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 — 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 — 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 — so 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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