The Wellness Industry continues to Skyrocket... But Who's Profiting?

In Orlando, like most major cities, Pilates studios seem to be opening around every corner. Yoga has become increasingly mainstream. Consumers are spending more money on feeling better, moving better, and living longer.                                             There is clearly a lot of economic value in wellness. Investors, franchise companies, private equity firms, booking platforms, and studio owners have all figured out how to capitalize on that growth. 

But how much of what a client pays is actually going to the person teaching the class?

Boutique fitness has become beautiful. The lighting is perfect. The branding is beautiful. The mirrors are spotless. The playlists are curated. At Solace, we certainly care about those things too. We built a space people genuinely want to spend time in. But then the door closes and class begins. For the next 60 minutes, the instructor is the product.

An exceptional Pilates instructor is simultaneously observing movement, managing transitions, remembering injuries, demonstrating technique, correcting alignment, adjusting resistance, watching fatigue, providing modifications, keeping time, controlling the energy of the room, and making dozens of small decisions about individual bodies.

The room matters. The equipment matters. The brand matters. But none of them can teach you Pilates.

So why are instructors paid like an accessory?

One of our most popular instructors came to Solace from a studio where she started at $25 per class and eventually worked her way up to $30. She could be standing in front of 10, 15, or 20 paying clients and still make roughly what one drop in client paid to be there. We thought that was absurd. At Solace, she was hired at our starting rate, $60 per class.

And now, only nine months into business, with an average pay per class of over $70, by some calculations double the industry average, we're still here. We're growing rapidly. And we've learned something important:

Studios can pay instructors substantially more and still build successful businesses.

Rent is expensive. Equipment is expensive. Insurance, software, marketing, maintenance, and buildouts all cost money. We understand that. What we don't accept is the assumption that instructor compensation should always be the easiest place to protect a studio's margin.

We've already been asked about financing. 

Only nine months into Solace, we've already been approached about expanding and franchising. That's flattering. But we won't do it simply because there is an opportunity to make more money.

We would only expand in a way that allows us to protect the things that made Solace work in the first place, and instructor compensation is one of them.

Franchising can make that more complicated. Suddenly, the money from a class isn't simply supporting the instructor and the people operating the studio. There can be franchise fees, royalties, marketing funds, technology fees, debt obligations, investors, and additional entities that each need their percentage.

Every percentage has to come from somewhere. And too often, the person standing at the front of the room is expected to work with what's left.

We don't want to build a wellness company where a client believes they're supporting the person who knows their name, remembers their injury, and teaches them every week, while an increasing portion of their dollar is actually being extracted to support layers of ownership and investment far removed from the classroom.                 Investment isn't inherently bad. Franchising isn't inherently bad. Growth isn't bad.

But growth that depends on suppressing the wages of the people delivering the actual service isn't the kind of growth we're interested in.

If we cannot expand Solace while protecting meaningful instructor compensation, then we'd rather not. We would rather see 500 independent studios paying instructors better than see 500 Solace locations paying instructors less so that our company could grow faster.

In fact, talking publicly about instructor compensation works against our immediate competitive advantage. Paying significantly more has helped us attract what we believe is one of the strongest instructor teams in Central Florida. If every Pilates studio in Orlando started paying instructors what we do, that advantage would shrink. We hope it does.

Because our goal shouldn't be to employ every exceptional instructor. It should be to help create an industry where exceptional instructors don't have to find Solace to be compensated like exceptional instructors.

Wellness doesn't have a revenue problem. It has a distribution problem. 

The next evolution of boutique wellness shouldn't simply be prettier studios, bigger franchises, better apps, and larger valuations. It should be asking how more of the economic value created inside these rooms reaches the people actually creating it.   That might mean higher guaranteed class rates, attendance bonuses, revenue sharing, paid training, clear pathways for raises, benefits as studios grow, or simply accepting that ownership takes a little less so instructors can make a little more. There isn't one formula that works for every studio.

But there should be one principle: When wellness grows, the people actually providing wellness should participate meaningfully in that growth.

Solace doesn't need to become the biggest Pilates company in America. If we can build a great studio, take care of the people who make it great, remain financially healthy, and demonstrate that paying instructors more actually works, that's a model worth building.