8 min readA decade ago Megan Hill, a publicist in Los Angeles, was a member of a boutique fitness studio that offered Pilates. She liked the classes, but she felt she wasn’t getting the results she wanted from that one exercise modality alone. So, she joined an Equinox to gain access to a weight room, cardio equipment, multiple types of classes, a pool, and more. “I don’t think I would go back to a boutique, just because I don’t want to be limited to their practice,” she says.
Hill is not alone in this thinking. There are evident shifts happening in the fitness industry that reflect the modern exerciser’s desire for a “bundled” offering.
Boutique fitness studios, which are historically smaller spaces focused on one discipline—like cycling, boxing, running, or Pilates—are taking note and expanding their offerings. Rumble, for example, added a treadmill class with no boxing involved (their original focus), while OrangeTheory now has a floor-only strength workout and Hyrox training programs. Meanwhile, big box gyms seem to be getting even bigger, offering everything from recovery rooms complete with saunas and cold plunges to GLP-1 prescriptions and beyond.
This reflects a larger business trend that happens in “every” industry in which things bundle, then unbundle, then rebundle “forever,” says Jason Fiefer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, podcast host, and keynote speaker. Here’s a look at where the fitness space is right now in that cycle—and what that means for your own workout options.
Meet the Experts: Jason Fiefer is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, podcast host, and keynote speaker. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a professor of history at The New School, and author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. Anton Severin, is the vice president of research at the Health & Fitness Association. Edward Hertzman is the founder and CEO of Athletech News, a publication focused on fitness business and trends.
Gym Unbundling In The Early 2000s
20 years ago, taking a boutique fitness class was a true luxury, says Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, professor of history at The New School and author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. “When boutique fitness first came on the scene, it was at a very high price point,” she says, pointing to SoulCycle, which started in 2006, and Barry’s Bootcamp, which started in 1998, as early examples.
These niche studios were shiny and new compared to the gym concepts of the same era (such as Bally Total Fitness and 24 Hour Fitness), says Fiefer. The boutiques offered what felt like a secret that went against the conventional wisdom of the time, he says. While big box gyms had a bit of everything for everyone, SoulCycle and Barry’s thrived in contrast to that: They offered a highly specific concept and attracted like-minded people, forging an era of customization and personalization, explains Feifer. And when concepts like cycling and bootcamp took off in popularity, a million copycats rushed in.
The influx of new studios made boutique fitness somewhat more accessible, both financially but also logistically, Petrzela says. After all, over time it seemed like there was an OrangeTheory, F45, or Rumble in every strip mall across America. In 2019, studio memberships hit a peak of 24.9 million, per Anton Severin, Health & Fitness Association vice president of research. But they weren’t immune to business challenges, and thus began yet another shift in the fitness landscape.
Cracks in the Boutique Fitness Model
In 2021, studio memberships fell to 15.8 million, the largest pandemic-era decline of any facility segment, per Severin—although memberships have increased every year since, reaching 23.3 million in 2025, or about 6% below the pre-pandemic level.
While boutique fitness studios are still a “vital and growing” part of the fitness landscape, according to Severin, full-service gyms and health clubs currently have stronger momentum in both membership expansion and visitation. In 2024, fitness-only gym membership grew 7.6 percent year-over-year compared with 3.1 percent for studios, according to the association’s most recent report. “Visitation gains have also been led by traditional gyms this year,” Severin adds, especially among locations with a high-volume of memberships, and lower prices (such as Crunch Fitness). In fact, between January and September 2025, average visits to this category rose 4.2 percent year over year, while studio visitation only increased 0.8 percent.
And even though people are increasingly willing to shell out to work out, only around 25 percent of the U.S. population has a fitness membership, says Edward Hertzman, Founder and CEO of Athletech News. Why is this the case? Hertzman speculates it’s likely that the boutiques and gyms are in direct competition for the same wellness-conscious clientele.
What’s more, Hertzman compares the boutique fitness scene to the club or restaurant scene. “You have successful restaurant groups that are hot for long periods of time, but the average restaurant or club has a short tenure,” he says. “It’s hot and then it’s not.” He points to a few boutique fitness concepts that have stood the test of time including Club Pilates, F45, and [solidcore]—as opposed to others that didn’t pan out, like modelFIT and Flywheel.
Challenges for boutiques include, for the franchises at least, pressure to expand quickly before proper infrastructure is in place and payment model difficulties, Hertzman says. “If you and I travel this week for work, we don’t cancel our Equinox membership,” he says, but if you don’t take a studio class, you don’t pay for it. While some studios have membership and package models, “having recurring revenue is proven to be a very important component of a successful facility.” What’s more, there are only so many hours a day that you can offer fitness classes and that people are going to show up to them, Petrzela says. “It’s very hard to fill a 2:00 p.m. class anywhere, even if you’re the hottest business in town.”
The primary issue though, as Feifer sees it, is that there isn’t one “cure-all” in fitness or one singular activity thing you can do to support your health. So people end up with fitness FOMO, or they “cobble together some kind of complicated package where on this day you’re doing this thing, and on that day you’re doing that thing,”Feifer says. “Now you have a bunch of different memberships at a bunch of different places and it’s suddenly gotten very expensive.” And from the business operators’ perspective, boutiques are tricky because you’re subject to the whims of fitness trends.
Petrzela flags another battle for studios: Big box gyms are coming for their lunch. “Some of these boutique fitness businesses really thrived because of the communities that they created, and I think that’s still the case,” she says. But now that many gyms are positioning themselves as wellness-focused “third space” clubs that offer co-working spaces, restaurants, and more amenities in addition to a gym—many people are flocking back to the big box, bundled model. “We’re seeing, like never before, gyms really leaning in to cultivating community as a core part of their offering,” Petrzela says. It’s tough for the boutiques to compete, purely from a square-footage POV—“[small studios] just don’t have the real estate footprint to support that.”
Similarly, one of the things that set boutiques apart was a social belonging aspect. “With a lot of these brands, especially the brands that are successful, people identify with it,” says Hertzman. “People want to wear the t-shirt that says, ‘Hey, I’m a member of this. I work out here.’” There’s also an “intangible value” that the successful brands create by playing on emotions through aspects like lighting, music, and generally enticing vibes. But these are all things that the newer wave of gyms are catching up with and capitalizing on, as well.
Today’s Consumers Want It All
Today, rebundling is happening in a couple ways across the fitness industry, Feifer and Hertzman agree. “If I had to look into my crystal ball, I think we’re going to see massive consolidation over the next couple of years across all the categories, which means there’ll be consolidation in big box, luxury, boutique—everywhere,” Hertzman says.
One way is through mergers and acquisitions. For instance, OrangeTheory merged with Anytime Fitness last year, while F45 and iFIT announced a partnership around digital fitness content. Much earlier, around 2016, Equinox completely bought out the SoulCycle founders (after purchasing an initial stake in the company in 2011). This consolidation will likely continue, Hertzman says, as private equity money comes in and those companies either need to build new locations or buy existing businesses.
A second way rebundling is happening is that gyms themselves are growing. Some include “boutique-quality” classes within their four walls, Hertzman says, including 24 Hour Fitness piloting a reformer Pilates concept. Other gyms are also jumping on fitness trends—Gold’s Gym, for instance, is adding turf spaces to support massively-popular Hyrox-style workouts. Others are also investing in recovery rooms with massage guns, cold plunges, red light therapy, and more. While some boutiques are also adding some of these things (with OrangeTheory and F45 both offering Hyrox training, for example), it may be easier for gyms to continue expanding purely from a square-footage advantage.
Some spaces are even adding medical options, which makes sense given the rise of biohacking and consumer interest in longevity: Life Time has MIORA, an in-house integrative health clinic that offers everything from blood work to GLP-1 prescriptions; Equinox partners with Function Health to provide comprehensive labs; and Love.Life, a longevity club and gym in California, puts functional medical care at the center of their members’ experience. “There’s a lot of talk about gym as clinic,” says Hertzman.
Petrzela says that this shift of gyms into the wellness business makes sense particularly because of how GLP-1s are changing how people exercise. “It makes complete sense that they’re getting involved,” she says, especially as doctors emphasize the importance of maintaining and building muscle on these drugs, and people look for specialized guidance.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Fitness?
After this “moment of rebundling” and consolidation, Fiefer predicts that, inevitably, it will all unbundle again—likely because the more things bundle, the less personalized they feel. “A new fitness trend will be introduced that feels totally different from whatever you’re getting at your big slow gym, and people will flock to it, and the flocking will inspire further niche services to be developed and introduced,” he says. “Those early successes will drive a bunch of copycats, and then we will have a whole other unbundling cycle, which will then exhaust itself and get rebundled.”
Fiefer believes this presents an opportunity for smart entrepreneurs to build niche brands that they know will be swallowed up by larger brands. This is happening right now in the home services franchising space, he says, with niche companies like plumbers and window washers getting bought up and bundled. “You get these generally private equity-backed rollup companies, which is essentially a parent company with the purpose of buying up tons of smaller service franchises and then tying them together,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you see [people in] fitness launching these niche things specifically to get bought up five years later.”
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule: Look no further than the YMCA, which started in 1844 in London, for an example of a “trend-proof” fitness business, Petrzela says. “These continue to be really vital places and community centers decades and decades and decades later,” she says. “They keep it affordable, they keep it accessible, it’s everywhere,” she says. “That’s kind of beautiful, and better than, I think, a lot of these super exclusive places, which tend to get more ink, but none of them have proven the longevity of the YMCA model.”
At the end of the day, this unbundling and rebundling of the fitness space has resulted in a lot of choices out there for people looking for a place to work out—which is a great thing! While trends and demand will ebb and flow, there will always be places for exercisers to connect, break a sweat, and work towards a healthier lifestyle.
Caitlin is a health and fitness journalist based in New York City. In addition to Women’s Health, she writes for publications including The Wall Street Journal and Runner’s World. She’s completed 12 marathons, including the six World Marathon Majors, is semi-fluent in French, and volunteers as a greeter on The High Line. Follow her on Instagram or LinkedIn.
