The wellness revolution
June is a great month for wellness. It starts with Global Wellness Day on June 8 and ends with In Goop Health in London on June 29. At Felix, we believe that wellness is more than just a short term trend but rather a cultural shift that impacts our everyday life for the long term.
When one sees “wellness”, he might think of facial masks and hot baths. Wellness is actually much more than that: the global wellness industry includes travel, nutrition, fitness, personal care among others and is estimated to be worth $4.2tn, 2x larger than health expenditure. In a western world where the World Health Organisation has classified stress as the “health epidemic of the 21st century” and where health insurance costs are rising, consumers are seeking new ways of living that would enable them to reach their own wellbeing. And each individual would have different ways to “feel well”: for one it would be by eating a healthy meal and seeing a therapist, for another one it would be by taking care of plants and doing a fitness session, etc.
First and foremost, consumers want to be able to take care of themselves by using wellness products and services that are safe and efficient. Then they want a product or service that enable them to become a better version of themselves, to make them feel so well that it enhances their own abilities. Last, they want to be inspired and relate to the values supported by the brand offering such wellness products or services, and as a result create an emotional link between them and such brands.
We have built the “wellness pyramid” below to illustrate this consumer behaviour. The best wellness brand example covering the 3 stages of this pyramid would be Nike: they offer wellness products that work (e.g. innovative and performant products), they enable you to become an athlete (Nike’s mission statement is to “do everything possible to expand human potential”) and inspire their community based on shared values (such as sustainability, diversity and inclusivity based on the company website).
We currently observe an increasing convergence phenomenon between wellness and other verticals such as :
- Food: Eating healthy is no more a luxury, both from an education and a price point of view. For instance, we observe an increasing interest for plant-based meals with 55% of UK’s population being “plant curious”. At Felix, we’ve been lucky to invest in AllPlants and Frichti, both promoting wellness via healthy meals and positive messages. We also observe an increasing demand for alternative proteins, supplements and gut-related superfoods, which would enable people to become kind of super human. We would love to meet more entrepreneurs in that space.
- Fitness: Today, one doesn’t exercise only to burn calories but also to feel well, enhance its physical and cognitive abilities and be part of a larger community of like-minded individuals. Over the past years, we’ve been amazed by how yoga has become mainstream (c. ⅓ Americans have tried yoga at least once) and by the rise of boutique and on-demand gyms. At Felix, we are delighted to be investor in Peloton, a community-based at-home fitness studio and are continuously looking for new fitness propositions.
- Beauty and personal care: If beauty might have been once about hiding behind make-up, we observed a massive shift over the past months with the rise of natural and inclusive beauty that want you to feel well and increase your self-confidence, driven by a more than ever educated ingredient-conscious consumers thanks to the large amount of beauty content on social media (in 2018, beauty-related content generated more than 169b views, +60% YoY). At Felix, we are excited to back companies such as Urban, Goop and Manual, each one of them leveraging beauty services and products to make their community feel at their best, and would love to invest even more in the buoying BeautyTech space.
- Mental health: The social stigma attached to mental ill health and potential linked discrimination is becoming less relevant thanks to accessible and preventive propositions such as Shine and Unmind, both companies we are proud to support. We believe that there is still a lot to do in the mental health space for emerging brands and platforms and are keen to spend more time discovering such propositions.
At Felix, we have a strong conviction that this global wellness quest is just at its beginning, there is still a lot to do in the wellness space, including (but not exclusively) gut-related propositions, reinvention of spas, gender-fluid make-up, etc. If you are an entrepreneur building such proposition, please feel free to reach out!
