# La Mongo 2 — The four trends we ride (v1, 8 Sept 2026) *Companion to the Vision note. Part 1 states the trends with the numbers that hold up. Part 2 attacks them the way a VC would, and lists what the story is still missing. Sources at the end; anything not sourced is flagged.* --- ## Part 1 — The trends ### 1. Social clubs are a thing The gym is turning into a place you stay. In Paris alone, autumn 2026 brings a cluster of openings that mix training, recovery and a social space: **Rune** (10e, six training zones + sauna/cold plunge + restaurant + coworking, expected Sept 2026), **Hyria Wellness House** (17e, "performance & longevity club", Sept 2026, €195–590/month), **NXT LVL** (16e, 1,700 m² inside Stade Jean-Bouin, opened 2 Sept 2026, contrast therapy + café), **Haus One** (9e, members-only "Move / Recover / Connect", Oct 2026) and **Impact** ("social sport club" with padel + cross-training + sauna, Oct 2026). They follow **La Montgolfière Lamarck** (18e, 5,800 m², Oct 2025, €195/month), **RE-SET** (9e, social sauna club, March 2026, 6,000 bookings in its first month), **Sant Roch** (1er, 400 m², largest sauna in France) and Soho House adding a Soho Health Club to its Paris house. The same pattern is already funded abroad. **Bathhouse** (NYC) raised $35M in 2025–26 to go from 3 to 10 sites; **Othership** (Toronto/NYC) raised $8.5M in 2025 for its 4th site; **Remedy Place** runs 4 "social wellness clubs" at $300–2,750/month; **Life Time** calls itself an "athletic country club", did ~$3B revenue in 2025 (+14%) and is opening 12–14 large-format clubs in 2026; **Third Space** London is at 14 clubs at £273–325/month with 3 more in 2026; **1Rebel** is adding cold plunges, saunas and F&B to its London studios. McKinsey's 2025 wellness study puts the global market at ~$2T and names in-person wellness services as a high-growth area; the Global Wellness Summit called "super-social clubs" a 2025 trend and "festivalised" sauna culture a 2026 one. *What it means for us:* the format is validated, the price point (€195/month in Paris) is validated, and the money is flowing — but every French example is in Paris. Nobody has done it in a French regional city. ### 2. Health is the new reason to train Europe's fitness market hit a record in 2025: **75.5M members (+5.8%), €39bn revenue (+9%)**, penetration 9.3% of the population. France is the laggard: **~6.2–7M members, ~9–10% penetration**, against 14.8% in Germany, 16.6% in the UK, ~24% in the Netherlands and **26% in the US**. That gap is the headroom. And the motivation has shifted: **52% of French exercisers now cite health first** (+6 pts since 2018), 46% cite wellbeing (+6), only 34% appearance; 61% of French adults now practise regularly (+7 pts since 2018). The under-30s are leading. **50% of new gym sign-ups in France are under 30**; in the US, 18–24s have the highest penetration of any age group (35.5%); UK Gen Z train ≥2×/week at 73% (62% a year earlier), spend £49/month on fitness (+17%), and **44% train to socialise**. Around them, the "measure your health" layer has become a consumer category: WHOOP (2.5M members, $10bn valuation, now sells blood panels), Oura (5.5M rings, >$500M revenue), Function Health (200k members, $2.5bn valuation), and in France **Lucis** ($20M Series A in May 2026, 10k+ users, 110+ biomarkers). *What it means for us:* people are willing to pay for health, not for machines. A club that measures (VO2max, blood, body composition) and programs from the data sits exactly where the spend is going. ### 3. Running and the outdoors are the new social life France now counts **12.4M runners** (6.6M in 2000), 40% under 35, 42% women, and **74% of them also run trail**. Races are sold out faster than concerts: **Semi de Paris 2026, 50,000 runners, sold out in hours; Marathon de Paris 2026, 58,853 starters (3rd largest in the world), 49% first-timers; Marseille-Cassis, 20,000 bibs gone in one hour.** Trail races in France doubled since 2015 to 5,900 in 2025, with 1.44M finishers. Hyrox went past 1.5M participants in 2025/26 and targets 2M+ in 2026/27; Paris will race at the Grand Palais in 2027. The social layer is what changed. Strava counts **1M clubs** (running clubs up 3.5× in 2025), run-club participation grew 59% in 2024, and **58% of people say they made friends through a fitness group**. Gen Z are 39% more likely than Gen X to use sport to meet people; the "run club is the new night out" headline is now mainstream. Paris has 12+ active run clubs (Flow Club ~2,000 runners); Marseille has a dozen, running the Corniche, the Vieux-Port and the Calanques, plus the biggest open-water event in Europe (Défi de Monte-Cristo, 10,000 swimmers). Brands are built on it: Bandit Running ($30M+ raised, membership $125/year, stores that are clubhouses), Distance (Lyon → Paris → Copenhagen), Hoka ($2.6bn, +16%). *What it means for us:* Marseille is one of the best outdoor playgrounds in France. The club is the base camp — the run and trail club leaves from here, and comes back here to recover. Outdoor is our acquisition channel and recovery is our product. ### 4. People are lonely, and cities are where it hurts **24% of French adults feel lonely regularly** (Fondation de France 2026); it is **28% in cities over 100,000** vs 21% in rural areas, and **35% among 25–39 year-olds** — our exact persona — vs 16% of 60–69s. WHO now treats social connection as a health determinant: 1 in 6 people worldwide lonely, ~871,000 deaths a year linked to it. The OECD documents a decline in daily in-person contact with friends since 2006, sharpest among the young. The US Surgeon General's line — lack of connection is as lethal as 15 cigarettes a day — is now standard in every wellness pitch. The commercially useful evidence is about retention, not loneliness: in a 10,000-member UK study, **gym-only members were 56% more likely to cancel than group-exercise members**; 81% of Gen Z gym-goers do group workouts; Strava's group activities last 40% longer than solo ones. Community is not the mission statement, it is the churn model. *What it means for us:* belonging is why members stay past year one, and staying past year one is the whole economics of a capped, premium club. --- ## Part 2 — The VC read: where the story breaks *Same four trends, seen from the other side of the table.* **On "social clubs are a thing".** Seven openings in one Paris autumn is a supply signal, not a demand signal — it can just as well be the top of a cycle (United Fitness Brands closed in London and its Chelsea flagship went to 1Rebel, Blok closed Manchester, boutique fitness has a graveyard). None of the Paris clubs has published unit economics; Rune, Haus One and Impact have not even published a price. Paris is 2M people at 20,000/km² with a 54% cadre share in the 10e; Marseille's premium supply today tops out at €69–209/month and the 6e/8e are the only districts that resemble the persona. The honest version of the trend is "validated in Paris, unproven anywhere else in France" — which is both the opportunity and the risk, and the story should say so. A VC will also ask why La Montgolfière itself, which took outside investors in 2024, will not open in Marseille or Lyon before we do. **On health and gym growth.** The growth in European penetration is overwhelmingly low-cost: Basic-Fit has 894 clubs in France at €25/month, Fitness Park added 19% clubs last year; the French average subscription is ~€33/month. We are asking for 5–7× that — so the comparison set has to be boutique studios, not gyms. There the numbers hold: outside Paris a reformer/Lagree class is €28–38, a 10-pack €25–35 per class, unlimited €220–350/month (Marseille, Aix, Bordeaux, Lyon), and two classes a week already cost €250–300/month. The counter-risk is the local bundler: SET Marseille sells gym + reformer + Hyrox training for €90–130 per four weeks, and Wellness Sport Club Prado has a pool and 160 classes a week at €59/month. Our €179 has to be visibly more than "classes plus a gym" — the spa, the lab and the place are what justify the gap. The under-30 numbers cut both ways: Gen Z has the highest participation and the lowest disposable income (£49/month in the UK study); our persona is 30–45 CSP+, so the Gen Z slide is a cultural signal, not our customer. "Health as motivation" says nothing about willingness to pay €179 in a city where median income is below Paris. And the biomarker layer that makes the concept feel modern is being built by companies with 100× our budget (WHOOP, Oura, Function, Lucis) — we should be their distribution, not compete with them. **On running and outdoors.** The running boom is free. Run clubs are free, Strava is free, the Calanques are free, and Marseille's climate means the outdoor alternative is available eleven months a year — the very thing that makes the city attractive reduces the need for a gym. Willingness to pay in this trend shows up in events (bibs, Hyrox entries, Bandit's $125/year), not in €179 memberships. The base-camp idea is good but it has to be proven: how many of Marseille's run-club members would pay for recovery, coaching and a place, and how many would just keep running for free? Also note that Hyrox skipped Marseille in 2025 after organisational problems — the local hybrid scene is smaller than Paris or Lyon. **On loneliness.** The correlation is real, the purchase driver is not. The loneliest groups (unemployed 45%, low-sociability 25–39s) are the least able to pay for a premium club; the people who join a €179 social club are usually the ones who already have a social life. Loneliness is a good opening line and a bad business case. Use it once, then switch to the retention data, which is the number that actually moves the model. ### What the story is still missing 1. **Demand evidence outside Paris.** Zero presales, zero waitlist, zero price test in Marseille. The three-week validation protocol is the only answer to this, and it should be in the deck before the trends are. 2. **The operator.** La Montgolfière was a finance founder plus a coach who had run gyms for seven years. We are a growth/AI founder. Who runs the floor, hires 40 coaches, manages a restaurant and a spa? The team slide is currently the weakest slide. 3. **The building.** In this category the building is the product (industrial, high, light). We have no site, no rent quote, no landlord. Capex is a guess until we do. 4. **The pace contradiction.** Our benchmark opened one club every seven years; our plan says five clubs in four years plus franchises. A VC will read the plan as either naïve or as requiring a fundamentally different operating model — we must show which, and what it costs (HQ team, playbook, capital per club). 5. **Franchising an unproven format.** Nobody in France has franchised a 1,500 m² social club; the compact format has no economics yet. Franchise revenue in the EBITDA story is the least defensible line. 6. **The AI moat is a feature until proven otherwise.** Every device and app is shipping an AI coach. Our defensible asset is not the model, it is the proprietary in-club data (tests, attendance, recovery) and the closed loop with a coach. Say that. Also check the regulatory side: blood-test-driven advice in France sits close to medical practice; the partnership with Lucis needs to define who prescribes and who advises. 7. **Exit and investor fit.** Fitness operators trade at mid-single-digit to ~10× EBITDA; VC returns need the network-and-fees layer to be real. Until it is, this is a business-angel / family-office / hospitality-investor story (exactly how La Montgolfière and Bathhouse's early rounds were done), not a VC story. Choosing the right investor is part of the narrative. 8. **Model consistency.** The public dossier says €179 and 1,335 m²; the internal model says €149 and 800 m². Any investor who reads both will stop there. 9. **Seasonality and churn.** Marseille empties in August and fills with tourists; no French premium club has published churn. The 3%/month assumption is borrowed from generic gym data; premium capped clubs should do better, but we have no proof. 10. **The backlash trend.** The Global Wellness Summit's 2026 list includes "over-optimisation backlash". A club that leads with biomarkers and VO2max can read as clinical; leading with the place, the outdoors and the people, with the lab as a quiet layer, is safer. *Bottom line for the narrative: keep the four trends, cut each to three numbers, and put the counter-argument in our own words before the investor does. The credibility comes from the validation protocol and the team, not from the trends.* --- ## Notes on the club list Three names from the original list could not be verified as Paris clubs: **Blold**, **The Eight** (theeightclub.com is a members' club with no city, fitness content or prices) and **Digg** — please check spellings or share links. Haus One and Impact open in **October**, not September. Impact's "Paris 19" address is not published. ## Sources Paris clubs: runeclub.fr; Numéro (30 Jul 2026); haus-one.com; impact-paris.com; hyriawellnesshouse.com; nxtlvlclub.com; crea-home.fr; Time Out Paris (31 Oct 2025, 22 Jul 2026); cult.news (8 Jun 2026); Journal du Luxe (28 Jul 2026); Luxus+ (3 Sep 2026); sohohouse.com House Notes 006. US/UK: Athletech News (Bathhouse $35M, 12 May 2026; Othership, 3 Jul 2025; Sweat and Tonic, Jul 2026); Fortune "social wellness clubs"; remedyplace.com; Fitt Insider (May 2022); Life Time FY2025 preliminary results (22 Jan 2026); Health Club Management (Third Space Whiteley; 1Rebel); luxe.digital (Equinox 2026 pricing); McKinsey Future of Wellness 2025; Global Wellness Summit trends 2025 and 2026. Fitness market: EuropeActive/Deloitte EHFMR 2026 via SGI Europe; HFA 2026 US report; LeisureDB UK 2025; Union Sport & Cycle / Xerfi via MagicFit; Basic-Fit FY2025; Filière Sport (Fitness Park, 11 May 2026); INJEP/CRÉDOC Baromètre des pratiques sportives 2025; ABC Fitness Wellness Watch (Oct 2025); The Gym Group Gen Z Fitness Pulse 2025; GWI Wellness Economy Monitor 2025; WHOOP Series G (31 Mar 2026); Oura (Sep/Oct 2025); Sacra (Function Health); lucis.life (26 May 2026). Running/outdoor: Strava Year in Sport 2024 and 2025; Observatoire du Running 2025 (Union Sport & Cycle / Running Heroes); athle.fr (FFA licences 2025); Baromètre Finisher FFA 2024 and 2025 (u-Trail, Filière Sport 25 Aug 2026); Jogging International (Semi 2026); marathons.com (Marathon de Paris 2026); u-Trail (Marseille-Cassis 2025); Maritima (Défi de Monte-Cristo 2025); endurance.biz (Hyrox 2026/27); zonehybrid.fit and roxzone.fr (Hyrox France/Marseille); utmb.world (2025 season, UTMB×Strava); Paris Wellness Review, Run Club Collective (Marseille); Deckers FY2026 (Hoka); Brand Futures (Bandit). Boutique pricing (Sept 2026 rate cards): studio-apato.com, wondercamp.fr, setmarseille.com, capsulepilatesclub.com, lagreelab.fr, soda-studio.fr, yesclubstudio.com, beyond-cycling.studio, o2trainingclub.fr, reformer-factory.com, crossfit-symbiote.fr, wellness-sportclub.fr, cnmarseille.com (2025 grid), silostudio.fr, episod.com, studio-rituel.paris; Mariana Tek Boutique Fitness Trends 2026. Loneliness: Fondation de France, Étude Solitudes 2025 and 2026; OECD, Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries (Oct 2025); WHO Commission on Social Connection (30 Jun 2025); US Surgeon General advisory (May 2023); gov.uk Community & Engagement Survey 2025/26; Hillsdon/TRP retention study via Health Club Management; Les Mills Gen Z report (Apr 2024); PLOS Global Public Health (parkrun, 2024).