DAILY STRETCH
Boutique fitness seen as a big trend for 2022
A year and a half ago, fitness enthusiasts and married couple Elizabeth Shen and Jason Guy were looking to get into the fitness industry and realized the best route was to focus on an area of need they had in their own lives.
“Both Jason and I are middleaged and fairly active,” Shen said. “I do triathlons and he does obstacle races and long-distance running.”
What they experienced and constantly saw around them was that everyone was always getting injured when training for or competing in races.
“I found myself in and out of PT for various issues,” Shen said, referring to physical therapy.
So when they came across a wellness franchise concept called StretchLab, based out of California, it was the concept’s focus on stretching that resonated with them. This led them to open up a location in Collegeville, Montgomery County.
“The boutique fitness presentation is much more appealing than a physical therapy office,” Guy said.
The way it works at StretchLab is that credentialed and certified stretch practitioners, which they refer to as “flexologists,” work oneon-one with clients to customize a stretch program to meet their needs.
Guy discussed their diverse range of clients.
“Just today we had an elite triathlete, we had a grandparent, and a woman who was wheelchair-bound when she first came to us and was walking in the studio today,” he said.
The majority of StretchLab’s clients are members. Regardless, each session is centered on assisted stretching in a comfortable group setting and requires a 25 or 50-minute appointment to be made in advance.
“You can buy a three or five-pack or a one-off,” Shen said. “If you are new, your first visit is a 50-minute full mobility assessment. We gauge where your starting point is and where you want to be.”
In one case, a client might want to have the ability to play with their grandkids and in another, they might want to run a triathlon.
“It’s about finding out their needs and we match a flexologist with them,” Shen said.
As far as Shen and Guy are aware, they are currently just one of two StretchLabs in Pennsylvania, but that will soon change with the opening of their second StretchLab location in the spring that will be located in Conshohocken, also in Montgomery County.
With a demand for a more personalized approach to fitness, they expect to see many more locations opening up in the near future
“It’s an incredibly fast-growing franchise,” Shen said. “In the next year, more will be popping up along with other boutique fitness concepts.”
According to Shen and Guy, boutique fitness, in general, is a trend they anticipate will have an increasing impact on the fitness industry in the new year.
“Especially with COVID it’s a more personalized experience,” Guy said. “You see the same people week in and week out — it’s almost like an extended pod.”
He said they have clients who told them that StretchLab was the only place they would leave their house for at different stages of the pandemic.
“It’s safe and easy to do while masked,” he said, adding that their 1,800-square-foot space makes it easy for them to manage proper sanitization.
Boutique fitness venues, such as StretchLab, are a place where all members are known by name.
“In the world we are living in now, the emphasis is on ‘comfortable’ and ‘in your circle’,” Guy said. “Everybody missed people and the boutique fitness gives you the personal touch more than bigbox gyms.”
Guy said the trend in fitness is going toward that personal piece that big box gyms can’t deliver. He used the investment group, Xponential Fitness, that StretchLab is under, as evidence that this trend is on the rise.
Xponential Fitness curates leading brands across every vertical in the boutique fitness industry including YogaSix, Pure Barre, CycleBar, Club Pilates and Rumble.
“There are so many ways to get what you want and get a tailored experience,” Guy said. “The point being we have the benefit of having experts in boutique fitness and these owners are investing time, money and awareness in branding.”
Guy said that before COVID he and Shen didn’t necessarily think about the benefits of boutique fitness.
“You get that familial piece and that customized workout and you get the feeling you’re a part of a community,” he said. “Before COVID we didn’t think of that.”
For more information
About StretchLab: https://www.stretchlab.com/location/collegeville About Xponential Fitness: www.xponentialfitness.com*