Is the Boston Wellness Industry Over-Saturated?
Many thanks to journalist Jamie Ducharme for quoting me in her Boston Magazine article on the Boston Wellness industry. A link to the article is here and an abstract is below.
Greg
Summer 2013 was the summer of yogurt. Shops popped up en masse, flooding the market with a wave of self-served fruit and miles-long flavor lists. Then, suddenly, they started to disappear, leaving behind vacant storefronts and empty topping bins. The trend crept away as quickly as it started.
Is the wellness industry headed for the same fate?
Health may not be a fad in the way that frozen yogurt was—it’s a vital part of life, after all—but the uptick in wellness-focused businesses is undeniable. Juice bars and specialty fitness studios of all kinds have popped up at an unprecedented rate, with new ones opening seemingly every week. The question now is whether that’s a rate the city can sustain.
“There’s over-saturation,” says yoga instructor Jenna Hill, who co-founded her non-traditional yoga company PopUpAsana in part because of studio competition. “You can pretty much find a yoga studio, or some kind of fitness studio, on every street corner.”
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