Five stories in two weeks, and not one of them is about getting more members through the door.
A bankruptcy. A buyout offer. A lawsuit over who gets the machines. A new fee on hardware members already own. And a founder saying out loud that the money is going to the wrong place.
That is what a repricing looks like from the inside.
The Run Rate Roundup
Issue #16 · October 26–November 8, 2026
FitLab Filed for Bankruptcy. Google and Meta Are Listed as Creditors.
FitLab filed for Chapter 11 on October 26. It pulled more than 20 connected companies in with it, including Y7 Studio, Yoga Vida and Mile High Run Club. The petition lists up to $500 million of debt against assets worth no more than a tenth of that.
Google and Meta are both on the creditor list. That is the detail worth sitting with, because it means the business was still buying members while the cash ran out. Paid acquisition is a fixed monthly bill. It does not pause when bookings slow, and it is rarely the first line anyone cuts.
Xponential Got a Buyout Offer at Up to $7 a Share. The Stock Was at $3.74.
Fund 1 Investments wrote to the board on October 30, offering cash for every outstanding share at up to $7.00. The stock had closed at $3.74 the day before. Nothing is agreed and the board has not answered publicly.
Still, paying half again over the last close is a bet that the problem is the listing rather than the studios. If you run one, that is the signal to take from it.
SLT Is Suing Lagree for at Least $50 Million. The Fight Is Over Megaformer Supply.
SLT says a Megaformer shortage turned into leverage: no machines for new locations unless it gave up its exclusive rights in New York City. Lagree denies using supply to pressure anyone. One outlet has reported the complaint and we could not locate the docket, so treat the detail as SLT’s account rather than settled fact. The question underneath it is the one worth asking of your own setup. When one company owns the right to make the machine your class is built on, there is no elsewhere to buy.
Orangetheory Now Charges Members $99 to Use Their Own Apple Watch
The fee went live at participating US studios on October 23. Orangetheory used to sell a physical bridge for the same job, the OTbeat Link, at $129. The new charge ships nothing at all.
No stock. No warranty. No dead batteries two years in. And in a franchise system where the royalty comes off gross sales, a revenue line with nothing behind it is worth more than its face value. For the long version of how operators grow revenue without adding a single member, that is the argument we made in The Take.
Solidcore’s Founder Says the New Workout Is a Mistake. She Sold in 2023.
Anne Mahlum built Solidcore and sold her majority stake for $88.4 million in 2023. She went public with her objections to the company’s first new format in 13 years anyway, and she says plainly that she no longer sees the internal numbers.
Skip the brand argument and take the specific one. Members are posting about air conditioning, paint and reformers that need servicing, while the money goes to a launch. A serviced reformer produces no press coverage. Both come out of the same budget, and only one is easy to defend in a meeting.
Read This Week
Two posts from the past fortnight, both worth your time. Both are paid, so we have cited only what the free preview shows.
The Rowformer Is Coming to Tribeca. Is It Still Pilates? — Courtney Clapper, The Business of Pilates
STRONG Pilates opened its first Manhattan studio on October 24. The machines row and bike as well as press, and the day’s workout arrives on a tablet bolted to each one. Clapper’s read is that this may be the best-designed Pilates business rather than the best Pilates. The line that travels is hers: “The equipment is the moat. You can’t take a Rowformer class anywhere else.”
The company says half its existing US studios passed $1 million in recurring annual revenue inside their first year. That is STRONG’s own figure, not an audited one. Read the piece straight after our SLT and Lagree story, because both land in the same place. Own the machine and you own everyone whose business runs on it.
What I Got Wrong About Wellness This Year — Rach Hirsch, The Wellness Investor
Hirsch invests in wellness companies and spent the year making public calls on where the category goes. This post lists three she got wrong. The first is menopause. She thought the attention meant the industry was closing in on solving it, and she has changed her mind.
The framing underneath it is the part worth keeping. In her words: “being right about the direction of a market doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right about how it gets there, or who wins, or what consumers actually want.” Read it after our Solidcore story, where a founder outside the building is making a confident call about what members want. Hirsch invests in the category she writes about, so take it as an investor’s view.
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