The wellness industry, currently a $200 billion a year market providing healthy people with products and services to maintain good health, is poised for explosive growth to over $1 trillion annually by 2010. This growth will be fueled by developments in biosciences like the mapping of the human genome. Given the projected growth, the wellness industry offers an excellent investment opportunity. Four key areas to target are: food packed with nutrients people increasingly want; preventative medicine enhancing health rather than just treating illness; financial services and insurance sustaining long-term wellness; and distribution systems educating consumers on improving their lives. In short, now is the time to invest in the ground floor of the high-growth wellness industry. Our genetic code and aging will drive unlimited demand for wellness products and services for decades. Each new genetically-based offering slowing aging will increase demand further, as satisfied customers seek to look and feel even healthier and live longer consuming more wellness offerings.
Wellness encompasses the way people eat, exercise, sleep, work, save money, age, and almost every other aspect of their lives. At its core, wellness means being proactive in sustaining good health, made possible by scientific breakthroughs in biology, cellular biochemistry, and manufacturing technologies. The wellness industry is already sizable and poised for explosive growth over the next decade. Just two or three decades ago, wellness did not exist as a major industry. Today, however, it has expanded rapidly on the back of businesses offering products and services like vitamins and herbs, nutritional supplements, cosmetic procedures such as plastic surgery and dermatology treatments, discretionary vision correction surgery, fertility treatments, preventative medicine, fitness clubs and trainers, athletic equipment, medications, health food, weight loss programs, and more. This wellness revolution traces back to J.I. Rodale, founder of Rodale Press, which currently publishes popular health and fitness magazines. In the 1950s, Rodale released books advocating exercise and reduced consumption of red meat and dairy. For over 20 years, the Federal Trade Commission tried unsuccessfully to block these publications. Now Rodale reaches over 12 million readers and has become the world's largest publisher of health books, releasing over 100 new titles yearly. Several factors make the industry ripe for quick expansion over the next 10 years: scientific advances enabling new wellness products; rising discretionary incomes funding quality purchases; technology allowing work efficiencies and labor force growth; and medical acknowledgement of lifestyle impacts on health. The time is right specifically because 61% of Americans are now overweight thanks to the food industry's push for overconsumption, while the medical industry profits more from treating symptoms rather than preventing illnesses. Employers and insurers have little incentive to promote wellness given loose job markets. Baby Boomers refuse to accept aging and will spend to slow its effects. Wellness has five key traits of breakout consumer goods like cars and computers: affordability, viral marketing as consumers inspire friends, continual use, universal appeal, and all-day enjoyment of benefits like increased energy. In essence, the wellness industry tackles enduring questions of life, health, and aging through proactive prevention rather than reactive treatment of symptoms downstream, creating products and services that enhance vitality and longevity.
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