was built around inclusive, social bathhouses.² 

So, understandably, I’m far more interested in the startups tackling wellness from a social perspective.

But while many people join a gym or wellness center for the social aspect, they’re often disappointed. Because these businesses leave the average person to sail in and out, clutching at the hope that this week, other like-minded people will attend the random 6 am class or 7 pm sauna session they manage to squeeze in.

What ends up happening is they pass by most would-be good social connections like ships in the night.

Which got me thinking: isn’t it wild that we have specialist community managers for SaaS startups, but not for wellness centers and gyms? 

After all, it’s what people want:

Community and social experts for gyms and wellness centers will be great for us all — not to mention customer retention. Let them subtly and strategically connect us already.

Tidbits

🧓 Despite longevity advances, life expectancy is stagnating in wealthy nations. And unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension “is implausible in this century,” reports Nature.

🧬 23andMe’s fall from grace has, amongst many things, confirmed that genetics is complicated as heck — and DNA sequencing is just a fraction of the story. Also that providing ongoing value to customers is always a good idea for, well, revenue. 

🫁 Athletes will soon be able to track their breathing, and thus enhance their performance, using headphones, thanks to BreezeLabs’ pre-seed raise. Pretty rad.

~

¹ No one is more surprised than me to see lululemon’s wellness report referenced in this newsletter for a second time. But I’m nothing if not a wide-reaching consumer survey fan, and life is humbling.

² Remedy Place knows this. That’s why their ridiculously fancy at-home wellness products are a marketing play, not a revenue one. Although with their social club annual memberships starting at $9k, I wouldn’t say they’re very inclusive. 

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