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At 30,000 square feet, it will be similar in size to a Kohl’s but should have more variety than a conventional store because only one of each piece of clothing will be on display, with the rest stored out of sight to be delivered to fitting rooms. There, customers can browse touch screens for more options or to request a different size. Company algorithms will produce recommendations to customers.
At Therabody’s Reset wellness center, the services offered might seem quirky to people who remember when ice, Atomic Balm analgesic cream and Whirlpool baths were considered sufficient treatments for athletic ailments.
Cryotherapy, which involves standing for a few minutes in a chamber where the temperature is 180 degrees below zero, is said to commonly provoke a stream of profanity followed later by a pleasant rush of endorphins, a boost to one’s immune system and a reduction in inflammation.
Twelve minutes in a therapy bed getting penetrating near-infrared light like a human plant is intended to relieve joint pain, relax muscles and improve blood flow.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy conducted in a special chamber has a host of benefits, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, including repairing tissues and strengthening the immune system.
Treatments such as these are growing common among professional and college sports teams, Therabody Chief Executive Ben Nazarian said, but can also be helpful to people who may just be stiff from sitting at their desks too long.
“As we learn what the elite athletes are doing, it gives us a chance to figure out how to bring it to the everyday consumer,” he said. He hopes to make such services affordable to many, starting as low as $45 for a Theragun massage.
And then there are the Theragun products, led by the internet-famous Theragun, which starts at $199. There are also muscle stimulators to speed recovery after a workout and pneumatic pressure boots and sleeves to relieve pain and soreness.
The Theragun was an invention born of necessity, said Therabody founder Jason Wersland, a chiropractor who crashed his motorcycle into a car at 55 miles per hour in 2007. His most profound injury was a bulging disc in his neck that caused him debilitating pain around the clock. He didn’t like the choices he had to feel better.
“I found that my only options were narcotics or surgery,” he said. “I was actively looking for something to make the pain stop.”
Wersland found the pain was eased somewhat by a little-used chiropractic tool in his office for percussion therapy, applying impulses instead of vibrations. He set out to improve on the concept, starting with some power tools in his garage. He bent down the blade on a hand-held jigsaw, then wrapped a towel and tape around it.
His creation gave him meaningful relief, and the foundation for Theragun was laid. The company now known as Therabody was founded in 2016 with a goal of being a direct-to-consumer company, Nazarian said.
“The news at the time was always, ‘retail is dead, e-commerce is the way to go,’ and we thought it would be a much more efficient way to build a company,” he said. “That’s how we started.”
The founders came to realize that “with a new product in a new category, people want to touch and feel” it, he said.
They moved into wholesale distribution before testing in-person sales in a small kiosk in Westfield Century City mall in 2019. It performed well and, after a pandemic-related delay, the company began opening a few full-fledged retail stores in 2020.
But now the company is amping up the conventional retail side; it has invested $13 million in the stores and developing the Reset wellness centers in the last two years, Nazarian said.
Online sales continue healthy growth, he said, but rising advertising costs, fed by Apple’s privacy update, “makes Therabody’s long-planned move to expand its physical presence to create a true omni-channel experience even more important.”
A wellness specialist talks with a customer about Recovery Air Pneumatic Compression.
In addition to the Brentwood location, other Reset stores are set to open this year in Manhattan Beach, New York, Chicago and Houston. They’ll be located in neighborhoods with concentrations of customers who have already shopped for Therabody products online.
Executives did not disclose financial results but said Therabody has been profitable since 2017, with nearly 600 employees and sales in more than 60 countries. In September, it was ranked 61 on Deloitte’s annual list of fastest-growing tech companies, reporting 2,742% growth in revenue from 2017 to 2020. Year-over-year sales grew more than 80% in 2021, the company said.
Waning pandemic restrictions will inspire other online sellers to make moves to physical stores, said Jonathan Lorenzen, an attorney at Allen Matkins who works with retail landlords and tenants.
“People are so drawn to their phones and computer screens, but there still is this element of physical interaction with the product that you really don’t get on a phone,” he said. Coming out of the pandemic, retailers see the chance “to maybe show their products are of higher quality, to differentiate what they have and maybe get a higher price.”