3x Thesis: If you’re building a med spa platform today, don’t invest in real estate, invest in distribution.

The aesthetics industry loves talking about location like it’s gospel.

“Affluent ZIP code.”
“High visibility.”
“Street-front retail.”

However, the best med spa location might be someone else’s.

Here’s the 3x thesis behind why hotel and gym partnerships on a rev-share model are one of the most overlooked growth levers in aesthetics:

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1. Med spas aren’t doing this at scale.
Despite 9,400+ US med spas and $18B in annual revenue, the industry still clings to old-school leases like it’s 2006.
Luxury resorts and wellness hotels do operate their own spas, but those are internal, capex-heavy operations. The idea of embedding an independent med spa operator into unused space on a revenue-share model? Almost nonexistent.

Same goes for gyms.
Plenty of Equinox and Life Time locations offer “spa-like” treatments, but few are leveraging external, high-margin aesthetic operators in underutilized rooms.

This is a structural gap in the market.

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2. Hotels and gyms are sitting on gold. They just don’t know it.

• Luxury hotels have treatment rooms sitting empty during weekdays.
• High-end gyms have excess locker room space or old massage studios collecting dust.
• Both have thousands of high-income members or guests walking through the doors each week.

With a rev-share model:
• You bring the equipment, team, and treatments.
• They give you the space, the foot traffic, and the brand halo.
• You both split the upside.

Instead of paying $10k/month for rent, you give them 15–20% of revenue.
No lease. No buildout. No marketing spend.
Just embedded distribution.

And importantly: it turns a fixed cost into a variable cost, the holy grail of unit economics.

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3. This isn’t about location. It’s about embedded access.
This strategy flips the med spa model on its head:

– Lower CAC (the customer’s already inside the building).
– Faster breakeven (you skip the 6-month ramp on new leases).
– Higher trust (you piggyback off the host brand’s credibility).
– Lower capex (no buildout = more cash for hiring and growth).
– Better scalability (you test in weeks, not quarters).

And if you think this isn’t “repeatable”?
Tell that to every food and beverage brand running airport kiosks, pop-ups, or inside-the-hotel bars. This model scales, if you stop thinking like a landlord and start thinking like a distribution business.

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The next generation of med spa platforms won’t win on branding or real estate.
They’ll win on access.

Med spa rollups stuck in the “real estate + Google Ads” loop are building balance sheets, not businesses.

Distribution-first models don’t rent space. They own demand.