The other day while driving by a gym that I have driven by many times, I noticed a name change. The gym had rebranded from “Gym Name” Fitness to “Gym Name” Fitness & Wellness. Thinking about it, this name change makes sense and is consistent with more general trends in the health and wellness space. Providing products or services limited to just fitness is less common in many segments of the growing health and wellness industry, and indeed in the sports industry as well. Those industries have generated many iconic brands (think Nike, Gatorade, etc.). In Loeb & Loeb's practice representing health and fitness companies, and even traditional sports industry companies, the trend is for those companies to seek out their place in the wellness industry, and in doing so, redefine themselves as wellness companies.  

This trend raises many issues. The first issue is: What is wellness, and what does it mean to be a wellness company? There is no standard definition or regulation of what constitutes “wellness” or allows a company to fashion itself as a wellness company. This gives broad latitude to companies to define wellness for themselves, and also allows for creativity. What type of product or service must a company sell to be in the wellness industry? A mindfulness app? Health insurance? A healthy recipe subscription service? A therapy subscription service? Again, no clear answers, but plenty of good reasons for companies to stake their claim in this space. Wellness, however defined, is a growing industry, and companies apparently believe that claiming the mantle as a wellness company helps positions themselves to benefit from that growth.

Like many industries that experience rapid growth and new entries in the market, the wellness industry may experience the application of new regulations in order to ensure that wellness companies are actually wellness companies and able to provide the benefits they are promoting. This raises the possibility of laws helping to define and govern activities in this industry. There will certainly be legal issues to arise, including legal requirements for promoting wellness goods and services. Rebranding a company name will be the easy part—the greater challenge will be understanding and complying with the legal framework that will apply to the industry.