Key findings from the Welltodo 2021 Wellness Innovation Blueprint

What are the fastest growing industries in the world of wellness? What are the most innovative brands to watch in the coming year? The new Innovation Blueprint from Welltodo looks at these questions and more in their new comprehensive guide to the most innovative companies defining the world of wellness. We sat down with Laura Hill, Senior Editor at Welltodo to learn more about this report which looks at 25+ key industry categories and subcategories including: 

• Clean beauty

• Digital Fitness

• Meditation

• Functional Nutrition

• Mental Wellness

• And many more...

What was the motivation for creating this report?

With the wellness industry experiencing so much acceleration and transformation, we really wanted to produce a resource that would help to contextualise this fast-moving marketplace in a way that has never been done before. And showcase the depth of diversity and innovation that is driving the industry forward.

By doing so, we hope to support founders, investors and industry professionals to unlock future opportunities and facilitate further growth.

A lot of the brands mentioned in this report target a more "conscious consumer." What's driving this trend?

For some years now, we’ve been tracking this growing trend of a new generation of conscious consumers who are thinking about how the decisions they make are impacting the wider world, especially when it comes to the businesses they engage with.

Demanding that brands demonstrate real engagement with sustainability, these changemakers are driving the idea of purpose over (or at least alongside) profit and the philosophy that wellness brands should ‘practice what they preach’.

There are many factors driving this behaviour –– a growing recognition of the lasting impact businesses are having on our world, a desire to align personal values and behaviours with those of the brands we’re buying into, and the collective realisation that as consumers we have the power to hold companies accountable over their input (or lack of) in important global issues.

Today, catering to the conscious consumer creates relevance, drives talkability and propels profits.

With so many brands making waves across so many categories, one might make the assumption that the wellness industry is a crowded place. What should entrepreneurs in the wellness industry take away from this report?

I think what the Wellness Innovation Blueprint really shows, is that despite the wellness industry continuing to grow, through innovation, agility and responsiveness new brands across every wellness category are still carving out space for themselves.

By catering to new values and behaviours, speaking to underserved demographics and filling the many whitespaces that still exist, trailblazers are rewriting the marketplace and creating new wellness categories. It’s an exciting new era for wellness!

Several brands like CLMBR, Theragun, Impossible Foods and Oatly have benefited from celebrity investment from the likes of Jay-Z, Serena Williams and Gwenyth Paltrow. Why are celebrities now some of the industry's biggest backers?

Aside from athletes and other high-profile celebrities recognising the financial opportunities that exist within the wellness industry, for the brands themselves, the clout, credibility and cultural currency of having superstar athletes like Serena Williams and Stephen Curry financially and vocally invested, is invaluable.

Not only in terms of tapping into their highly engaged, multi-million-sized audiences but in reaffirming the product’s authenticity as a trusted tool used by some of the highest performers in the world.

The wider strategy being, that by genuinely catering to the high end of the market, eventually, that adoption will translate into mass sales.

It’s a clever game plan and one that’s already proving successful.

Was there one category that was most impacted - positively or negatively - over the last year?

So many wellness categories have been transformed by the pandemic over the past year but I think we can all agree that the fitness industry underwent a huge tipping point in which digital fitness really came into its own. What was once a ‘nice to have’ is now unquestionably a ‘non-negotiable’, and despite in-person fitness still playing a major role an omnichannel approach blending both physical and digital fitness has become the ‘norm’.

In the long term, this presents an opportunity for the industry to introduce more individuals to fitness, who perhaps felt that in-person fitness held too many barriers to entry.

Of all the 25+ key industry categories examined, which category is the one to watch?

Connected fitness is undergoing a major boom at the moment, with new investment pouring into the sector at lightning speed. Consumer adoption has been accelerated by the pandemic, and with advances in technology pointing to a future where these devices will become even more intelligent and responsive, it’s a category that we believe has huge growth potential.

To download your free copy of the Welltodo Innovation Blueprint, click here.