The global health and wellness market continues to climb. In 2024 the market size reached $5.8 trillion, and is projected to rise to almost $14 trillion by 2032.
Both direct-to-consumer (DTC) and service-based businesses in the health and wellness industry have experienced supercharged growth in the past few years. Newer brands and fan favorites alike have been able to take advantage of soaring interest in virtual and physical classes, personalized wellness experiences, and smart fitness equipment.
Yet increasing interest means greater competition. Wellness services and products are everywhere. How can your DTC ecommerce brand stand out from the noise?
Here we’ll share global wellness trends, insights, and stats on what 2025 will likely bring to the industry. First, we’ll review the state of the industry and what’s been shaking it up in recent years.
The health and wellness market: Key trends and stats
In a McKinsey study of roughly 5,000 consumers, 82% of those in the US now consider wellness a top or important priority. Meanwhile, 73% of consumers in the UK and 87% in China report sharing this sentiment. More than half overall say they prioritize wellness more now than they did a year ago.
Younger generations are spending more on health and wellness than older consumers. McKinsey & Company report millennials and Gen Z consistently spend more in every category: appearance, fitness, nutrition, sleep, and mindfulness. They also say fitness is a “very high priority,” compared to just 40% of the overall US population.
This prioritization of health has supercharged growth in the industry—growth that looks set to continue in the future.
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Interestingly, consumers are more willing to buy from new brands than ever. Data compiled in our Ecommerce Growth Guide found that Shopify merchants saw a 17% increase in first-time shopper orders since 2022, and a 59% increase in return shoppers in the past two years. This presents a unique opportunity for health and wellness brands to run targeted marketing campaigns that reach open-minded consumers.
But as the wellness trend increases, the landscape is becoming increasingly crowded. Brands need to be strategic about how and what they create. Health and wellness activities are no longer limited to physical experiences. To stand out, brands must build online and omnichannel experiences.
10 health and wellness trends to follow in 2025
1. Wellness experiences get personalized
People expect personalized health and wellness. But consumers are increasingly privacy-conscious—they’re wary of who they share their personal data with. Only 14% of consumers say they’re willing to share health data, including medication history, health records, lab results, and physical activity data, with health technology companies. That’s down from 25% in 2020.
However, our data found that half of consumers say personalized offers and promotions from brands they’ve interacted with improve their shopping experience.
To build consumer trust, health and wellness brands must provide value to consumers who are comfortable exchanging privacy for personalization. In practice, this looks like wellness brands going beyond building personalized marketing campaigns and building tailor-made product offerings unique to the consumer.
Supplement brand HUM Nutrition, for example, uses first-party data to personalize their offerings to each individual consumer. Shoppers complete a short quiz about their daily lifestyle, food, and exercise habits. The brand then shares personalized supplement recommendations based on the consumer’s unique responses.
Then, in exchange for the customer’s personal data, including their email address, HUM provides a 50% discount on their first order. Customers can also get up to 30% off their first order just by signing up for the brand’s newsletter.
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2. Brands will partner with authentic (and accredited) influencers
Influencers are a central part of the health and wellness industry. But it’s no longer about collaborating with the influencer or celebrity that has the highest follower count. Instead, people want to see authentic content from relatable influencers. For wellness brands, this may mean partnering with micro-influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers) or even nano-influencers (fewer than 10,000 followers).
Brands often see influencers with fewer followers create more authentic content when compared to overly polished celebrity endorsements. An important part of any influencer marketing strategy is building trust with its audience—and people are much more likely to trust accounts they can more easily relate to. In fact, nano-influencers have an average engagement rate of 3.69%—over twice the engagement that macro-influencers have.
HiSmile is just one brand that used an influencer-led marketing strategy to get their products in front of a broad global target audience on Instagram. Social selling and influencer marketing drove HiSmile from a kitchen table idea to a global force.
For even greater influence over wellness consumers, partner with professional doctors or clinicians over other social media influencers. A recent McKinsey study concluded that doctors’ recommendations hold more weight than ever—particularly when consumers are seeking specialist care related to overall health, sleep, and mindfulness.
3. People own more smart exercise equipment
Home workouts boomed during the pandemic, and people who don’t have time or disposable income to join a gym are continuing their home exercises to this day. In fact, home is the most popular workout location—beating the gym, outdoors, or in a fitness studio.
DTC brands are tapping into consumer preferences for at-home workouts with smart exercise equipment. Statista estimates that revenue in the digital fitness and wellness space will reach $16.51 billion this year.
For example, apparel brand Lululemon’s purchase of Mirror—now known as Lululemon Studio—provided the brand with a digital offering to support their main fitness apparel business. Users can stream over 10,000 classes from fitness studios, including pilates and HIIT, through the Mirror device in their home gym. Instead of having to go to their nearest studio, they can get a top-tier training experience in their own homes.
Smart fitness equipment has developed into a shared community experience where consumers can choose when and how they work out while engaging with other like-minded people. This community element replicates the in-person experience that home exercisers otherwise miss out on. Peloton, for example, promotes their Leaderboard, Video Chat, and Here Now features. Lululemon’s Studio encourages user engagement by using community cameras.
4. Consumers download apps to help them build solid health and wellness routines
As people continue to exercise from home and adopt remote-friendly workouts that don’t require a physical gym space, consumers are increasingly turning to workout apps.
According to Statista, in 2024 the most common online fitness and health services consumers in the US bought were fitness, yoga, training, and health-tracking apps. For apps, some of the leading health and fitness apps downloaded globally in the Google Play Store included weight loss apps and home workout apps.
To tap into this wellness trend, brands can evaluate how their offerings could be packaged into a health-oriented community-based app. For instance, the Nike Training Club app aims to help users stick with their fitness habits. There’s free guidance from trainers, athletes, and nutritionists. Users can also participate in a catalog of free workouts including restorative yoga, HIIT, and bodyweight burn.
Athletic backpack retailer and Shopify merchant WOLFpak also has their own mobile app to give customers exclusive access to new product drops. Some 75% of Americans feel uneasy leaving the house without their phone—and native apps give health brands the option to send in-app notifications and create a direct line of communication with customers.
5. Wearables become commonplace
Health and science are closely linked—and consumers are relying on technology that makes their own biometric data accessible.
The Apple Watch was perhaps the most notable introduction to the space, selling 12 million watches and claiming a 75% market share in their first year. Competitors have since emerged and contributed to a fitness tracking industry valued at $60.9 billion.
Brands like Oura Ring and WHOOP, for example, help people measure fitness, monitor recovery, and improve their sleep through a biometric device worn on the finger or wrist. Users can see detailed analytics on how their body behaves, giving them the freedom to run their own experiments to hone in on the perfect health and wellness routine.
According to McKinsey, around half of all consumers have purchased a fitness wearable at some point, and more than three-quarters say they’d be open to wearing one in the future. Research from The WELLSurvey corroborates this: some 53% of respondents look to evidence-based science to guide their lifestyle choices.
Perhaps even more interesting: some users are willing to share their biometric data with brands in exchange for a personalized experience. Oura’s partnership with Natural Cycles is just one example. Users can take their temperature reading from Oura and integrate it with the Natural Cycles app to track how their basal body temperature changes throughout their cycle.
This willingness to share biometric data from a wearable presents a unique opportunity to collect first-party data from your customers. Even if you don’t offer the wearable technology yourself, partnering with a brand that does—and giving consumers a way to turn their scientific data into health and wellness improvements—could help you offer the personalized shopping experience that modern consumers crave.
6. The rise of the wellness metaverse
While the metaverse is still a novel concept, consumers are already looking for ways to improve their daily routines and experiences. By 2030, an estimated 198.2 million people will interact with the health and fitness metaverse, spending an average $140.90 per user.
The growing wellness metaverse will create new opportunities for each segment of the surging global wellness market. Health and wellness brands may choose to use the metaverse in the following immersive ways:
- Immersive mindfulness sessions
- Interactive cooking classes
- Virtual workouts
- Gamified exercise
For instance, VR fitness apps in the metaverse, like Supernatural and Beat Saber, combine upbeat music, high-intensity workouts, and virtual coaching to create an engaging and fun exercise experience.
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As these metaverse experiences are in their infancy, there’s room for improvement when it comes to user experience. Some users have complained that the fitness data in these apps is hard to export into fitness tracking apps or wearables.
That said, brands are still investing heavily in the metaverse. Meta’s developing tech will encourage iOS and Apple Watch users to try out VR fitness apps and close their activity rings. As Apple continues to develop its wearables lines, including smart goggles, metaverse-based wellness activities will continue to grow in variety and popularity in 2025 and beyond.
7. Men’s personal care brands continue to grow in popularity
While wellness and personal care traditionally have been targeted at women, there’s increasing demand for men’s personal care products. The global men’s personal care market size is expected to reach $115.3 billion by 2028. There’s clearly plenty of room for opportunity.
There’s increasing demand for gender-specific products like shampoo, soap, face masks, and peels. Plus, growing numbers of men are purchasing their own personal care products instead of having a partner or family member do it for them.
Dr. Squatch is one example of a men’s care brand tapping into this increased demand. Founded in 2013, the DTC brand began with an online shop that sold natural soap bars. In June 2023, Dr. Squatch launched a new line of natural deodorant and hair care products, also adding face wash to their product line.
To connect with their target audience, the brand focuses on using humor to educate men about the benefits of using natural personal care products.
“Guys don’t necessarily talk about personal care in a way, generally speaking… that women do and, so there’s an element of having to really find ways of connecting with them that are unique,” Josh Friedman, chief marketing officer at Dr. Squatch, told Retail Brew.
Manscaped is another men’s personal care brand that has seen its popularity soar. In late 2022, the business announced it successfully finished an undisclosed Series B funding round that will be used to boost product expansion.
8. Sleep is a top priority for more people
Sleeping well is the next-highest priority for consumers following better overall health, and many say their sleep needs are unmet. As people begin to prioritize high-quality sleep, the range and innovation of products that help people continue the habits they enjoy—e.g.,caffeine-free coffee as part of an evening routine—also increase.
Apps like SleepTown and Sleep Cycle help people track and improve their sleeping habits. To incentivize people to stay off their phones and prioritize sleep, SleepTown gamifies the process. The app locks the phone screen with a slow animation of buildings being constructed. The buildings get destroyed if you don’t meet your set goal.
DTC health and wellness brands that want to make the most of this trend should look for innovative apps or wearables to add to their lineup. Partnering with other brands in the sleep industry can help you get in front of the right target audience. For example, a mattress brand could partner with an app developer or smart fitness equipment brand.
9. Focus on gut health health, not weight loss
The wellness consumer of today is focusing on long-term health outcomes rather than fad diets. There’s been a decline in aesthetic-based diets, and a growing interest in healthful foods made with natural ingredients. More than 80% of consumers consider gut health to be important—and more than half said it’ll become a higher priority over the coming years.
The same study also found that consumers are moving away from products that tout “clean” or “natural” ingredients, and towards those with clinically proven properties. Around 70% of US consumers also purchased more in the healthy aging category in the past year then any years prior.
Brands that understand the push for healthfulness over weight loss are not only seeing skyrocketing sales but also gaining powerful partners, like Olipop, a prebiotic soda company.
In 2018, Olipop started off with only $850K in revenue. Then as public interest in gut health increased, Olipop hit $100 million in revenue in the first six months of 2023—and even got celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Mindy Kaling, and the Jonas Brothers on its roster of investors.
“Before the pandemic, we were seeing reductions in the size of the soda market year-on-year as consumers were migrating away from that addictive drink, but also a really pleasurable and enjoyable drink,” Olipop’s cofounder Ben Goodwin said in a Shopify podcast.
“People were trying to migrate over to healthier options with a simultaneous increase in awareness around microbiome importance and science, and a real significant increase in awareness around digestive health.”
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10. Prioritizing mental health
A major wellness trend that has continued to grow is taking care of your mental health. The CDC reported that 57.2 million people visited a physician’s office with a mental disorder as the primary diagnosis.
In fact, a survey conducted by growtherapy found that 68% of therapists saw an increase in patients in 2024. Furthermore, mental health has even been pushed beyond the couch: The online therapy service BetterHelp now serves over five million people with its network of 30,000 licensed therapists.
Mental health is something that all brands are concerned about—not just wellness brands. Fashion brands like Kenneth Cole created their own alliance, The Mental Health Coalition, to provide resources and advocate for mental health.
Boys Get Sad Too, the men’s apparel brand, even built their entire DTC business around mental health support. The retailer donates 10% of all profits to a mental health charity and aims to break the stigma around men’s mental health by printing the brand’s name prominently across their clothing.
Tap into these health and wellness trends in 2025
The health and wellness market is growing, and shows no signs of slowing down. Consumers are set to continue prioritizing good health and well-being next year, meaning they’ll likely spend more too. But the wellness segment is also becoming more competitive, so brands must consider how to best engage with target consumers.
Focus on tapping into a few core wellness trends, including:
- Creating personalized wellness experiences
- Building authentic influencer campaigns
- Creating virtual fitness sessions
But these trends are just the tip of the iceberg. We recently performed an in-depth analysis of our internal data—a sample size of more than 875 million people who shop with businesses on Shopify—to bring you a rich collection of data and insights as you work toward sustainable business growth.
One datapoint we found is that health and beauty is one of the top-ranked industries by overall order volume. And when we drilled even deeper to start looking at what propels that success, we found that direct and affiliate marketing channels are the top-referring channels for health and beauty when ranked by average order volume.
These are just a couple of the key points we found, but you can find so many more in our Ecommerce Growth Guide. And from there, you can chart a course toward business horizons filled with opportunity and long-term growth.
Health and wellness trends FAQ
What is the wellness trend in 2025?
Wellness is still a trend in 2025, particularly amongst the Gen Z demographic—and they’re no longer focusing on weight loss alone. Using advanced technology like DNA testing, apps can now suggest the perfect diet and fitness routine based on your unique body.
What is the future of the wellness industry?
Authentic partnerships with accredited influencers, the rise of wearable fitness trackers, and a focus on gut health are three trends anticipated in the wellness industry.
What is the outlook for the wellness market?
The global wellness industry reached $5.8 trillion in 2024 and is expected to continue growing, reaching $14 trillion by 2032.
What are the four areas of health and wellness?
- Mental well-being
- Physical fitness
- Sleep
- Nutrition