As Toronto’s favourite sauna startup Othership expands south of the border, co-founder Robbie Bent sat down with The Peak to talk about the future of wellness culture and the business of sauna sessions, cold plunges, guided classes, and community events.
What do you see happening in the wellness space over the next decade?
Wellness is becoming more social. People want to connect in a sober-curious way. People also want to connect through healthy niche groups like run clubs and cycling clubs. I see immersive wellness becoming a substitute for traditional entertainment, like nightclubs, bars, and restaurants. I also see wellness spaces hosting things like comedy nights, live music nights, birthdays, and events. I feel a future is one in which health becomes fun and wellness becomes entertainment, and we’re leading that trend globally at Othership.
What differentiates Canadian sauna culture from other parts of the world?
In Canada over the past few years, we’ve seen 250,000 visitors attend Othership. We’ve brought sauna and ice baths into the mainstream — hosting many, many, many first-timers to bathing, sauna, and ice baths. We’ve seen the community really flock towards emotional wellness classes, sober dance parties in the evening, and performances featuring comedy and live music. These are completely unique to sauna culture globally, and something we’ve created as Torontonians as a completely new way to do sauna culture.
What is the impetus behind expanding the brand to New York City?
New York is a hard place to live — it can be lonely, stressful, and busy. More so than anywhere else in North America, people need healthy ways to be social, connect, have fun, and reduce stress. We wanted to bring something we created from scratch that is truly unique to New York to put Othership on the map globally. The customer here has been extremely receptive, and it’s clearly a brand new, innovative product that doesn’t exist in New York. The customer has been obsessed with the healthy socials. It’s very rare for a Canadian wellness consumer brand to launch in the U.S. with a unique offering, so we thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to create something on one of the biggest stages in the entire world.
What are you paying the most attention to these days?
We’re always looking for ways to innovate and improve our product. Each class takes hundreds of hours to design. Each social offering requires dozens of tests to get perfect. I’m always paying attention to experiences like museums and underground art shows, large-scale immersive entertainment venues like the Sphere and Meow Wolf, retreats like Hoffman Process and Canyon Ranch, fine dining and boutique hotel hospitality experiences, concerts, comedy shows and festivals, and church-like experiences across religions. Experiencing new immersive ways to connect is what keeps us improving. We’re always tinkering with the experience with the goal to create healthy social evening experiences and deep emotional classes for all humans to really feel good now.
Is there any wisdom you can share about building a happier, healthier life?
I get the most joy from creating something I’m really passionate about, in this case trying to make a dent in the loneliness epidemic. My favourite thing to do when feeling overwhelmed is to go to a class and listen to the shares after. Seeing people share helps remind me of the meaning and the ‘why’ for what we’re doing. I’ve worked pretty much every day for the past five years, we’re at about 150 employees and doing multiple construction projects at once, and so my phone has thousands of messages everyday. We have a private WhatsApp community for our 1,000 most passionate customers and they message me everyday. Dealing with overwhelm is my greatest challenge now. It’s really, really intense without many boundaries. Getting negative customer reviews can even still hurt my soul because we care so much about the experience. I wouldn’t trade this for anything, but happiness for me is connecting to something I care about really deeply, experiencing the transformation with journeyers, and just having time to create daily.
Is there a book you’re reading that you’d recommend?
My most consumed content over the past two years is the Founders podcast. I love the episodes on Walt Disney, Trader Joe’s, Red Bull, the Four Seasons, and the Ritz Carlton. Seeing the lengths people will go to create beautiful, mind-blowing, transformational products just for the love of creating something magical inspires me every morning. I usually listen while taking a walk and drinking coffee to get inspired to really care about every detail of our experience.