Gillian Tan, Columnist

Soulcycle's Path Back to an IPO

Private equity firms could turn their stakes in fitness chains into attractive candidates for the public market by joining them together first.

May 8, 2017 at 12:00 PM UTC

By Gillian Tan

Gillian Tan is a senior reporter covering finance and alternative asset classes including real estate, infrastructure, private equity, private credit, venture capital and sports business. She previously wrote an opinion column for Bloomberg and was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. She is a qualified chartered accountant.

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Sporting-apparel retailers in the U.S. are suffering and even shuttering, as many grapple with heavy debt loads while facing increasing competition from online alternatives (a prime example: Sports Authority). But at least one corner of the health-and-wellness world continues to flourish, and that's boutique fitness studios.

Unlike other areas of consumer spending, fitness is both fast-growing and relatively recession-proof. And the specialty chains -- from Barry's Bootcamp and Pure Barre to CorePower Yoga -- are getting an added boost because they're directly linked to the spending power of both millennials and their successors, Generation Z.1494021107451